#Australia trekking tours

[australiatrekkingtours]

Ultimate Guide to Australia Trekking Tours: Must-Visit Trails and Treks

The untamed nature and varied topography of Tasmania, home to several excellent hiking and trekking programs, provide hikers an amazing trekking playground. Australia trekking tours are some of the most popular trekking routes in the world, including the Kokoda Trek, the Overland Track Tasmania expedition, and the Tasmania South Coast Track.

Australia is also home to ancient rainforests and stunning coastal cliffs, which combine to create some truly amazing scenery. Hiking South West Cape Track is one way to thoroughly appreciate trekking in Australia.

An Online Exploration of Some of The Most Popular Hikes in Australia:

Black Cat Trek PNG: Most seasoned hikers believe this path to be quite difficult, but they genuinely like the trip since they find it to be such a fun adventure. Because of its challenges and the potential for meeting bogs, river crossings, cliffs, ledges, and other such encounters along the way, this expedition may not be as well-known as others.

Kokoda Trek: The traditional Kokoda track journey is among the finest if you want to experience traveling through thick jungles, high mountain passes, and isolated communities. By following this path, which shows Australia's participation in the Second World War against Imperial Japanese Forces, one may travel through time and follow the history of the war. People just bring a daypack on this journey; porters assist carry the full backpack to support the local economy.

Tasmania South Coast Track: The South Coast Track provides access to the untamed wildness of Tasmania's untamed southwest coast and is well-liked by hikers worldwide. This trail offers trekkers an incredible wilderness experience as it passes by windswept beaches, ancient rainforests, and breathtaking coastal cliffs. Because this walk traverses several terrains, it requires significant experience before beginning.

Overland Track Tasmania: Trekking over diverse terrain from Lake St. Clair to Cradle Mountain offers breathtaking alpine views, serene lakes, and towering peaks. For people who love being outside, it's an experience they shouldn't miss. Take a legendary journey into the heart of Tasmania's outback.

If you've been waiting to go on an adventure with hiking boots, gather your adventurous spirit and embark on a once-in-a-lifetime experience with the best trekking tours. Schedule a meeting with the top Australian companies that provide trekking experiences, then relish your travels.

Source

[nando161mando]

[spawksstuff]

Star Trek TMP Australia Promotion Tour Part 2/3

12 Dec 1979 The Sydney Morning Herald

15 Dec 1979 The Sun

[himalayantrekkingpathpltd-blog]

Annapurna Circuit Trek Nepal is the Top choice Trek for 2024/2025

[dotthings]

I put together an appreciation post for the casting on The Night Mothers, since the SAG strike is not yet resolved (but hopefully will be by next week. Hopefully), I thought I'd give these artists some extra appreciation in their extraordinary supporting roles.

Their screen presences left a strong impression as they portrayed Witches of Dathomir in live-action for the first time. Very mysterious and powerful. These three characters were crucial to the world-building and atmosphere on Peridea surrounding Thrawn.

As others have pointed out, the names Aktropaw, Klothow, and Lakesis evoke the fates of Greek myth, Atropos, Clotho, and Lachesis.

Aktropaw - portrayed by Jeryl Prescott

Jeryl Prescott has a long IMDB cv, working on many shows including The Walking Dead. She has a PhD in American Lit.

Klothow - portrayed by Claudia Black

Claudia Black is known to a lot of people as a sci-fi legend. She was in Farscape, Stargate, and a lot of other things. She was born in Australia and has also done stage work such as playing Portia in a touring production of The Merchant of Venice.

Lakesis - portrayed by Jane Edwina Seymour Jane Edwina Seymour also has a long list of IMDB credits in various shows, films, and shorts, and did the body acting (with voice by Alice Krige) for The Borg Queen in Star Trek: Picard season 3.

[apureniallsource]

Ahead of new album, The Show, Niall Horan on how he 'lives' for touring, his desire to connect with fans through his songs, and the challenge of going out for chips in his Irish hometown

It’s almost a cliché to call Niall Horan a “super-nice guy”, but really, there’s no getting away from it. He may have named his new album The Show, but Horan feels no need to put one on for a journalist. In fact, the Irish singer-songwriter is so laid-back and likeable when we meet at a smart London hotel – fresh flowers everywhere, bottled water waiting on the table – that I ask how he’s stayed so well-adjusted. “It’s probably a combination of the upbringing I had and the fact I already had enough character at 16 [to deal with it],” he says. “It might have been a different story if I’d started doing this when I was 10.”

Now 29, he has been scarily famous for almost half his life. After auditioning for The X Factor in 2010 as a solo artist, 16-year-old Horan was eliminated at the boot camp stage, then given a spectacular second chance as one fifth of a hastily assembled group called One Direction. He and his new bandmates – Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson – didn’t win that year’s show, but still used it as a springboard to become a chart-topping global phenomenon. By the time One Direction announced an indefinite hiatus in January 2016, they had sold 70 million records and debuted at number one in the US with their first four albums – something not even The Beatles achieved. When asked what he would say to his pre-1D, 16-year-old self, Horan replies: “Get ready. Your life’s about to change on a level that most of the world can’t even quantify.”

Horan says he still speaks to “the lads” on a regular basis, but like all of them, he has worked hard to carve out an identity as a solo artist. If Horan’s individual achievements still feel slightly underrated, that’s probably only because his flashier bandmate Styles is now a stadium-filling superstar. Released in 2017, Horan’s debut album Flicker was a deft blend of soft rock, folk and country that debuted at number one in the US and Ireland. His 2020 follow-up Heartbreak Weather added a dash of swagger to the mix – particularly on the Brit-poppy single ‘Nice to Meet Ya’ – and became his first UK chart-topper. Because it dropped in March 2020, just as Covid-19 was taking hold, Horan never got to take the album on the road. “I haven’t toured since 2018 – that’s wild,” he says. “I love live music and I love touring – I live for it. So, it’s sad that I haven’t done that.”

Happily, a few weeks after this interview, Horan announced The Show: Live on Tour, a 50-date trek across Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand that will keep him busy from February to July of next year. When Horan last toured five years ago, he mainly played large theatres, but now he is aiming to pack out arenas from Birmingham to Brisbane. During our conversation, he hinted that he was ready for the step up. “In my eyes, the bigger the venue, the better, because I fucking love looking out at an ocean of people,” he says. “For me, it feels like the bigger the venue, the better the show is gonna be.”

Horan also makes no bones about wanting The Show to become another UK number one after it drops on 9 June. “There’s nothing better than getting that little statue sent to your house,” he says with an impish grin. At the time of writing, he seems well on course for another express delivery from the Official Charts Company. The album’s breezy lead single ‘Heaven’ cracked the UK Top 20 in February, and its sprightly follow-up ‘Meltdown’ is now climbing the charts. A few hours before this interview, I watch him perform both songs in the Radio 1 Live Lounge. Horan is just as relaxed with his band during rehearsals, but when he spots that his vocals are getting buried in the mix, he quickly and calmly gets it corrected.

Horan began working on ‘The Show’ while holed up at home during the summer of 2020. The album title had come to him earlier in the year, but he “didn’t really know what it meant until the pandemic”. When he sat down at the piano that August, the lyrics that came out seemed to capture the confusion of the Covid era: “If everything was easy, nothing ever broke / If everything was simple, how would we know? / How to fix your tears? How to fake a show?” At this point, Horan says he realised ‘The Show’ was both “a metaphor for life” and an overarching concept he could run with. “When there’s no heartbreak [to write about], you have to come up with a different concept,” he says. “I realised quite quickly that what I wanted to talk about was the ups and downs and good and bad of life. That’s ‘The Show’.”

Having “no heartbreak” is about as much as Horan will say about his personal life. “Keeping that stuff quiet”, he believes, is one reason he remains so grounded. Since 2020, he has been dating Amelia Woolley, a designer shoe buyer who never appears on his work-focused Instagram. But when we discuss ‘You Could Start a Cult’, an idiosyncratic folk ballad from the album, Horan does offer a teasing glimpse into their home life. He says the song’s eye-catching title was inspired by the true-crime series they like watching. “I always try and write weird stuff like that, then see if I can flip it on its head and make the song [itself] not as dark as the title,” he says. In this case, Horan flipped it into a “love song, effectively”, albeit an intense one. “It’s about… not the desperation feeling, but the ‘I think you’re the best fucking thing in the world’ feeling,” he explains. “And if you started a cult, I’d follow you into the fire. You know, that kind of angst, though I don’t know if ‘angst’ is the word I’m looking for!”

Horan spends a lot of time in LA because his record label and producers are based there. His main collaborators on The Show were Joel Little, who he brought in because he liked his work with Taylor Swift, indie artist Noah Kahan, and long-time co-writer John Ryan, a veteran of four One Direction albums. “I think it’s really important first of all to be loyal,” he says of his enduring partnership with Ryan. “And you know, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.” Still, working with Little felt just as comfortable, partly because they could pick things up at a moment’s notice. “If I get the green light at the top of my street [in LA], I can be at Joel’s house in less than a minute,” Horan says. “It’s a fucking dream!”

But during the pandemic, Horan was grounded at his main base in southwest London. “I’ve never been fitter in my life because I was cycling 80 or 90 miles around Richmond Park every week – it’s gorgeous out there,” he recalls. Like many of us, Horan has conflicting feelings about the way Covid placed our lives on hold. “I don’t want to say I enjoyed it because I didn’t – it was such a horrible time,” he says. “But I got to a point about two or three months in, where I was like: ‘This is the longest I’ve ever had off.’ He particularly appreciated having to stay in one place for a sustained period of time. “Normally, I’m packing a suitcase every three or four days,” he says. “At Heathrow Airport, the guards at the [security] desk just laugh when they see me coming. They’re like, ‘How do you do this?’”

Having lived in London since he was 16, Horan says “it’s definitely the best city on the planet”. But at the same time, he still regards Mullingar, the Irish market town where he was born and raised, as home. His debut solo single ‘This Town’, a UK top 10 hit in 2016, was incredibly charming because it harnessed his ineffable longing for the place. Horan reckons he returns to Mullingar “seven or eight times a year”, although walking down the high street is pretty tricky. “I can’t just pull up outside the chip shop, run in and get the chips, then run back to the car,” he says. “Everything has to be thought through. Like, where am I going to park? How many streets am I going to have to cross? What am I going to wear?” Horan says all this with no hint of frustration: by now, he knows what is expected of a homecoming hero.

Horan knew he wanted to be a musician from a young age and says he “tried to make this as clear as possible” to his parents. They were “supportive up to a point”, but because the family didn’t have much money and Mullingar wasn’t a creative hub like Dublin, his mother urged him to “get some sort of qualification”. “I still don’t have any,” Horan says with a laugh, “I didn’t do GCSEs or anything like that because I didn’t finish school.” At 16, Horan made the 50-mile journey to Dublin to audition for The X Factor and grabbed hold of the One Direction rocket with both hands.

Did his parents come up with any ideas for a Plan B? “We didn’t get that far. Honestly, I just packed my bag and never came back – that’s the way they look at it,” says Horan. “My father worked in Tesco for 35 years and my mother worked at a pewter genesis company making little bits and pieces – clocks and things like that. They both had very regular jobs.” Horan notes astutely that some kids from a working-class background “like to spread their wings and leave the nest” – as he did, quite spectacularly – whereas others “like to stay in their hometown, or maybe can’t get out”. Horan pauses for a second, perhaps to ponder what might have been. “I don’t know what they would have wanted me to do, but I’m sure it would have been a good life,” he continues. “Like, my parents are having a good time.”

Thirteen years after he left to become a pop star, Horan’s own ambition remains undimmed. “I’ve achieved a lot in my young life, but I’m still fired up to do as much as I can,” he says. “My career has felt so good because it reminds me of everything I thought the music industry would be when I was a kid. I got the good end of the stick [in terms of] travelling the world and playing to millions. And I still want more of that.”

For this reason, the audience is always at the forefront of his mind. “When I’m writing, I ask myself, ‘Have I gone too specific to the point where it only makes sense to me?’” he says. “And then I try and broaden the thought to make it as relatable as possible.” ‘Never Grow Up’ from Horan’s new album was partly inspired by his girlfriend’s parents, who are “still madly in love”, but its lyrics will chime with One Direction fans who, like him, are close to turning 30. “Hope we still drink like we’re back in the pub,” Horan sings. “Hope we grow old, but we never grow up.”

In Horan’s eyes, the songs that fully stand the test of time – from Simon and Garfunkel to Whitney Houston and Adele – are “the ones that really mean a lot to the people”. It’s this kind of universal connection that he is always striving for. “These are the things that go on in my head when I’m writing,” he says. “I don’t want to alienate anyone, and I don’t want to be introspective to the point where I ruin it for everyone. So, if they can connect to it too, then we all get what we want out of this.”

[womensworldtour]

The weeks between the Tour de Suisse Women and the Giro d'Italia Women are quiet on the World Tour calendar, as most countries hold their national championships in this block. (A few, like the U.S., held them earlier in the season, for whatever reasons.) As we start to look forward to the Giro, let's take a look at some of the new road race champions for 2024 in no particular order. There's a mix of familiar faces and some new talent.

France: Juliette Labous (dsm-firmenich PostNL)

Slovenia: Urska Žigart (Liv AlUla Jayco)

Australia: Ruby Roseman-Gannon (Liv AlUla Jayco)

USA: Kristen Faulkner (EF Educaton-Cannondale)

New Zealand: Ella Wyllie (Liv AlUla Jayco)

Germany: Franziska Koch (dsm-firmenich PostNL)

Netherlands: Chantal van den Broek-Blaak (SD Worx-Protime)

Spain: Usoa Ostolaza (Laboral Kutxa-Fundación Euskadi)

Great Britain: Pfeiffer Georgi (dsm-firmenich PostNL)

And you may have heard of these last two riders:

Italy: Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek)

Belgium: Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime)

We haven't even mentioned Canada (Olivia Baril of Movistar), Austria (Anna Kiesenhofer of Roland), Hungary (Blanka Vas of SD Worx-Protime), Switzerland (Noemi Rüegg of EF Education-Cannondale), and plenty of other countries. And apologies to the ITT fans out there, but we haven't even listed the ITT winners, mostly because you don't have to know the national champs jerseys as much in the ITT to recognize a rider like you do in the bunch. The Escape Collective has a nice run-down of both lists.

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

EVANESCENCE's AMY LEE Is 'So Grateful' To Still Be Able To Make Music 20 Years After 'Fallen''s Release

In a new interview with Australia's "Today", EVANESCENCE frontwoman Amy Lee was asked how it feels to see the band's debut album, 2003's "Fallen", still resonating with so many people around the world and being discovered by new generations of fans. She responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Oh, great. This is a big year. It's an anniversary year, so 20 years since 'Fallen' this year. So there has been more focus on it again in a cool way. We've been through so much together. I think the biggest thing that I feel about all of that is really about the journey for us, for me and through the band, but also with our fans. We've all lived a lot of life in that time and it makes the songs more meaningful. It's not really just about like the initial meaning so much anymore. It's become something just so much bigger, because we've had so much time together. And new fans? You always want new fans. Come on."

Lee also talked about the music video for "Fallen"'s first single, "Bring Me To Life", recently surpassing a billion views on YouTube. She said: "It's awesome. I mean, it's crazy. There's a lot of milestones that have been happening lately with the first record. I never thought back then — I couldn't have imagined how far we've come and that we're here now still making music we love and earning new fans. Man, 20 years — it's a beautiful thing. I'm so grateful."

EVANESCENCE is celebrating the 20th anniversary of "Fallen" on an Australian tour, which kicked off last Thursday night (August 24) in Brisbane. The five-date trek marks the band's first Australian tour since their sublime run with local symphony orchestras in 2018.

[eopederson]

Village, Chiang Mai or Chiang Rai Province, Thailand, 2000.

Taken on a week-long trek through the highland villages, called the "hill tribes," in northwest Thailand. It entailed backpacking far from roads and sleeping at night in thatch roof shelters. Thankfully guides and porters provided by the Australian tour company did the bulk of the way finding and carriage of food - and we ate quite well. We were the "old folk" in a group of 20 somethings from Australia and Canada. It was, alas, my final expedition into territory where I was totally lost - I had no decent map or knowledge of the languages spoken. And it was exhilarating!

[karmasreal]

"The tiaras were overflowing at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles on Tuesday night (Nov. 14). An ecstatic, sold-out crowd came together to witness the latest stop of Chappell Roan‘s U.S. tour, where the rising pop star performed the entirety of her Dan Nigro-produced debut album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess.

Decked out in black and white lingerie, black knee-high boots and black latex arm sleeves, the flame-haired singer stormed and twirled across the stage as she performed a roughly 90-minute set composed of fan favorites like “Casual,” “Red Wine Supernova,” “Naked in Manhattan” and “My Kink is Karma.”

Roan is a powerhouse vocalist with a potent stage presence and a gift for banter, and she showed off the full breadth of her talent on Tuesday night. “Who brought their boyfriend? Raise your hand if you brought your boyfriend,” said Roan during one interlude — clearly referencing the scattered straight men in the audience as a nod to her largely queer and female fanbase. “Does your boyfriend know who I am?”

Judging by the energy of the packed audience — many dressed in red-and-black getups themed to the music video for “My Kink is Karma,” per Roan’s instructions at the outset of her tour — and the strength of the star’s performance, boyfriends across the country may well be learning Roan’s name before too long, whether they mean to or not. In addition to her own tour, which picks back up in Australia on Nov. 24 before resuming in Europe next month, the singer is slated to open for Olivia Rodrigo on a string of dates on the superstar’s U.S. trek next year while also embarking on a second U.S. leg of her Rise and Fall tour starting in February."

[world-cinema-research]

I Was Always Me, In a Way.

I remember not liking the 1968 kids movie musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I found the kids irritating, and I was not interested in many of the songs.

The trailer is long on slapstick and sentiment.

I have memories of seeing it both in a movie theater and on TV. But I would have been six years old when the movie came out, and I'm not sure my parents let me go to movies alone that young.

I think I liked the one where the adults sing about candy and make whistles out of candy. I remember watching it on TV and feeling relieved and happy that a good number finally came on.

I was more interested in the villain than the kids. The villain (really the villain's helper) was the Child Catcher. he has a long nose, which is probably an anti-Semitic stereotype, which he uses to sniff out children. (Children are illegal in the kingdom where that part of the story takes place.) It's like the opposite of the Star Trek episode where adults are outlawed.

Reviews at the time were mixed to negative.

Reviewers thought the movie talked down to children, and as a child, I think I saw it that way.

"The $10 million film lacks warmth. No real feeling is generated between any two characters. As well as one star performer, from Mary Poppins have come all the musical talent – songwriters Richard M. and Robert B. Sherman and the choreographers [Marc Breaux and Dee Dee Wood]. But there has been no desire to reprise the Edwardian music hall tradition, aspects of which so informed Poppins.

Howes goes through the romantic motions with Van Dyke and the maternal ones with the kids, but there is no real sentiment between players."

Howes goes through the romantic motions with Van Dyke and the maternal ones with the kids, but there is no real sentiment between players."

Doing some research, I discover that the people who owned the right to Ian Fleming's James Bond books also owned the rights to his children's book about a magical car.

After Julie Andrews appearance in the musical My Fair Lady on Broadway, she was such a hot commodity that people fought over her. The producers of the film of My Fair Lady foolishly cast a movie star who couldn't sing (Audrey Hepburn), and so Disney cleverly snatched up Julie Andrews for their 1964 kids movie based on a book Mary Poppins, co-starring Dick Van Dyke.

The same year My Fair Lady was released, and Hepburn and Andrews both got Oscar noms but Andrews won for playing Mary Popppins.

So the Bond producers owned the rights to Fleming's children's book and made a kids movie musical featuring Dick Van Dyke. There's even a musical number ("The Old Bamboo") which is a lot like the chimney sweet dance in Mary Poppins.

The female star Sallie Ann Howes is basically a substitute for Julie Andrews. Andrews was busy working for Hitchcock and other high-profile things. She was not about to make another kiddie picture after having made a celebrated one.

The producers of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang also hired Roald Dahl to write the screenplay, and Dahl's children's book about a child and a chocolate factory was made into a much bigger hit in 1971: Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

The director of Chitty Chitty worked a lot, but he did not have any major hits. Chitty Chitty was a flop. Which I didn't know as a child.

Things have changed since 1968.

Today (April 16, 2023) the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang DVD DVD gets 4.8 stars stars from almost 9,000 reviews reviews.

One Amazon reviewer says basically this: they made this for the wrong reasons.

"I don't know how this movie wasn't sued into oblivion, especially by Disney. It takes so much from Mary Poppins, it's an abomination. And throw in The Sound of Music, Peter Pan, My Fair Lady, Wile E Coyote cartoons…bits of business, choreography, and the music, one song is a direct rip off of With A Little Bit of Luck! I just thank God DVD didn't try another British accent, bad enough we've had to listen to the English bang on about his bad Cockney for the last 60 years.

Talented cast, no mistake, but ill-used….

….I watched this in five sittings, I wanted to finish it, but I just couldn't stick with it for an extended period, and it is painfully long and slow -- that Toot Sweets number was like one of those bugs you keep swatting but it never seems to die?"

Talented cast, no mistake, but ill-used….

….I watched this in five sittings, I wanted to finish it, but I just couldn't stick with it for an extended period, and it is painfully long and slow -- that Toot Sweets number was like one of those bugs you keep swatting but it never seems to die?"

I later discovered that the Child Catcher was played by Robert Helpmann: a revered ballet dancer who danced leads and also played 'character parts' in ballet. He danced the role of Hamlet, which is one of my favorite plays.

And he has an important role in the movie The Red Shoes. This later became one of my favorite movies. It's about an empressario who falls in love with his lead ballet dancer and works her literally to death--or suicide, I think it's ambiguous.

When we are young, we don't know who we are or what we will become.

Some experiences from childhood later in hindsight tell us about the person we will become.

Movies don't change. People do, but maybe not that much.

[australiatrekkingtours]

Explore Scenic Beauty of Wild Tasmania: Connect to Australia Trekking Tours Organisers!

Australia trekking tours can be easier and more enjoyable with recognised tours and trekking organisers. Anyone can enjoy the tranquillity and scenic beauty of Mornington Peninsula, Tasmanian wild, far away from the city's hustle and bustle.  

Some competent trekking organisations in Australia, organise overland track walking tours, and many other trekking to explore nature and the stunning scenery of Tasmania, Kokoda, or many other challenging treks such as the Black Cat trek, Bulldog trek, Shaggy Ridge trek, and more with qualified and experienced trekkers.

A few reputable trekking firms staged various treks, including the Kokoda track, with improved safety, security, equipment, and nourishment.

Kokoda is renowned for its world-class tropical hiking trail, which leads trekkers through lush rainforest landscapes, moss-covered trees, and picturesque streams, all while commemorating a key period in Australian participation in World War II.

Reasons to Choose Only Professional Trekking and Tour Companies:

To ensure a safe and enjoyable vacation, choose skilled trekking specialists. These trekking and hiking experts can give skilled guides who are familiar with the terrain and ensure the safety of the adventure.

Their well-planned itineraries accommodate acclimatisation, which reduces the risk of altitude sickness. Responsible tourism organisations hire educated employees who value local cultures, and professional trekking companies prioritise environmental protection.

They provide high-quality equipment to assure comfort and dependability throughout the walk, as well as safety and security. Furthermore, these organisations provide content logistics, allowing attendees to focus on the event rather than permits, housing, or emergencies.

How to Choose a Reliable Trekking Business?

Before joining any trekking organisation is necessary to ensure the company's validity and reliability.

They should check their web reputation and read evaluations from prior trekkers.

Check their permits and certificates to ensure that they meet safety standards and are committed to environmentally friendly and responsible trekking practices.

Finally, select a reputable trekking organisation that meets all standards and guarantees a terrific trekking experience.

Source

[spawksstuff]

Star Trek TMP Australia Promotion Tour Part 3/3

20 Dec 1979 The News

After this, De and Carolyn went to Hawaii for a vacation (told in an interview with Merv Griffin later).

[intheshadowofwar]

22 July 2023

Journey to the Front

Gallipoli 22 June 2023

I won’t lie to you; today was incredibly hard. It’s one thing to travel between countries, quite another to do so when neurodiverse, and another indeed to do so alone for the first time. If I’m not particularly erudite today, please bear with me. I am both physically and mentally exhausted.

I awoke at 2.15am and was on the bus by 3.15 to get to Heathrow. We flew out on a Turkish Airlines A220 and landed somewhat bumpily at Istanbul just after 12.30 local time, We then met our tour bus – which oddly enough has better internet then our hotel – and drove to Gallipoli, stopping at a rest stop by the Sea of Mamara for a discussion of the submarine AE2 and, more importantly, a cheese toastie.

We arrived at Gallipoli at roughly 6pm – due to our late arrival, it was decided that we’d make the most of the remaining light and ascend Plugge’s Plateau before checking into the hotel.

Plugge’s Plateau, named for a New Zealand officer, is a position on the ‘first ridge’ – there are three key ridges inland from Anzac Cove. To get to the top requires a short but arduous trek through Shrapnel Gully and up the cliffs that overlook Anzac Cove, the landing place of the Australia and New Zealand Army Corps. My first impression from climbing the ridge was to think back to my first thought upon viewing the battlefield at Culloden years ago – that this was an astoundingly poor choice for a battlefield. To get off the beach, one must ascend this steep ridge, then descend it into the gullies and valleys beyond and climb the second ridge beyond. Once you’ve taken this position, you still need to capture the third ridge, a task that eluded the Allies (for British and Indian troops also fought here) throughout the campaign. From our final position, just a little inland from Plugge’s, we could see ‘Quinn’s Post,’ the ‘Sphinx’ and Lone Pine – I never really appreciated just how close to each other they were, yet just how difficult it would have been to travel between these positions and the beach – and between each other, for that matter.

The path also has a very good view of Anzac Cove facing northwards – one can see as far as Suvla Bay and the salt lake there. I must admit to a little pride in noticing Suvla before I was explicitly told what it was – all that map reading wasn’t in vain, it seems. I think it’s still in the air as to whether or not we shall visit Suvla, but I certainly hope we do – it is one of the most interesting and misunderstood aspects of the campaign.

As a rare example of a mostly intact battlefield (the only others I can think of off the top of my head are Culloden and possibly Waterloo), we will be remaining in Gallipoli for five nights for a fairly in-depth tour. But if I’m going to have the energy to take part in said tours, I had better sleep, so I shall see you all for some more in-depth discussion tomorrow.

[legends-expo]

I really love this idea! It looks great and I really want to come along!

Problem is, I’d be coming from Australia, and I can’t really come alone but I doubt my friends would want to come as they’re nerds, but not Star Wars nerds.

Is there any argument you could make for them to at least come to LA with me? ;)

Hello there! We are so excited to hear that you want to come all the way from Australia! We can definitely help you find some non-Star Wars nerdy things to do in the Burbank/LA area!

Overall, LA is a vibrant city with rich and diverse arts and culture. You can experience a little bit of everything here from theme parks to museums and natural phenomena. LA is home to many cultural enclaves from around the world, so you can take a world tour of food, music and more!

All of these attractions are less than a 30 minute drive from the hotel:

The Last Bookstore is over 2000 square meters of wall to wall new and used books. That place is amazing.

Universal Studios theme park

Griffith Observatory which is cool for both astronomy nerds AND Trekkies as it was the filming location for the time travel episode of Voyager.

Actually, pretty much all of Griffith Park was used for Star Trek episodes at some point.

The Burbank Aviation Museum is within walking distance of the hotel

Los Angeles Zoo

Heading out a little further, these attractions are within roughly an hour's drive from the hotel.

Disneyland

If they're art nerds, they can go to the Getty Art Museum, LA Museum of Art (LACMA), the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) or the

If science museums are more their speed, there's the Natural History Museum, California Science Center (home to the Space Shuttle Endeavor, among other things), La Brea Tar Pits & Muesum (fossils), and the UCLA Meteorite Gallery.

We are also going to attempt to book a group tour of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA facility the builds and operates the Mars rovers and other uncrewed spacecraft) for the day before or after the convention, but those reservations only open about a month in advance and are very competitive, so no guarantees.

If there's anything in particular that they're interested in we can provide some more tailored suggestions as well!

[ccohanlon]

into the outback

The track to Palm Valley is an unlikely route for a tour bus. It begins just beyond the Hermannsburg aboriginal mission, 72 miles west of Alice Springs, in the arid, red-dirt emptiness of Australia’s Northern Territory. A large, weather-beaten white sign warns, No conventional vehicles to proceed beyond this point. For 12 miles, the rough-hewn track winds around the dry bed of the Finke River, over angular steps of solid rock littered with sharp chippings and soft patches of alluvial sand, to a deep gorge where rare species of palms, including prehistoric cycads, inexplicably flourish.

It’s hard work even for a four-wheel-drive truck. Not surprisingly, the chrome-plated coaches running daily between the Alice, as Alice Springs is known, and Ayers Rock do not include Palm Valley on their itineraries.

There are a lot of lonely places in the Territory. As the local license plates boast, this is outback Australia, the heartland of popular imagination, where fewer than 150,000 people occupy over half a million square miles of land, half of it a vast semidesert, the Red Center of the tourist brochures, and the other half, the tropical ‘top end’, a little-explored tangle of rough bush and rain forest and mangrove swamps growing into the Arafura Sea. The maps show only a handful of long roads through it all. The majority of water features on this map do not contain permanent water, travelers are cautioned. For anyone depending on conventional vehicles, much of the country is inaccessible.

The tour operators realise this and a few have adapted the fine Aussie pastime of bush bashing, pushing rugged four-wheel-drives across the rough, spinifex plains of the outback, to the benefit of the Territory’s booming tourist industry. Nowadays, depending on how long one wants to go bush and how much discomfort — heat, dust, mosquitoes, flies (especially the flies!), poisonous reptiles — one can take, there are a number of well-organized, adventurous and downright unusual safaris reaching even the most isolated stretches of the Territory.

Bill King’s Australian Adventure Tours is perhaps the best-known of them. Mr. King pioneered commercial four-wheel-drive expeditions not only throughout the Territory, from Ayers Rock to Bathurst and Melville islands, but nearly all of Australia’s seemingly endless wilderness, including the wild, jungle-like country of Cape York in Queensland and the hot, desolate ranges of the Kimberlys in northwest Australia. His company now offers 104 tours. The shortest is a three-hour bus ride around Alice Springs; the longest, a 30-day trek across the Northern Frontier: north to the Kimberlys from Alice Springs via the Tanami Desert, west to the pearling port of Broome, on the Indian Ocean, east to Darwin, Bathurst and Melville islands and the Kakadu National Park, south through aboriginal lands to the Gulf of Carpentaria, then back down to Alice Springs.

But outback itineraries would be less practical, and not nearly as much fun, without reliable off-road transportation. Bill King has, among other vehicles, the Unimog or, more properly, the Mercedes-Benz UL1700L, a desert cruiser powered by a 5.7-liter direct injection 6-cylinder turbo-charged diesel with eight forward and eight reverse gears, which can carry 21 people in air-conditioned comfort. Its slab-sided body, painted battleship-gray, and raised high off the road on big, heavy-tread tires, encloses a walk-in pantry, tool shop, a field kitchen, an ice box and plenty of storage space for the tents, bedrolls and other items necessary to survive, let alone have a good time, in the outback.

Alice Springs is a convenient base for Australian Adventure Tours, as it is for dozens of other tour companies in this part of the Territory. Each year, thousands of visitors crowd this pleasant and thriving near-city — no longer the ramshackle outback town of Neville Shute’s novel (but still in the middle of nowhere) — from where, they can get to the spectacular, orange-colored gorges cut by ancient flood waters in the steep, quartzite walls of the surrounding Macdonnell Ranges or — farther away — to the Olgas and the Territory’s main attraction, Ayers Rock.

A powerful fascination with this “immense pebble rising abruptly from the plain” (as the explorer W. C. Gosse described it in 1873) is one of the few things white Australians, let alone other tourists, share feelingly with the continent’s indigenous peoples. Solid and inspiringly strange, the Rock - the aborigines call it Uluru - embodies the Dreamtime, the ancestral legends of aboriginal prehistory. Despite the deeply felt objections of aboriginal elders, tourists climb to its summit in the quiet, cool hours before dawn and watch the rising sun illuminate the domed heads of the Olgas, Katatjuta, 20 miles to the west —one of the Territory’s most compelling sights.

Roughing it is an essential part of the outback adventure. On a Bill King tour, life is reasonably easy with a cook, as well as an experienced bush driver and guide, on hand at their campsites. On the Red Center itineraries, standard coaches and a choice of motel accommodation are provided for those inclined to travel less rigorously.

For those with an insatiable streak of masochism, going bush and roughing it can be taken a step further. Rod Steinert, a well-known local guide and tour operator, organises bush survival programs of up to three days in the harsh semi-desert south of Alice Springs. The approach is simple enough: for $75 each a day, a small group is led across the badlands by aborigines who will instruct in the crafts of the nomadic hunter-gatherer. Sleeping outdoors with poisonous snakes and rodent marsupials understandably might make one nervous, so creature comforts — camp beds, swags, conventional food and water — are carried if required.

Mr. Steinert also offers less drastic itineraries, including wild-life safaris in which, with any luck, one can try roping a wild camel or dogging fast moving hordes of wallabies, as well as day trips to cattle stations and aboriginal missions.

Rod Steinert is himself a student of aboriginal lore and I first met him at Ewaninga, an aboriginal ceremonial site on the Old South Road to the Alice. A talented raconteur, he was carefully explaining the complex rock carvings at the site to an elderly couple from South Australia. Despite the heat, which quickly sucked the moisture from our skin, and the annoying persistence of the flies, he managed to convey the awe of ‘the duck Dreaming’ and its very real relationship to the blistered surface of a nearby clay pan. “The tribal elders didn’t read these carved lines,” he said as he traced them with his fingers. “They’d look away and then recite the legend from memory; some of these lines were simply reminders.”

Aboriginal culture permeates the Territory and rock paintings. Carvings and other artifacts can be found practically everywhere. Later, while drinking black billy tea together and munching spotted dog, a kind of raisin pudding laden with syrup, Mr. Steinert told us, “Don’t believe it when you hear that the significance of these and other markings are long forgotten. There are elders, very much alive, who understand them. They could explain them if they wanted to - but they don’t want to.” Mr. Steinert is sometimes recommended as a guide to visiting anthropologists by the aborigines’ Central Land Council, which administers the land rights of central Australia’s huge aboriginal reserves.

For the scores of small, four-wheel-drive operators advertising unusual overnight camping tours from the Alice, the routes now extend as far east as the old Arltunga gold mine and ghost town on the edge of the Simpson Desert, as far west as Palm Valley and the Finke River National Park (or, in Mr. Steinert’s case, the Yuendumu aboriginal reserve), and as far south as Ayers Rock and the Olgas. In the north, the 'top end’, the rain forests, fast running rivers, deep gorges, hot springs and even the wildlife, particularly east of Katherine and in the Kakadu NationalPark, are perhaps even more beautiful — if commonly unreachable at certain times of year because of monsoonal floods.

However, there are alternatives to a four wheel-drive for traveling in the outback: camels, for instance.

Noel Fullerton and camels are seemingly inseparable. Among a plethora of colorful characters in the Territory, Noel Fullerton is one of the more sober and enduring. You can even find him on postcards: a squat, barrel-chested fellow with a mane of long white hair and a sunburned, bearded face not unlike an Afghan trader’s, he is commonly pictured atop a dromedary in the shade of a eucalyptus tree. He started the infamous annual Camel Cup Race down the sandy bed of the Todd River and won it five years in a row. He rode a camel up the steps of the Federal Parliament building in Canberra to protest the delay in extending the Ghan, the railway between Alice Springs and Port Augusta, South Australia, to Darwin. And now he operates safaris on camel-back from his ranch south of the Alice.

Throughout the year, with the exception of January, Mr. Fullerton and another guide lead caravans of up to 10 camels on one of three routes, depending on the time of year, usually in a series of daily treks from a base camp in the Rainbow Valley. The most interesting of these is probably through the Finke River National Park to Palm Valley, following as it does the path of the earliest explorer, Ernest Giles. Like others in the outback travel business, Mr. Fullerton is prepared to tailor an itinerary to suit individual urges — one customer, a young American woman, reportedly spent three months just wandering with one of his guides through the Krischauf, James and Macdonnell ranges and the hard plains between.

The outback is not a place in which to take chances. Unless one is experienced, an outback safari of one sort or another led by a competent guide is the best way to get into the rugged scenery, the unusual flora and fauna and just the silent, endless space of it all. Even if one is prepared, there is always an element of risk.

I recently went bush with a couple of friends in a Japanese-built four- wheel-drive truck. Loaded with camping equipment, food and a .44 magnum rifle (which nobody used), we went looking for a track to Mount Conner in the twisted scrub 20 miles south of the newly-laid Lasseter Highway to Ayers Rock. We could see the mountain from the highway, a long flat ridge of crumbling purple rock standing alone in an expanse of yellow spinifex, but the track was harder to find. We followed a few disused drovers’ routes into dead ends before coming across an unlikely looking turnoff covered in fine red bull-dust and sand.

“You’ve got to be bloody careful,” warned the proprietor of the Curtain Springs roadhouse, back at the highway. “It’s rough going, so don’t even try it without four-wheel-drive. And let me know before you set off. If you get into trouble, I’m the one who’ll have to fetch you out.”

He wasn’t kidding. It was a slow haul, scraping past the gnarled branches of trees blackened by bush fire and easing the wheels over the bleached-gray remains of corral fences. Finally, we stalled; the truck sank belly-deep into a sand dune. We deflated the tires and unchoked the wheels and tried to ignore the sine-wave tracings of snakes that were everywhere in the sand.

We wished we’d taken a tour round the Alice instead.

First published in The New York Times’ Travel & Leisure section (under the by-line, Chris West), USA, 1984.