Ten Best book reads

In no special Order

1. Midnights Children: Salman Rushdie
2. Catch 22: Joseph Heller
3. Illywhacker: Peter Carey
4. Cloudstreet: Tim Winton
5. Underworld: Don DeLillo
6. 
   

Our 10 Great Australian Drives

BRUCE ELDER

March 12, 2010 The Age

Comments 16

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10 Best drives

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Veteran travel writer Bruce Elder nominates the road trips all Australians should make in their lifetimes.

There are probably 10,000 wonderful drives in Australia. Every weekend, families all over the country pack up the car, strap the children into the seats and head off to destinations that are personal favourites full of fond childhood memories and unforgettable experiences.

But what are the truly great drives - the drives capable of changing your life and showing you the special magic of the continent? Here are 10 that are unforgettable.

1. NULLARBOR PLAIN, SA & WA

It wasn't serendipity that led South Australian government surveyor E.A. Delisser, in 1867, to coin the name Nullarbor from the Latin words "nullus arbor", meaning "no trees". The place really does have no trees. And it is very, very flat. That is part of the appeal of this incredibly long drive. But, along the way, there are amazing sights including the old telegraph station at Eucla, which was built in 1877 as a manual telegraphic repeater station, abandoned in the late 1920s and is now half-covered in the sand dunes that are blown by winds from the Southern Ocean.

The other highlight is the Great Australian Bight, which boasts the longest uninterrupted cliff face in the world.

Distance From Norseman to Ceduna - 1201 kilometres.

Vehicle Standard car.

2. GIBB RIVER ROAD, WA

Starting in May and continuing until the rains come in October, four-wheel-drive enthusiasts try their luck on the 709-kilometre track known as the Gibb River Road. The appeal is obvious. It traverses one of the most stunningly beautiful areas on the continent. The soils are rusty red. The winter days boast impossibly blue skies. The mountain ranges - notably the Cockburn, Pentecost, King Leopold and Barnett - are rugged and dramatic. The landscape, with its ghost gums, paperbarks and myriad cockatoos, kites, eagles and crows, is an endless natural wonderland. And the night skies, so vast and grand, sparkle with a clarity city dwellers can scarcely imagine.

All you can do is make sure you are up at dawn and standing on some vantage point at sunset when the landscape colours are soft and golden and it feels good to be alive.

Distance From Kununurra to Derby - 709 kilometres.

Vehicle High 4WD.

3. ALICE SPRINGS TO ULURU AND KINGS CANYON, NT

The development of a major airport at Yulara means the old circular trip from Alice Springs to Uluru via Kings Canyon and back via Erldunda has become marginalised. Visitors fly in to Uluru, watch the sun set and rise over the rock then head off.

The much more desirable option is to drive from Alice Springs down the Stuart Highway, cross the Finke River (often nothing more than a dry riverbed), head off towards Kings Canyon on the Ernest Giles Road and stop at the amazing Henbury meteorite craters, where 7400 years ago meteorites travelling at more than 40,000km/h crashed into the land leaving craters 180 metres wide and 15 metres deep. Then continue on to the impressively beautiful Kings Canyon, where a four-hour walk around the edge of the canyon is one of those "must do" experiences for every able-bodied Australian. Next head on to Uluru and Kata Tjuta before returning to the Alice via the Lasseter and Stuart highways.

Distance 1080 kilometres.

Vehicle Standard car.

4. GREAT OCEAN ROAD, VIC

After World War I, the Great Ocean Road was carved out of the Victorian coastline as a memorial to those who had fought in the war. All the road builders were ex-servicemen. The 255 kilometres from Torquay to Warrnambool was completed in 1932. This has been described as the most beautiful coastline in Australia. Most of the major attractions - the Twelve Apostles, London Bridge (now London Arch), Loch Ard Gorge - are at the western end but beyond Anglesea there are some lovely vistas across the Southern Ocean.

Port Campbell National Park is a highlight, with vantage points overlooking offshore islets, towering rock stacks, gorges, arches, blowholes and other spectacular scenery. The coastline has its origins about 10 million-20 million years ago when billions of tiny skeletal fragments accumulated beneath the sea, gradually creating limestone formations. The sea then retreated, leaving the soft limestone exposed to violent seas and strong winds.

Distance 255 kilometres from Torquay to Warrnambool.

Vehicle Standard car.

5. HOBART TO FREYCINET PENINSULA, TAS

There is no single road in Tasmania that is significantly better than others but if you want to reach into the essence of historic Tasmania, it is hard to beat a circular journey that includes historic and perfectly preserved Richmond, passes Triabunna and edges Great Oyster Bay, allows for a full-day walking experience through Freycinet National Park to the pristine and unforgettable Wineglass Bay and returns via historic Campbell Town and Ross to Hobart.

At Ross you can inspect the most beautifully carved bridge. It was made by two convict stonemasons, Daniel Herbert and James Colbeck, and is considered one of the richest achievements of the earlier colonial period in Australia.

Distance 437 kilometres.

Vehicle Standard car.

6. THE BIRDSVILLE TRACK, SA

A couple of years ago Drive reported the Birdsville Track had been upgraded since the 1950s when the famous Back of Beyond documentary about the local mailman, Tom Kruse, was made, and had become like a four-lane highway - albeit a four-lane dirt highway. Given the recent rains this may have changed. Still, the Birdsville Track from Marree in South Australia across the Tirari Desert and Sturt Stony Desert is one of the continent's iconic drives. It can be driven in a day or a week.

The first explorer to venture into this lonely area was Charles Sturt, who described the area as a "desperate region having no parallel on Earth". The current fascination with the outback has meant that a regular stream of 4WD adventurers make the journey.

Distance 517 kilometres.

Vehicle 4WD.

7. WESTERN QUEENSLAND — LONGREACH, BARCALDINE, MUTTABURRA

The $12.5 million that was spent developing the Stockman's Hall of Fame at Longreach was an inspired investment that opened up the entire region to rural tourism. As a result, there is now a drive encompassing Barcaldine, Longreach and Winton that can keep the visitor busy for a week.

The roads are sealed, the terrain is flat and the sites include the Australian Stockman's Hall of Fame and the Qantas Founders Outback Museum in Longreach; in Barcaldine the replanted Tree of Knowledge (the symbolic beginning of the Australian Labor Party) and the Australian Workers Heritage Centre; and in Winton, where Banjo Paterson wrote Waltzing Matilda, there's the $3 million Waltzing Matilda Centre. For those who think nothing of driving 110 kilometres across the dusty plains, there's Lark Quarry Conservation Park, which has the largest group of running dinosaur footprints in the world.

Distance 286 kilometres from Barcaldine to Winton.

Vehicle Standard car.

8. EDEN AND BEN BOYD NATIONAL PARK, NSW

The Ben Boyd National Park, which stretches from the Davidson Whaling Station near Boydtown to the wildly romantic Green Cape Lightstation, offers the driver an excess of isolated and peaceful coastal destinations. The highlights of this fascinating journey include Boydtown, Boyd's Tower, Saltwater Creek, Bittangabee and the Green Cape Lightstation.

Stop in Boydtown at the Sea Horse Inn, which was first built by convict labour and, in 2002, was upgraded at a cost of about $4 million. Today it is chic and charming with glorious grounds that extend down to the edge of the water.

Nearby is the Davidson Whaling Station where, although little remains, there are excellent plaques with interpretive text, illustrations and photos to help the visitor imagine what the area was like when the station was operational. Beyond the station is Boyd's Tower, a lighthouse built by Boyd but never completed, and the red siltstone cliffs that have been fractured and folded into some fantastical shapes.

Distance 108 kilometres.

Vehicle 4WD/standard car.

9. FRASER ISLAND, QLD

Fraser Island is the largest sand island in the world and crossing over the island's huge 240-metre-high dunes and driving up and down the long and firm beach on the island's eastern shore is an unforgettable 4WD experience.

Fraser Island is about 123 kilometres long and 22 kilometres at its widest point. Highlights of driving around the island include Eli and Wanggoolba creeks; the wreck of World War I hospital ship the Maheno, which washed ashore in 1935; the colourful sands of the Cathedrals, Pinnacles and Rainbow Gorge; the rocky headlands at Indian Head, Middle Rocks and Waddy Point; Lake Wabby, the island's deepest, which sustains fish and is bordered by melaleuca trees; Lake Bowarrady, which is 120 metres above sea level; and the crystalline Lake McKenzie.

Distance About 150 kilometres of driveable tracks and beach.

Vehicle 4WD.

10. THE DESERT CIRCUIT, NSW

For those who want to experience the desert without leaving civilisation, this circuit from Broken Hill to Tibooburra (nearly all sealed road) across to White Cliffs (dirt road but flat and good when there hasn't been any rain) and on to Wilcannia (mostly sealed), Menindee Lakes (dirt but flat and easy) and back to Broken Hill (all sealed) offers just about everything.

Make sure at sunset you visit the Sculpture Symposium, 13 kilometres out of Broken Hill, which is 12 large sandstone sculptures in a harsh, desert environment. Tibooburra is justly famous for the paintings by Clifton Pugh and Russell Drysdale on the walls of the Family Hotel and the huge whaleboat sculpture in the Pioneer Park.

White Cliffs is a wonderland of opal mining with the countryside being so dry and unforgiving that the Bill O'Reilly Oval is hard red dirt with not a blade of grass.

Wilcannia's highlights include the centre-lift bridge over the Darling and the superb late 19th century buildings around the town.

Distance 959 kilometres.

Vehicle 4WD/standard car when conditions are dry.

Top 10 best travelling songs

Top 10 best travelling songs

From the Age April 28, 2009 -

With iPods a travel essential these days, Travel + Leisure has compiled the ultimate, and completely subjective, traveller's playlist. The list avoids destination songs and focuses on music that evokes the spirit of travel: celebratory road trips, the itch to get on a plane or the occasional quiet moment of introspection experienced while on the move.

1. Motel Blues: Loudon Wainwright III

A particular type of travel, the existential angst of the travelling troubadour. This perfect sketch of loneliness is one of Wainwright's most raw and personal songs. The naked desperation in the final stanza, "Come up to my motel room/Save my life" is at once sleazy and heartbreaking, a rare combination.

2. Refuge of the Road: Joni Mitchell

Travel as a place to hide and to renew. And most of all to gain a bit of perspective as to how insignificant we all are: "In a highway service station/Over the month of June/Was a photograph of the earth/Taken coming back from the moon/And you couldn't see a city/On that marbled bowling ball/Or a forest or a highway/Or me here least of all." A service station stop has never been the same, Joni.

3. Wide Open Road: The Triffids

Another writer to seek solace in the constant movement of the road trip. Spurned lover David McComb takes to the endless expanse of Australia to try and forget that his lover has left him, sporadically taking his rage out on the surrounding countryside. "The sky was big and empty/My chest filled to explode/I yelled my insides out at the sun/At the wide open road." Not happy travel, but very cathartic.

4. Leaving on a Jet Plane: Peter, Paul and Mary

Capturing the moment when we leave a loved one behind, this mournful classic was penned by John Denver and Kenneth Browder in an airport lounge in Washington, giving it extra travel kudos. Peter, Paul and Mary made the song their own, however.

5. Station Approach: Elbow

The antithesis to the above, this is a song about coming home. Having hit the road, presumably on a lengthy tour, gruff Northern poet Guy Garvey just wants to get back to Manchester since he "hasn't seen my Mum for weeks". And who can argue with the quiet mantra: "I never know what I want but I know when I'm low that I/I need to be in the town where they know what I'm like and don't mind." That's something to come home to.

6. Traveller's Tune: Ocean Colour Scene

Raucous Britpop tribute to daydream escapism, this Birmingham-based five-piece band chronicle the frustration of chasing a perennial travel dreamer: "But if you find yourself standing on the corner while you're thinking of a different world/Then you might see me waiting on the corner staring through you in your different world."

7. Transit Lounge: Crowded House

The layering on this even suggests the confusion of waiting around in lounges with German boarding announcements and general travel hubub. But travellers will most likely relate to the chorus, which could double as a practical travel tip. "Lying on the floor of a transit lounge/There'll be no announcements made/You better make sure you don't sleep too sound/There'll be no announcements made." Keep the iPod on low.

8. Every F---ing City: Paul Kelly

A love song played out on the European backpacker trail ("We split up for a while in Barcelona/We met up six days later in Madrid/I was hoping that the break would make things go a little better for us/And for a little while it almost did.") but as the continental chase continues and the city's fly by our protagonist finally gets travel weary proclaiming "Every f---ing city looks the same". Honourable mention also goes to Kelly's bus travel opus From St Kilda to Kings Cross.

9. Like a Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan

"How does it feel/To be on your own/With no direction home/Like a complete unknown/Like a rolling stone?" Well, sometimes Bob, it feels pretty damn good, thanks for asking. Dylan's rollicking road trip classic is a perfect paean to aimless wandering.

10. Roam, the B52s

It's not just the sentiment of roaming 'round the world or the trip that "begins with a kiss" but the sheer glee with which Kate and Cindy belt out this travellin' ditty. So hit the road and, who knows, you may wind up at your very own private Idaho.

I would also add:

"The Proclaimers: I'm On My Way" (from misery to happiness)

Ten things that I have learnt from travelling

The ten things that I have learnt from travelling as far as making the journey safe, hassle free and rewarding are:
1. Always have a supply of toilet paper on you at all times.
2. Always travel with a torch that fits in your mouth so your hands are free.
3.Always have a few $US dollars available in various denominations.
5. In countries where security and Armies are present carry a packet of cigarettes with you to give away.
6. If you are carrying a money or passport pouch on you, always wear it under your clothing under one of your armpits.
7. Always travel with a frisbee. They make great plates and cutting boards and is the best way to break the ice with strangers. Masai Warriors are mean frisbee throwers!
8. Always carry a sewing needle and make sure you have some dacron thread. It will hold anything together.
9. Learn pig latin or arpy darpy or similar for those countries where you are hassled by Touts and tell them you are from Kiribati or some other small South Pacific Island and you don't speak English. Works a treat.
10. Always have a sense of humour where ever you go and don't take yourself too seriously. It is the Australian way and makes us the best travellers in the world

Ten prophecies for the digital millennium

• Saved

Graeme Philipson
December 9, 2008
http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/biztech/ten-prophecies-for-the-digital-millennium/2008/12/09/1228584755498.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1

A summary of the main trends in IT, from the rise of the supernet
to the threat posed by intelligent machines.

Recently I was asked to speak at a conference about what's going to happen in IT predictions in the next 10 years. It's always hard to tell the future, but here goes anyway - 10 predictions, in no particular order. I have mentioned most of these ideas in various columns during the past year or two. So treat this, my last column for the year, as sort of a summary of what I believe to be the trends in IT as we near the end of the first decade of the digital millennium.

1. The internet will become the "supernet"

The internet has been around since 1969, but it's only 15 years since it has become the web - easy to use, easy to navigate, with billions of web pages and billions of users.

We have already reached the point at which most devices connected to the internet are mobile - phones, cars, even household appliances. That trend will continue, with the move to "embedded computing", where the internet links objects as well as general-purpose computers.

2. The decline of the PC

This is a consequence of the first prediction. PCs will not die - indeed, they will become massively more powerful, but they will become only one of many types of computing device. Mobile phones and "thin clients" will be much more popular ways of connecting to the supernet.

3. The rise of software as a service

Again, a consequence of the rise of other types of computing device. Data and processing and applications are moving off fixed computers - or even mobile computers - and on to the web.

This is increasingly being called "cloud computing" as all processing takes place in the "cloud" that is the internet. An important example is the craze for "software as a service", in which applications reside elsewhere and are accessed through a web browser.

4. The decline of copyright

Regular readers of this column will know this is a hobbyhorse of mine. Copyright and most intellectual property laws are now an anachronism. Attempts by record companies and film studios and book publishers to stop people copying digital media are doomed to failure.

Technology is forcing big changes to business models.

5. The greening of IT

Computers contribute about as much to carbon emissions as do aircraft - about 2per cent of the world's total. Many users and vendors are working out clever ways to reduce this figure - virtualisation, data centre consolidation, thin clients and telecommuting. All worthy stuff. But the real greening of IT comes when the power of information systems is harnessed to increase efficiencies throughout the organisation, in logistics, in manufacturing and in power distribution. IT is also an integral part of the carbon footprint monitoring and measuring process.

6. The threat from intelligent machines

Look up "The Singularity" in Wikipedia or somewhere. The term, invented by American writers Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil, refers to the time in the near future when machines become more intelligent than humans and start replicating themselves. Who then will be the dominant life form on the planet?

7. Increased importance of technology for the aged

The population is ageing. The proportion of people disabled by the illnesses of old age is growing rapidly. Digital technology has a big role to play in helping people live independently and in keeping them out of expensive and soulless institutions.

The rise of so-called "e-health" is a big trend in this direction - use of technology to remotely monitor people's vital signs, to provide diagnoses at a distance and to supplement communications systems.

8. The decline of IT as a speciality

A hundred years ago it seems someone predicted that if telephony job opportunities continued to grow at the same rate, within a generation everybody in the world would be a telephone operator. Well, with automatic dialling, everyone is. Somebody else once predicted a similar thing about computer programmers. Today we all program computers, by the very act of using them. There are fewer specialists, but many more generalists.

9. The death of newspapers

Newspapers as we know them are in decline. Are you reading this in hard copy or online? Around the world, newspapers are shutting down or moving to the web. Blogs are replacing the mainstream media.

The profession of journalism, and the way we consume media and get our news, is being transformed. I'm not sure whether this is a good or bad thing, but there's no doubt it's happening.

10. The growth of internet TV

TV is going digital. At the same time, internet bandwidth is quickly increasing, and most of the data it carries is video.

Many kids simply don't watch TV any more - they download stuff. All sorts of people are offering all sorts of video content on the net, from legitimate TV stations seeking another distribution medium to amateurs on YouTube and elsewhere.

The existing pay TV model of expensive content over a proprietary distribution medium has only a few years left. And "free-to-air" will become "free-to-internet".

Call me at the end of 2018 to see how all this has panned out. And do have a Merry Christmas.

Weekend Australian Magazine's 20 best songs poll results

Readers were asked to vote for the greatest Australian songs of the past two decades, as part of their 20th anniversary celebrations. They asked 20 top musicians and industry players to pick their favourites.
Here are the results. Do you agree? The Church was my first choice and I am sure Paul Kelly would be there as well.

TOP OF THE POPS: 1988-2008
1. Under the Milky Way (1988) – The Church
2. Into Temptation (1988) – Crowded House
3. The Ship Song (1990) – Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
4. Berlin Chair (1994) – You Am I
5. Distant Sun (1993) – Crowded House
6. Never Tear Us Apart (1988) – INXS
7. These Days (1999) – Powderfinger
8. Fall at Your Feet (1991) – Crowded House
9. No Aphrodisiac (1997) – The Whitlams
10. One Crowded Hour (2006) – Augie March
11. Blow up the Pokies (1999) – The Whitlams
12. Weather With You (1991) – Crowded House
13. Private Universe (1993) – Crowded House
14. Touch (1988) – Noiseworks
15. The Special Two (2005) – Missy Higgins
16. Better Be Home Soon (1998) – Crowded House
17. Straight Lines (2007) – Silverchair
18. Special (2006) – Gisele Scales
19. Are You Gonna be my Girl? (2003) – Jet
20. Thunderstruck (1990) – ACDC

My ten least favourite words or phrases

1. Aspirational: Code for saying something but in reality doing nothing.
2. Collateral damage: accidental killing of innocent victims in war. Carnage.
3. Youse
4. whatevah
5. yeahright
6. bitch slap
7. pimp yah