Archive for October, 2008
South America without a clue – Part 2
31st May 1986
Episode 2
Hawaiian Icons
Sleep and more sleep in a big bed and a pleasantly cool night. What’s jet lag? Up early, I ponder a day of touring over breakfast. But first things first, clothes. Now we are not talking anything flash here, just thongs and shorts. In fact, I hardly have anything much at all in my backpack, let alone clothes. Back home, my travelling mentor, Arthur Weston, suggested buying all I need at super stores such as North Face or REI in San Francisco, my next stop after Hawaii.
Don’t have a lot to work with here as I have a mere $6.00 US from a travellers cheque cashed at the airport. Why so little? Before leaving Perth I soaked up all the tips from more experienced travellers. One tip was never cash large amounts of travellers cheques at airports where exchange rates are lousy. Perhaps I took this advice a bit too literally, but can you blame me. The exchange rate is about 60 cents Australian to the American dollar.
South America without a clue – Part 1
South America without a Clue
Episode 1
30th May 1986
There’s a minor hiccup with the potential of becoming a severe case of indigestion. But my passport finally arrives minutes before heading out to the airport. This is what happens when you tell your travel agent to organise visas before leaving. As it turns out, only the USA and Costa Rica visas arrived on time. I will just have to get the Ecuadorian, Peruvian, Brazilian, Argentinean, Chilean, Bolivian and Venezuelan visas along the way. I did say I was going without a clue.
A final farewell to well wishers and I board the QF24 flight bound for Sydney. The four hour flight gives me time to reflect. Emotions rise and dip like the stock market. Most backpackers from Australia pick well trodden paths such as Europe for their first big overseas venture. I pick South America, a land of flesh eating fish, anacondas, drug gangs, murderous crime, mosquito borne diseases, loose woman, muggers and a plethora of other life threatening hazards. That is if I believe everything I am told by family, relatives and well meaning friends. On the other hand more positive thoughts battle for space hatched from gazing at stories about the Amazon and the Andes on the pages of National Geographic. All these things swirl around in my head in a sea of positives and negatives. I focus on my journey’s main aim. That is to come back to Perth with a bunch of gob smacking images so fantastic that any newspaper proprietor worth their salt could not refuse employing me as a photographer.
Introducing my Photographic Blog
What about a Pelusey photographic blog? That was a question Jane and I pondered while setting up our new website. After all, over the years I have gained plenty of experience both useful and possibly useless that somebody in cyberspace may find interesting. Articles will cover photographic techniques and my sometimes comical and not so comical photographic assignment experiences. There will be also topical subjects covering the direction photography is heading and anything else that takes my fancy.
But first, a bit of background about my own photographic journey over the years. When I first picked up a camera, it was 1963 and I was 8 years old. The occasion was a one week holiday on Rottnest Island off Perth Western Australia. It was a box brownie and it belonged to mum. The subject was a tame little marsupial wallaby type creature called a quokka. On my tenth birthday, my photography took a big leap forward. I got a little Kodak Starlite or was it Skylite, I can’t quite remember. It took a paltry 12 photos per roll.
Confessions of Puppy Sitters: Tilly
I always wanted a pet, but our travelling lifestyle doesn’t allow for it. However one thing led to another and now we are house sitters – well pet sitters really. Dogs and cats, (geese, chooks, ducks and birds) are much more at ease in their own house. So when pet owners go on holidays they get us in to look after “Nip and Fluff”. It can be quite a juggling act coordinating our own travel assignments with pet sitting engagements. So over the years we have looked after a menagerie of animals. This blog gives us an avenue to explain some of the funny animal personalities we have come across. Every month we will write about our “foster” pets. We will not however delve into the controversial subject of pet owners because they of course another breed to themselves.
The first pet we ever looked after was Tilly. Tilly is a beautiful Golden Retriever who really does know how beautiful she is. With her long peroxide blonde hair and contrasting purple collar she is very striking dog. In fact a tip for single men is to get a beautiful Golden Retriever because they are chick magnets. When walking with Tilly, we are stopped by many admiring people, mainly women. Especially heading to the beach where Tilly carries her own pink boomerang.