by Ian Cochrane | Jun 4, 2013 | Oceania
Our truck bumps from side to side, the wheels in deeply rutted tracks. Nearer our coastal camp, scrub turns to woodland and we both lurch to the left as I drop a gear and edge across a scary slab of sloping stone. Back on sand it’s our final descent, to a wild coast...
by Ian Cochrane | May 25, 2013 | Americas, Europe, Oceania, Utopia
A face stares out from my PC screen: a suited-up man about 30yrs old, the boyish face round, the hairline receding. I see a clean face, but for the sparing outline of a beard. I see a thin mouth, the eyes narrowed and slightly turned, the face of a man who killed...
by Ian Cochrane | May 11, 2013 | Americas
Just off Broadway I’m in a side street by City Hall, the ubiquitous New York crowds somehow missing, the hum of traffic vague and distant. A lonesome monument sits silent and tucked in the shadow of City Planning offices and a 30-storey Federal skyscraper; that...
by Ian Cochrane | Apr 22, 2013 | Asia, Oceania
I met Becky in the supermarket dairy aisle; a vivacious 40-something, born and raised locally. I’d seen her around, but we’d never met before Ed reappeared. I asked how my old friend was. “Not so good,” she said. “Still can’t sleep. And he really struggles with...
by Ian Cochrane | Apr 14, 2013 | Oceania
I’m met at the airstrip by Toi my guide, with a vice-like handshake and welcoming lei of yellow bougainvillea draped around my neck. Two skinny girls in grass skirts and goosebumps serenade to the strains of a ukulele played by a man in a knitted jacket over an...