Thursday 21 May 2009

LEAVE THE HANGER! Landcare Australia

Landcare Australia are calling all travel writers and photographers to write for a reason.

They need your help to get the general public engaged with the task of saving our planet. There are prizes for winning contributions!

Landcare’s Your Planet Needs You campaign is asking individuals to register the skills they are happy to offer for a local environmental project. They need you to write a compelling argument for getting involved and registering interest in saving our planet.

Written submissions should be no more than 100 words, visual submissions should be a 30 second video or a compelling image with caption.

Five finalists will be invited to a fancy lunch in Sydney on June 5 – World Environment Day – where the winner will be announced. There is a $500 cash prize for the winner and runner up prizes for the finalists.

Submit your entry to the Your Planet Needs You Facebook Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Your-Planet-Needs-You/75618033819?ref=mf And here is the rest of it. Read more!

Thursday 14 May 2009

New Feature: Lost In ....

..not Space, but various locations around the globe. Here's the low down on the feature as recently pitched to a travel website. I'll run it myself on Sandwagon, so that the idea lives on.
Travel content, be it in print or online, has always showed us how not to get lost. Heaven forbid that we wandered off with just our sense of discovery guiding the way.

The big questions are:
• Are trips doomed to disaster without the aid of a travel writer’s ‘Top Ten Must-See List of Unmissable Sights To See Before You Die’?
• Do travellers disappear into black-holes if they leave their hotels unaccompanied by a guidebook’s ‘indispensable’ colour-coded, waterproof, rip-proof, detachable fold-out map?
• Without a Google maps mash-up on their Smartphone would they all stand frozen to the spot – flibberdygibbets in a foreign land?

I think not. Be gone, generic travel content overkill.

Here’s my idea
My ‘Lost in ...’ series of content will back up my call to forego the safety net that is generic travel content, if only for one day, one morning or one hour of a trip. My first hand experiences and photos will inspire travellers to indulge in the sensation of getting intrepidly and truly unforgettably lost. It will have a light tone, reflecting the cult sci-fi series Lost in Space.

Travellers will still see the obvious sights and they’ll still immerse themselves in local culture. But they’ll also give themselves the chance to stumble upon experiences that are individual to their trip. These are the experiences that travel content cannot choreograph, such as... being invited into an artist’s studio on an anonymous backstreet ...or ordering the best fillet steak that you’ve ever tasted, in the restaurant that you took a chance on just because a fat furry tabby cat guarded the door.

Related post Travel without safety nets

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Sunday 10 May 2009

Golden Blocks Shore Dive: my piece for The Independent

Yet to perfect your giant stride entry or the throwing yourself backwards off a boat method? Then the Dahab way is for you.

The laid back Egyptian village set on Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, around an hour north of Sharm El Sheikh, has enough shore diving sites to keep divers busy for at least a week or so.

In fact shore diving seems to satisfy visitors' demands so much that none of the local dive schools have yet invested in a Zodiac boat for off-shore diving.

Read about my shore dive at Dahab's 'Golden Blocks' as featured by On The Road at The Independent:Travel.






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