We saw a lot of mushrooms My first visit across the Tasman to New Zealand and I have learned the South Island has a much better and more descriptive name, Te Wai Pounamu . Similar to my old home The Lizard named after the green dragony rock, Serpentine. Pounamu refers to Greenstone (Nephrite) and Wai to water. The...

Here are a few of my snaps from our first two days in NZ. We are really loving it here. I would love to go hiking, the climate is perfect and the mountainous country beautiful. Not this trip though, this one's for the boys. H apparently asked to be kicked off the bridge Spartan style. The staff were very helpful. H...

In the early 90s I worked for a couple of years in a what used to be called a "bucket-shop". One of the owners, Jerry Bridge - chose the companies name... Bridge The World , a travel agency specialising in cheap deals to the antipodes. I worked in despatch with a lanky good looking bloke called Mick. We were...

This airport wildlife signifies a degraded future Airports long ago lost their shine for me. This time was another step in the same direction. The usual bureaucrats herding crowds while inflicting petty annoyances. This flight will be less than 3 hours. We must be halfway across the Tasman Sea to Queenstown already....

Wing shots are of course mandatory whenever I get the window seat This is a snap I just took. It does not really capture the burnt-umber-end-of-summer light we get out here. You get the idea though. We are off for a trip to rainy and cold New Zealand today. We caught the afternoon flight out of Broken Hill. It was...

Some days is like this I replaced the front door yesterday. Today, I took it off again to paint. The wind blew it over and it snapped in two. Unbelieveable. I made an ugly repair job and stuck it back in the frame anyway. I am feeling particularly old and crabby this weekend. I'll be on a plane to New Zealand this...

The ' broligarchs ' who own the social networks, have abused our trust and profited immensely from our shared data. The power they have gained from our friendships, loving family connections and community networks is astonishing. The broligarchs are using this power we gave them to dismantle the world and rebuild it...

Taking the combined annual revenues ($993 billion) and user counts (6 billion) of Amazon, Alphabet and Meta we find the average user is worth almost $170 USD annually. This number is an extremely rough confabulation, don't take it too seriously. I just wanted to point out that our privacy has an economic cost which...

Woody Guthrie playing his famous guitar with the sticker, This Machine Kills Fascists When we are young we can veer from conviction to doubt with every heartbeat. There is an invisible watershed we cross as we age. One day our experiences and naïveté sublimate into immutable convictions. We essentially become a...

Don Quixote wanted to revive the age of chivalry, defend the helpless, right wrongs, and fight for justice. When I talk to my Brothers, Sister, Mum or Dad - I do so using one of the broligarchs platforms. Living as I do on the other side of the world from my family - my conversations are often laced with bittersweet...

Some of the outlying settlements around Broken Hill, from an old map This is a rare post about the work I do for a living. Something I generally avoid on my personal blog due to obvious privacy issues and direct commandments from my employer. No secrets or professional reputations are harmed in the following. Since...

Callers on Radio Cornwall's Talk-Back Radio would have a conniption if they saw the pasty recipe in this book. But I reckon there is nothing more Cornish than being artful, practical and thrifty. Oswald Pryor wrote a lovely little book, Australia's Little Cornwall . Throughout reading it I have been highlighting and...