Tag Archives: environmental portrait

If there is a single problem with the annual Easter-weekend Bluesfest music festival in Byron Bay, it is deciding what to miss out on! It is hard not have “music envy”. Every year that I attend, there are headliners that I have to forfeit. Or there are the days or years that I don’t go at […]

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Papua New Guinea is intensely colourful. Papua New Guinea is also – thanks to rugged terrain and relative isolation from the outside world – exceptionally regional. This is certainly the case for the speakers of between 50 and 250 distinct languages (depending on how you categorise things) who live in tightly knit clans in small […]

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The landscape around the Altai Mountains of far-western Bayan-Ölgii Province in Mongolia is as untamed as the people and animals who live there. The cold desert climate experiences dustings of snowfall – but little rain – and the measured temperatures – ranging from -22.6C (-8.68F) on a January night to 22.6° (72.7F) on a July afternoon – […]

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I’ve said it before: for a country with a small population, Australia has a disproportionate wealth of musical talent (see: The Local Lineup). I look forward to the annual Easter long-weekend Byron Bay Bluesfest: it can invariably be relied upon to serve up a range of quality musicians. It is a joy to discover new […]

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As cosmopolitan a city as Bangkok is, there are still spaces where one feels as though one has been transported into the distant past. The old community of Bang Khun Thian – established around 1867 – is one of the 50 districts (เขต – khed) that the huge and sprawling city is divided into. Tucked […]

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