Hole In The Donut Travels

Position: The Caretaker of the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef, Australia
Location: Hamilton Island
Employer: Tourism Queensland
Compensation: A salary package of AUD $150,000 for a six-month contract (that’s $96,950.34 in U.S. dollars)
Responsibilities: Through weekly blog posts, a photo journal, and a video gallery, tell the world what’s taking place on the Islands of the Great Barrier [...]

Goodbye Australia…..
The three words that best describe Australia to me are:

DIVERSE: In so many ways – the country is an enticing mix of many different ethnicities; many different geologic landforms; a mix between wonderfully modern, cultured cities and remote rural locales, etc.
VAST: Australia is not the biggest country in the world. But [...]

Because there is SO much in Sydney that I haven’t had time to see, deciding what to do on my last day in this beautiful city was tough. Ultimately, the decision was made for me when my friend, Jane, with whom I’ve been staying, said that coming to Sydney and not seeing Bondi Beach was [...]

Despite being equally as impressive and just as beautiful as Ayers Rock (some say more beautiful), The Olgas are the less-visited geological formation at Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park in central Australia. Located just 27 miles from Ayers Rock, the Olgas are a series of rounded domes that poke their heads above the sand dunes covering [...]

In the very center of the Australian continent is a vast and featureless desert of red sand and scrub vegetation that stretches in all directions as far as the eye can see. Only two features relieve this otherwise monotonous landscape – the giant red sandstone monolith known as Ayers Rock and the lesser-known conglomerate [...]

I have been trying to attend the annual teachings of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala, India for the past three years, but each year something got in the way. So when I discovered that His Holiness was to make a public appearance in Sydney, I scheduled my travels around Australia accordingly. Despite [...]

Basically, I hate tours. I detest being loaded onto a bus with 49 other people and herded like cattle from one tourist spot to the next. I loathe hearing, ‘We’ll be leaving here for exactly 18 minutes,’ when I’d like to stay for two hours shooting photos or hiking the trail to the overlook point. [...]

I’ve really been in a funk lately. I don’t know why. I thought it may have been due to the cold weather but it seemed to persist even after I arrived in warmer climates. In Sydney recently, I attended a meditation class, where the teacher discussed the benefit of “remaining present” every [...]

Because I had mistakenly thought Sydney was an oceanfront city, I double-checked my facts before going to Cairns. Yep! Cairns is an oceanfront city in the northwest corner of the Australian continent, where the temperatures are balmy throughout the year. Since it’s located smack dab in the middle of the Great Barrier Reef, I should [...]