Where are the dog nets?

I’ve always been amazed that so many things can kill you in Australia. I gather that even the redback spider wasn’t poisonous when it first came to Australian shores – it obviously had to adapt fast. It’s a wonder any tourists visit at all. When I was in Tahiti many years ago the taxi driver mentioned that she would love to travel to Australia but fear of snakes prevented it.

That’s on top of travelling on Australian roads, where I simply assume that everyone is trying to kill me. I gather it’s even worse in America where if they don’t get you on the road with a giant pickup truck up your arse, they’ll blow you away with one of their collection of handguns and assault rifles.

The 'truckification' of everyday roads.

‘We are rightly shocked when a couple of surfers get taken by sharks and start talking about shark nets again. What I want to ask is: where are the dog nets?’

'travelling light' – the full and final set in my suite of social media blogs

Today I launch 'travelling light', a final, fifth blog to add to my suite of four blogs on Blogger. For 16 years I published almost 300 articles there, with some articles posted on earlier outlets for closer to 22 years. 'travelling light' is different to all of these – not serious articles about creativity and culture, not humorous snippets, not creative and travel writing and not articles about food and cooking. It is a personal view of the light – and sometimes heavier – matters that come up in daily life and make me sit up and take notice, whether travelling or staying put.

Travelling light completes the set. My main blog is indefinite article, which I describe as irreverent writing about contemporary Australian society, popular culture, the creative economy and the digital and online world – life in the trenches and on the beaches of the information age. balloon is collection of short humorous articles, thought balloons for our strange and unsettled times – brief quirky articles about the eccentricities of everyday life, almost always with a sense of short black humour. handwriting, homegrown graffiti from the digital world – writing, rhyming and digital animations, is creative writing, including a series of seven articles about travel. Lastly tableland is about food, produce and cooking, land to table – the daily routine of living in the high country, on the edge of the vast Pacific, just up from Sydney, just down from Mount Kosciuszko.

Settled into a National Trust former fishing cottage at Port Quin on the Cornwall Atlantic coast in 2019.

Rationalising outlets

I have been rationalising some of my social media outlets and starting to place material on Substack, which has a different purpose to Blogger. I publish to both outlets, sometimes posting on both, with some cross-referencing. My most recent travel article on the 'handwriting' blog, which is about France, is part of a series of articles also called 'travelling light', in keeping with the same theme as this blog.