by Ian Cochrane | Feb 1, 2015 | Oceania
I’m in Tasmania drinking with Dave; a giant of a man with broad shoulders and no neck. He’s lived alone all his adult life, and sits at his normal spot at the bar, in brown flannelette shirt and singlet, jeans and mud-caked Blundy boots. “Changed?...
by Ian Cochrane | May 30, 2014 | Africa
`…didn’t you ever want to know what was on the other side of the mountain?’ – James Hilton, Lost Horizon. Funny to find an Antipodean neighbour way out here: a beanie-clad, mumbling, red-head New Zealander in the middle of Africa; him...
by Ian Cochrane | Apr 28, 2014 | Europe
From Berlin I’ve flown to Paris late winter, driving north for two hours and overnighting in the hamlet of Behen, a classic French Chateau with stately entry paved for WW2 German tanks, towers and walls from 15th and 18th centuries, the stables once bombed by...
by Ian Cochrane | Mar 23, 2014 | Africa
There’s another white dual cab propped on the wrong side of the road. I wind down the passenger’s window to ask if all’s OK. A khaki-clad man pauses, narrow-eyed and hesitant way out here, water bottle pulled from an open, dust-laden tailgate....
by Ian Cochrane | Feb 16, 2014 | Europe
Four metre waves batter our ferry on the fiercest piece of water in the world. We’re 100km west of the Norwegian mainland and this is the Maelstrom, first mentioned by the Greeks 3000 years ago and immortalised in the iconic writings of Edgar Allen Poe and Jules...