Word Count

Each year members of the ASTW have to tally their work and demonstrate that they really are travel writers.



This year's magic numbers are 36,000 words, 32 articles and 185 photographs. That excludes a handful of articles that ran in different markets or the syndicated outlets. It's a little more than I did last year, but still a long way behind the big guns of Australian travel. 50,000 is a good baseline and 100,000 is not uncommon.

Which all makes me wonder what the fuss is about with these honours students who only have to write up 15-20,000 words for a thesis? Every year I'd watch another batch of eager young science students torture themselves for months over what seems like a modest word count.

Admittedly it's easier to get inspired to write another few thousand lines about Antarctic penguin spotting than the second-messenger response of isolated adrenal cells.

But spare a thought for the travel writers this year who not only published their 50,000 words but who also wrote a book. Hats off to those guys and gals - never assume travel writers don't work hard!

Yum Sum

The face of Dim Sum dining in Melbourne has been changed forever. A little shop tucked away in the back streets of Little Saigon, in Footscray, has begun dispensing delicious dim sum parcels, freshly made for you to take home - steam them when you need them.

The range covers all the regular cantonese "little hearts", including Har Gau, Sui Mai and Char Sui Pau. Devotees of Shanghai dumplings will also enjoy the xiao long bao - "little caged buns" filled with crab and pork mince.

Did I mention that everything is made fresh in the shop? Let's make the local dim sum dealers feel welcome and enjoy a regular steamy breakfast of Chinese delights.

Four Hours

A little wisdom from the father of a friend. "You have four good hours in you each day - the rest is crap."

And so another 20 hours of crap works it's way to a finish. The clock just struck 12am and I wonder whether my four good hours begin now or will my brain can figure a way to save them up for when I really need them. Perhaps if I go straight to sleep I can save about three of them for when I wake up. Either that or I sleep through my four good hours each day, which would explain the events of the last few weeks at any rate.

Ah screw it, here's a photo of something completely irrelevant...

Hands Up

This week someone asked me to write a bio about myself and what inspires my photography. Boring as a boat of full of backgammon. The indigenous artists of Australia had the right idea - make a stencil from your hand and bugger off to let someone else tell the story.



"Photography was a creative pursuit against a background of boring career moves. I quit graduate school after studying molecular biology, became an IT expert during the dot.com boom and then dropped out of organised society to live life among the barristas of Melbourne's inner suburbs. Finally when my kidney could stand no more coffee I returned to the camera and discovered that photography is more than an art form, it's a story telling device. Travel photography is not about beautiful pictures for the sake of a beautiful picture, it's about revealing insight into the lives of people the rest of us have never known.

My first exhibition was in 1994, a collection of leaves shot in the outback between Melbourne and Alice Springs. It was all about the little things - sticks, mud and sand. 14 years later my work is being exhibited in Sydney and Melbourne as part of a travelling photo collection. The theme hasn't changed much, except I've found bigger
meaning behind the little things. Sticks can be used as brushes to paint rock art, sand makes an oven for cooking bush-tucker and mud is an indicator of where we sit in the cycle of seasons.

hmmm, contrary to my highest expectations I really did get a little wiser with age. Somebody should write my high-school teachers and let them know their efforts were not completely wasted."