The TWMH website is a window on my work—the books I’ve written, the photos I’ve taken—plus an active blog. Travels with My Hat is equally the title of my memoir on my adventures and misadventures as a travel writer.
My journeys began in the Pacific islands in the 1960s, when travel was far less homogenised than it is today – a time when you could simply roam, without need to state a return date on your ticket. A time when there was no internet and often no maps or guides on where to stay, things that are impossible to imagine in travel today. And while I have flown across the globe on more occasions than I can recall, my happiest times were of travelling slowly around the world on Messageries Maritimes packet-steamers spending days in exotic ports such as Tahiti and Djibouti, or Mombasa and Dakar, frequently disembarking to explore terra-firma with notebook and camera—laptops had not been invented.
In the 1990s, I began specialising in mainstream religions focusing on people practising their chosen belief and the associated rites of passage. Together with my travel images, they have been used in a wide variety of books produced by academic publishers. When Bill Gates launched Corbis, a leading photographic agency at the time, my image of a ‘Blue Man’ standing on a dune in the Sahara was chosen from a million others to promote the Corbis website.
Travels with My Hat gives a taste of my experiences working as a freelance in countries such as Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq and Ethiopia, at a time when there were no PR agencies or tourist offices—and in some of the Arab States of the Gulf, no hotels.
The Blog is essentially my take on current affairs, notably in the Middle East, North Africa and South Asia. I also comment on human rights and the environment, especially marine life. Aside from travel, my interests include eastern cuisines, animal welfare, the media, real estate and gardening. I have a big garden filled with camellias, rhododendrons and hydrangeas in the Blue Mountains of Greater Sydney.
Enjoy travel via Travels with My Hat without getting your feet wet … Bon Voyage!
