Peter and I were married in 1967 and have three children, born between 1972 and 1978.

My travelling within Australia began when I was in my teens and overseas travelling started with a trip to New Zealand. In December 1981/January 1982 we hired a motorhome and travelled around the North Island and South Island of New Zealand. That probably really started us off with the "travel bug". We were impressed with the concept of travelling by motorhome so in September/October 1982 we hired a motorhome in North Queensland.

For the next 10 or more years trips were chosen to suit the young age of our children and we travelled once or twice each year. Some of these trips were within Australia and some overseas. There were many cruises on the old "Fairstar" to Fiji, New Caledonia and Tonga as well as Singapore to Japan and Hong Kong to China, Korea and Japan. We travelled around the US and Canada a couple of times with the children.

We did not take the children to Europe when they were very young because long trips had to be in the Australian summer school holidays and we did not want to travel in Europe in winter with short days and dreary weather. Our first trip to Europe was in 1993 and our youngest, Janine, went with us and celebrated her 15th birthday the day we left Brisbane. We spent a few days in a hotel in London then flew to Frankfurt to pick up our motorhome. We found that this method of travelling around Europe is a superb. We had the freedom to design (and re-design) our itinerary and it was surprisingly economical. We might have been a little apprehensive about managing in countries where English is not the principal language, but my German-speaking mother-in-law was with us and this gave us confidence. It turned out to be a rather false confidence, because most questions we put to her were met with the answer "Don’t ask me". However, she was able to translate the German road signs for us and that was quite a help.

We had such a wonderful time in Europe that we decided to take our two "boys" who were then studying. I have to agree with a friend who said "New Zealand is like a part of Australia; the west coast of US is almost like another state of Australia but Europe is another world."

In 1995 we took our boys (Mark aged 23 and Chris aged 20) for a 9 week trip (by motorhome of course) around Europe. Mum-in-law went along also. We re-visited our favourite cities because we felt a tour of Europe had to include the Great Cities, and we also went to a lot of places that were new to us.

In these years there were trips to Ukraine, Russia and China - not by motorhome of course. We went on conducted tours which I think is the best way to travel in these countries. It did surprise us how exhausting we found these conducted tours. When we travel independently we have long days and fit a lot into the day, but somehow it is not as exhausting as a conducted tour. Our tours had 8am starts with 8 hour days but I have heard of some that have 12 to14 hour days.

We returned to Europe in 1999 for 15 weeks and this trip included a tour of Turkey, a cruise to the Cycladic Islands of Greece and a short tour in the Greek mainland. We then travelled for 10½ weeks around Europe in a motorhome. There were three of us on this trip, Peter and I with our eldest son Mark. Mum-in-law decided to stay home because she had adopted a little dog and did not feel she could entrust her new companion to a kennel.

In 1998 we went on a cruise to the Caribbean islands, principally to observe a total solar eclipse. The eclipse was an unbelieveably fantastic event to witness and we really enjoyed the shipboard life and the islands we visited.

In August to October, 2000 we travelled in Alaska in a motorhome and, after flying to Vancouver, travelled around the US by car. The highlights for me were the animals we were lucky enough to see and observing the aurora borealis (northern lights) in Alaska.

We purchased our own motorhome in 1997 and we have made quite a few long trips in Australia since then. Motorhoming suits us as a way to travel.

Peter retired from his Government job in mid 1996 then worked part-time in my business which we sold at the end of 1997. Now we have more time for travelling! We are already planning trips within Australia and overseas in the next couple of years. Two of our young adults are still living at home so we have house-sitters and pet-minders readily at hand.

Photographs - The photographs accompanying my travel articles were taken by both Peter and myself using 30-35 year old Minolta single lens reflex cameras with various lenses - zoom, telephoto, wide angle. Film and processing are Kodak.

I have many more travel stories to write and will add these to the website progressively.

I've also recently written a number of books to help campervan travellers in Australia.