Away in Lorne

Every so often I feel the need to get away from work, to literally toss the phone in a hotel room drawer and ignore email, social media and everything else. When that happens, I usually choose Lorne.

The Mantra Hotel in Lorne, on Victoria’s Great Ocean Road, was once Erskine House, popular accommodation for Melburnians seeking fresh sea air. It’s still a good place to head for that item, and as a non-driver I like it particularly because it a) can be easily reached by public transport; and b) it has the town on one side and the ocean on the other, so it’s easy to walk to everything.

The standard rooms are fine, but this time I was staying in a small apartment on the tree (rather than ocean) side of the property. It was a nice space with a proper kitchen, and I always appreciate being able to self-cater.

The gutter above the open-air terrace of the apartment seemed to retain water after rain, and this drew a set of regular visitors to the rooftop: sulphur-crested cockatoos!

These sizeable native birds are all over Lorne, often looking to cadge food from visitors, though signs everywhere tell you not to feed them. I saw plenty of cockatoos during my stay, as well as galahs and various waterbirds.

I have a pattern when I visit Lorne for a four-night stay. The first couple of days are spent largely collapsed on a sofa, reading; in between eating the buffet breakfast and swimming in the hotel pool (there’s a steam room there too, which I appreciate in colder weather).

On the second day I’ll stretch myself slightly by walking down to the excellent Swing Bridge Cafe just beyond the hotel, where the river flows into the sea.

It’s a beautiful spot in good weather, a great place to do more reading. Then I’ll cross the bridge and pass by the local supermarket for catering supplies. Lorne is a reasonably upmarket destination, and you can tell that fro the posh bread and cheeses on sale at the supermarket.

On the second or third full day, depending on weather, I’ll push myself a bit more by taking the coastal walk around past the beach to the pier. Next to it is a seafood restaurant which is a nice place to sit and have a drink or a meal, while looking over the ocean. I find it soothing.

Then I walk back to the hotel via the main road, which runs higher up and passes the local pub. Sometimes I’ll look in the shops, sometimes check out the film schedule at the old-school cinema.

It’s not a complex holiday, but sometimes that’s what I need.

Makes a hugely refreshing change from being somewhere where I have to stay alert, taking notes and framing photos for later use in published travel stories.

Love Lorne! Even the thuggish cockatoos that run the town.

A Travel Reading Holiday in Lorne (Part 2)

Every couple of years I take a short summer holiday in the seaside town of Lorne (see above photo), and do a lot of travel reading.

Last post I talked about two travel books I read there in late 2017, each regarding Africa. Now here are two more reviews of travel books among my holiday reading, set in South America and Europe...

1. Turn Right at Machu Picchu; by Mark Adams

The basic premise here is that Adams, an adventure travel magazine editor who rarely gets to do anything adventurous, decides to conquer the Inca Trail. in fact he goes much further than this, seeking to replicate the exploratory quests of Hiram Bingham a century ago.

It was Bingham who visited Machu Picchu and popularised its existence in the West, but he also explored several other significant sites over the following years. In the course of the book Adams visits these while detailing Bingham's expeditions, providing us with parallels between then and now.

It's an entertaining set-up, particularly as the writer is no hardened hiker; it makes it easy for us to identify with him when he struggles with the journey's demands.

The most entertaining element by far is the Aussie guide enlisted by Adams, an eccentric hardened bushman who seems like a real-life version of Crocodile Dundee; just as Bingham was said to have inspired Indiana Jones.

This was a thoroughly good read about a destination I'm not familiar with.

[see this book at Amazon]

2. Border; by Kapka Kassabova

Finally I struck a book with a style of travel more in tune with my own.

Kassabova is a Brit who was born in Bulgaria during the Cold War. In this book, she flits along and over the borders between three Balkan countries: Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey. Along the way she explores the history and folklore of the region, as much at home with relating ancient myths as detailing 20th century events.

This work had much less of the driving linear narrative that was present in the other travel books I read on my Lorne getaway. Instead, the author moves here and there, back and forth, sometimes staying in one village for an extended time.

As a result the book reads like a series of vignettes based on specific villages or border sub-regions, with local people and landscapes at their heart.

It's not as much a page-turner as a traditional travelogue, but Border does lend a lot of insight into the far southeast corner of Europe and the cultural and historical forces which have shaped it.

[see this book at Amazon]

That was my Lorne reading list in 2017. What should I read on my next tech-free travel reading holiday? Feel free to make suggestions in the comments section below.

A Travel Reading Holiday in Lorne (Part 1)

Every couple of years I take a short summer holiday in Lorne, on the Great Ocean road here in Victoria, Australia.

It's always a few days about two weeks before Christmas, as that's a period before the festive season rush; when room rates drop while everything in the seaside town opens.

As I've done before, I made it a tech-free break, putting the phone in a drawer once I'd checked into the hotel. The objective - in addition to swimming and walking - was to read as many books as possible.

So here are some reviews of my travel-themed reading, starting with two books about Africa...

1. Walking the Nile; by Levison Wood

There's something slightly irritating about this adventurer who decides to walk the entire length of the Nile, from Rwanda to the Mediterranean. He exudes a subtle air of outdated British imperial folly, perhaps, though he is good mates with the Africans he employs as guides along the way.

There's something meaningless about the goal, though it does lead him through an interesting variety of landscapes and nations, and into difficult encounters which make for dramatic reading. One specific episode within this true story is shocking in its outcome, and nearly brought the walk to an end.

In fact the Nile is never fully walked, as Lervison is forced to skip a section of South Sudan after civil conflict comes too close for comfort. And Egypt, the final country, is something of a damp squib as his progress there is so closely monitored and regulated by the authorities.

Having said that, it is an entertaining journey which reveals a lot about the cultures encountered and landscapes crossed.

[see this book at Amazon]

2. The Last Train to Zona Verde; by Paul Theroux

Some people aren't fans of Paul Theroux's travel writing, as they detect a cold misanthropy in his on-the-road observations. I'm not sure about that. It seems to me he is fact deeply invested in the places and people he encounters, but has a naturally detached way of relating them.

He also has a knack of getting people to speak to him, which seems the opposite of misanthropic.

In this follow-up journey to an earlier book about an overland trip from Cairo to Cape Town, he travels from Cape Town to Angola and talks to plenty of people along the way: shanty dwellers in South Africa, elephant handlers in Botswana, San tribesmen in Namibia, random strangers in Angola.

What Theroux doesn't do is suffer fools gladly, and if he takes a dislike to someone or something you know it. He's not a fan of Western culture in its incarnations as mass tourism or rapacious capitalism, and he's particularly scornful of international aid agencies.

He doesn't mind giving African people a serve over their societal shortcomings either, which can make for uncomfortable reading; though he's just as scathing of Europeans who fail his measures of decency.

The journey itself is fascinating, especially since Angola in particular is little visited by Westerners; partly because of its dependence on its misused (in Theroux's eyes) oil wealth. Indeed, it's in Angola that the trip - originally aimed at reaching the Mediterranean - falls apart and is abandoned.

Theroux, as if feeling awkward about not completing his stated quest, spends far too much time justifying himself at the end of the book. It didn't bother me; the journey as it was was intriguing, and I would've myself dropped out after the first difficult Angolan day.

[see this book at Amazon]

Next: Two more reviews - one of a hapless hike through the Andes, the other about the mysteries of a three-nation border region...

A Travel Writer's Reading Holiday in Lorne, Australia

In mid-December I took a short holiday in Lorne, an attractive coastal town on Victoria's Great Ocean Road.

The eccentric timing was the result of something I'd noticed a couple of years before - two weeks before Christmas Day, accommodation prices at the Mantra Lorne hotel drop to very reasonable levels.

I assume that represents the lull before the storm: for that brief period, business travel has ceased for the year, and the summer wave of vacationers hasn't yet hit.

Whatever the reason, I decided I'd take advantage of it to take a reading holiday. It was also largely a technology detox as well.

Aside from a little social media in the mornings at the Swing Bridge Cafe (pictured above), I placed the phone and tablet in a drawer while I read a number of books in print, and on my unconnected Kindle device.

For some reason I'd decided to go on a travelogue jag. Well, not entirely without reason. I often work at the Docklands Library in Melbourne, and pass through the travel section on the first floor.

On doing so recently my eye had been caught by a book about a trip to Timbuktu, and I'd started reading it in installments once I'd finished my work each day.

So I took it with me to Lorne, along with a number of other interesting works. Here's what I thought of them (with an Amazon link for each if you'd like to buy them or learn more). 

1. To Timbuktu for a Haircut; by Rick Antonson

This was a fun read. The author is a travel industry professional from Canada, who becomes obsessed with travelling to Timbuktu in the west African country of Mali.

This is not a journey made casually; part of his complex preparations involve liaison with a Malian 'fixer' who turns out to present his own challenges. Antonson does a good job of placing us in his shoes, dealing with the inevitable difficulties while relating the fun and the interesting characters he meets on the road.

I appreciated him being the sort of travel writer who's happy in the company of others, both Malian and foreigner, rather than the Theroux-type who shuns all Westerners; it's a more relatable kind of travel.

2. Stranger on a Train; by Jenny Diski

I loved this book, echoing as it did my recent long-distance train journey up the west coast of the USA. In it, British writer Jenny Diski decides to circumnavigate the USA aboard Amtrak trains.

Because she's a smoker, she finds herself frequently exiled to grim grey smoking rooms within each train. There she meets the most extraordinary collection of fellow travellers, each with their own eccentricity or outright psychological problem.

She's had her own experience of mental illness, and comes to find the long-distance train - with its strange sensation of existing outside the normal world of time and space - as a kind of refuge which allows her to forget the problems of the 'real world' and open up to strangers. A great read, as much memoir as travelogue.

3. Against the Flow; by Tom Fort

In 1990, this British writer and keen fisherman decided to drive across Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall, fishing and meeting locals along the way. Two decades later, he returns to fish some more and see how the region has changed.

It's a well-written 'then and now' account which I could relate to strongly, having lived in Poland in 1994 and then revisiting it regularly from 2006 onwards. I'm not much interested in the angling detail, but Fort does a good job of painting the people he meets, and it's good to see what happened to them after that first encounter.

The only sour note for me is the writer often striking a note of 'it was simpler and better back in 1990', when of course it was actually poorer and more deprived for the locals. He does redeem himself by acknowledging this contradiction later in the book, however.

4. This Other London; by John Rogers

I'm always interested in books promising to uncover secrets of London. It's such an old, layered and complex city that there's always something more to learn about it.

In this book, the writer stages a series of 'expeditions' to outer London, exploring areas that were generally towns and countryside outside London before the Industrial Revolution. Walking from Gunnersbury to Hounslow Heath, or from Lewisham to Tulse Hill, he passes stately homes, converted factories, lost sacred wells, Roman roads and buried rivers.

I find him frustratingly reticent to talk to locals; so it's more about his own thoughts and reactions than those of people he meets along the way. However it's all fascinating material, almost completely through parts of London off the tourist map, which I haven't visited at all.

5. Reckoning; by Magda Szubanski

Though it's not a travelogue, this autobiography by Australian comedian Magda Szubanski contains a fair bit of travel.

As part of her account of growing up as the daughter of a Polish father and Scottish mother, she explores her father's past and his activities as part of the Polish resistance against the German military during World War II.

Visiting Poland several times, during communist rule and after the fall of the regime, the author gradually unravels those dark times and comes to understand her father better as a result.

It's an excellent read, both for Szubanski's natural, honest turn of phrase, and for an insight into the complexities of family life and its tensions.

Getting so much read in such a short time has partially turned me back toward the pleasure of reading print books to escape from the endless short-focus demands of social media and email (though I do still love my Kindle).

There's always next year's reading vacation to look forward to... 

A Walk from Lorne

In December last year, I learnt a useful lesson... the best time to take a quiet summer beach break in Australia is the week before Christmas.

By about the 15th, businessmen have stopped travelling but it's too early for the school holiday rush. As a result, Narrelle and I scored a good room rate at the Mantra Lorne.

It's a resort built around the historic Erskine House guesthouse, in the attractive seaside town of Lorne on the Great Ocean Road.

This wasn't a work-related trip, and our main aim was to sit around doing very little. But one day we went for a walk on the trail which winds along the beachfront then up and around to the Lorne Pier.

Here's a view looking back to the town. As you can see, it was a relatively cool and overcast day for December:

On the way we encountered a gang of cockatoos delighting tourists at a rest stop:

All along the coastline at Lorne, there's a series of signs recalling past maritime disasters - a reminder of how deadly these waters could be, and how many shipwrecks lie below. In this case, the sign recalled the clipper Paul Jones, which in 1886 caught fire offshore and had to be abandoned:

The shoreline became impressively rocky as we approached the pier:

And this is Lorne Pier - or at least the current version, constructed in 2007 when the old pier (opened in 1879) reached the end of its long life:

It was good to see that a short length of the original pier was retained next to the new structure, with historic signage to explain its significance. The rails are a reminder of the 1904 horse-drawn tramway which hauled timber from nearby forests, to be loaded onto ships:

Near the pier is the magnificent Grand Pacific Hotel, opened in 1880 to accommodate travellers arriving by sea from Melbourne and other ports. You'll note a Chinese flag to the right, a sign that it's still in the tourism business in the 21st century:

Finally, on the way back to the town centre we followed the Great Ocean Road rather than the shoreline. This distinctive sign, which I've only ever seen on this route, is confirmation of how popular the road is with foreign visitors, and how dangerous its twists and turns can be if you're not paying attention...