Three times the size of New Zealand’s far more famous Waiheke Island, Great Barrier Island is one of the last great wilderness areas of the country’s upper North Island. At 285-square kilometres (compared to Waiheke’s 92-square kilometres) and with a population of just 1000, Great Barrier is widely thought of as New Zealand as New Zealand used to…
Tag: Travel
Sampling High-Rise Airbnb Luxury In Melbourne… While Dressed As Worzel Gummidge
Who flies all the way to another country for a themed dress-up birthday party and gets the theme wrong? It’s a question I’ll most likely ask myself for the rest of my life, though the answer is easy: me. But how did this travesty happen!? It was my dear friend Georgie’s 30th bash in Melbourne…
From Elephants In The Wild To Cricket By The Sea – My Top 60 Sri Lanka Photos
Sri Lanka is one of those those hot travel destinations right now that everyone seems to be talking about. As a cricket fan and lover of the tropics, Sri Lanka had been on my radar for several years, but when my wife said it was at the top of her must-visit list, we decided to…
Singapore’s M Social Hotel – A Robot Who Delivers Direct To Your Room!
I’ve always loved Singapore. With seven years in nearby Kuala Lumpur in the 80s, Singapore has so many of the same smells, sights and sounds that transport me right back to that Southeast Asian childhood. As I recently wrote in my weekly New Zealand Herald ‘Travel Bugs’ column: “I never understood why some people think Singapore…
The Most Remote Music Fest In The World: Backstage At The Big Red Bash With John Farnham & Daryl Braithwaite – My Top 50 Photos
In July I was invited to the deepest depths of the Australian Outback to cover the self-described “most remote music festival in the world”, Queensland’s Big Red Bash. With John Farnham the headline act and fellow Aussie baby boomer star Daryl Braithwaite also on the bill, I went to the towering sand dunes on the…
A Food Festival On 1 Of The World’s Largest Coral Islands – The KaiNiue Food Fest
I’ve never been to Niue and it’s on my list. A Pacific Island nation that sits on one of the largest coral islands in the world (Niue is roughly the same size as the island of Penang in Malaysia at 261 square kilometres), a population of just 1600, a mild tropical climate where average daytime…
Great Southern Land: The Soundtrack To An Aussie Outback Road Trip – My NZ Herald Article
On Monday I’ll be returning to the Queensland Outback so here’s a recent piece of mine the New Zealand Herald published about my ‘roo-dodging, Aussie-soundtracked road trip there back in 2016: New Zealand Herald, May 6, 2018: ‘Brisbane – Way beyond the beach’ As the title suggests, this was “way beyond the beach”. As in,…
Why The Andaman In Langkawi Is One Of Asia’s Best Beach Resorts – Let’s Travel Mag
It’s a travel writing cliche to say that a hotel or a resort was so wonderful that you didn’t want to leave to see anything else. “I just didn’t want to leave!” I’ve written it myself, though I suspect half the time this is travel writer hyperbole and that the writer really did want to check…
Beyond Disneyland: My Let’s Travel Mag ‘Anaheim For Adults’ Special
“Anaheim for adults” was the pitch from my editor at Let’s Travel magazine and I was up for the challenge. Yes, everyone knows this is the home of Disneyland, but what else is there to do if you’ve booked a family holiday in Anaheim, California? In my case, I’m an adult who unashamedly still loves…
Sleeping In A Smurf House! Exploring Solscape In Raglan, Waikato
I always loved the Smurfs. I was even such a Smurf-geek as a kid that I’d set my weekday alarm early enough to watch the 6:30am episodes on TV2 before getting ready for school. The pre-pubescent version of myself often thought how cool it would be to have my own human-sized Smurf house. Well, fast-forward 25…
Waikato’s Slice Of Jurassic Park
A couple of weeks ago my wife and I took up an invitation to return to a guesthouse that sits on the edge of a forest some people say is the healthiest in all of New Zealand. Maungatautari is the name of a mountain in Waikato that most North Islanders would’ve driven past without probably…
Why To Make Penang Your Next Tropical Island Holiday – My NZ Herald Article + Top 60 Photos
Last month the New Zealand Herald published my article about why Penang in Malaysia should be on your radar if you’re after a holiday on tropical island that’s a little different from all the rest. There are plenty of warm weather islands in the world with beautiful scenery and nice resorts to de-stress yourself, but there…
