Tag: Travel

  • Moving across oceans to create a new life

    After moving from India to Sydney in 2019, Khyati Sharma became inspired to share the stories of fellow expats and migrants through a new online project called Immigrants in Australia, modelled after Humans of New York. Since launching in September, she’s shared the stories of people from all over the world, including India, China, South…

  • If this Australian animal is after you, it might be personal

    How Deadly is a series of short videos featuring ABC’s resident ‘nature nerd’, Ann Jones, available on iView. Ann answers all the pressing questions: how realistic are the crocodile scenes in movies like Lake Placid and Crocodile Dundee? Are snakes cannibals? How do kangaroos feel about parachutes? How many people have been murdered by emus?…

  • Cross-country caramel slice showdown

    When WA author Monique Mulligan prepares for an author interview, she really prepares. And by that I mean she convinces her husband to go to the shops for condensed milk so she can make homemade caramel slice. Look at these beauties. Monique interviewed me for the Koorliny Arts Centre’s program Live: Stories on Stage this…

  • Be Nice to Australians Month

    Part of learning how to become Australian has meant trying to figure out the relationship between Australian and New Zealand. Growing up in Canada, I never thought much about NZ. Australia had a defined character, a national brand, thanks to Crocodile Dundee and Foster’s beer ads. New Zealand was just a place on the map,…

  • Traveling well or flatchat?

    Australia has 10,000 unique words, according to The Story of Australian English by Kel Richards. In comparison, Canada only has 4,000 unique words, despite having 10 million more people. It’s shocking to me that Canada has even that many specifically Canuck terms, but could come up with three: toque, poutine, and using borrow to mean…

  • The new book, out this year!

    I can finally share some exciting news with you. My second book will be out this June from Affirm Press. It’s called How to Be Australian, and it’s a memoir of moving from Canada. In a lot of ways, the book is a love letter to Australia, this charming, vast, baffling country that has been…

  • Melbourne’s most terrifying attraction

    When I visited the Medical History Museum at the University of Melbourne, the last thing I expected to find was Champagne Jimmy. I expected to find Dr Tracy’s ovariotomy instruments. Well, not his specifically, but something very much like them. Dr Richard Tracy performed the first such surgery in Victoria in 1864, using this horrifying…

  • Lessons from Australia: You don’t hit sleepy lizards

    Last week I was on a self-styled writing retreat in country NSW, near the Hunter Valley, and it was sublime. I spent most of the week at this desk, staring out at this view of the Williams River. I was interrupted only by eastern rosellas, kookaburras, and one dead mouse that showed up in the…

  • A new life of mud pits and stink water

    I recently discovered Anna Altman, an American author with chronic migraines. Altman  perfectly highlights truths like this: ‘Our culture encourages us to think that, if we push ourselves hard enough, we can overcome whatever ails us.’ As she discovered when her migraines became debilitating, it’s simply not true. But we deeply want it to be true,…

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com