Travels with My Hat is a memoir of my adventures as a travel writer
in Africa, South Asia and the Arab world. Beautifully designed, it is lavishly illustrated with
photographs and maps and includes poignant correspondence with my mother who had never left Australia.
Travel Talks
Christine who lives in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, is available for public or private talks. Hear her adventures first-hand, see her photographs and discuss current and historical events with this inspiring solo traveller.
GREAT MOMENTS IN TRAVEL
When I would think, well this is what I've come for and the physical and psychological demands of the effort to get here, are now worth it...
MY MOROCCO
When I first set foot in Morocco as a young backpacker in the 1960s,
I was captivated by the ever changing desert and mountain scenery, its colourful peoples
and fascinating souqs. My book Collins Independent Travellers Guide to Morocco was published in 1990.
WORLD WATER DAY
Some 1.3 billion people in the world lack access to clean water. Women and children spend an estimated 200 million hours a day hauling water, often over great distances from the source. Here Somali refugees in the Horn of Africa, one of the driest places on earth.
WHEN I WOULD THINK, WELL THIS IS WHAT I’VE COME TO SEE AND THE PHYSICAL AND AT TIMES THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DEMANDS OF TRAVEL TO GET HERE HAVE BEEN MORE THAN WORTH IT.
The sight of the Grande Recife as our flight from Sydney approached Noumea, capital of the Pacific island of New Caledonia. The year was 1960 and it was my first experience of travel outside Australia so you can imagine my excitement! I spent days snorkelling in the great lagoon.While still at school, I was captivated by a National Geographic Travel photo featuring the source of the Nile at Jinja, in Uganda. I vowed that one day I would see it for myself. Here is the picture I took some fifteen years later.The foggy evening as I waited in the Star Ferry pier in Hong Kong for the night ferry to Macau is another memorable moment. It was 1969 and the night was heavy with a sense of adventure. I stayed in the old Hotel Bella Vista and played roulette in the floating casino, the only casino at the time.
The awesome sight of Cheops, the great pyramid, when I drew back the curtains of my room at the Mena House hotel in Giza was one of the great moments of my travels. Egypt itself is special. I have been there more than half a dozen times.I can still hear the mysterious scratching sound made by the giant leaves of the coco-de-mer rubbing together in the Vallee de Mai on Praslin. On a visit to the Seychelles in the late 19th century, General Charles Gordon declared if there be a Garden of Eden on earth, it be here. I thought so too.
On my 39th birthday in Peshawar, in the North West Frontier of Pakistan, I boarded the legendary Khyber Mail for a fascinating journey up the Khyber Pass. I was the only woman passenger with hundreds of tribesmen travelling home to their remote villages for the Muslim festival of eid ul fitr.The sight of the soaring dunes, originally known as the Wahiba Sands, took my breath away when I visited them from Muscat in the Sultanate of Oman. The Bedouin woman had left her tent to bring in a stray goat for the night.I cannot leave out the moment I was introduced to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II when I covered the British royal tour of the Arab states in 1979. Here she is meeting the sheikhs in Abu Dhabi. I was the only woman photographer on the tiring seventeen day trip.Even though I used to pass it several times a week when I lived in London, the sight of Westminster Abbey, constructed more than two centuries before Captain Cook discovered Australia, always sent a frisson of excitement down my spine.This was the end of the road in Morocco when I had driven from Tangiers on the Mediterranean coast as far south in the Sahara as I could go. I mention this remote café in my memoir Travels with My Hat. That’s my little car parked outside. I drove it more than 3500 km.
About Travels with My Hat
Australian photojournalist and author. Used London as a base for nearly forty years while freelancing in the Middle East, Arabian peninsular, Africa and South Asia. Have written and illustrated more than a dozen books and travel guides. Operates a well regarded religious images stock photo library: www.worldreligions.co.uk. Live in Leura in the Blue Mountains outside Sydney.
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