OUR EARLY ROADS SOON TOOK THEIR TOLL David Ellis NEXT time you get a beep when you drive through a toll gate, take a moment to ponder just how long we hapless road users have been paying tolls in Australia. Because rather than only since sometime in the 20th century as you would probably think, […]
GETTING SQUARE WITH DAYS OF YORE David Ellis A RECENT overnight at a hotel on Sydney’s Railway Square turned out to be something more than just the chance to put the feet up for a night of the good life, it became an extraordinary walk down memory lane… Not that the Mercure Sydney was some […]
RUSSIANS’ TRUE MEANING OF BUNKERING DOWN David Ellis DOOMSAYERS who get a kick out of reckoning the end of the world is nigh, and disappointed nothing happened back in December last year and again in February this year despite all their forebodings, are no doubt already stocking their underground vaults to ensure they get through […]
David Ellis with Frank Linn HE’S like some modern-day Pied Piper, except that it’s not children he’s leading through the town square, but adults – 60-something of us mesmerised by the promises of what he says lays ahead… It’s a Sunday morning and we’re in St Tropez on the French Riviera, playground […]
GETTING HOOKED ON A SAMOA LEGEND David Ellis IT’S by no means the wettest place in the world, but a visit there in 1920 convinced English author Somerset Maugham it was certainly one of them – so much so that when he penned one of his most famous short stories about the characters […]
GETTING HOOKED ON A SAMOA LEGEND David Ellis IT’S by no means the wettest place in the world, but a visit there in 1920 convinced English author Somerset Maugham it was certainly one of them – so much so that when he penned one of his most famous short stories about the characters he encountered […]
DON’T DECRY NELSON IN PORTSMOUTH David Ellis MUCH has been said, written, researched and further researched about the dying words of Vice Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson as he led the British against France and Spain in the Battle of Trafalgar in October 1805, the battle that gave England its greatest-ever sea victory to […]
DIG THIS – LONG TIME FOR A SHORT CUT david ellis IT may have been a wonderfully rich agricultural area adored by farmers, but for early traders the Peloponnese Peninsula making up the southern-most part of mainland Greece, was anything but adored as it divided the Ionian and Adriatic Seas from the Aegean […]
DIG THIS – LONG TIME FOR A SHORT CUT david ellis IT may have been a wonderfully rich agricultural area adored by farmers, but for early traders the Peloponnese Peninsula making up the southern-most part of mainland Greece, was anything but adored as it divided the Ionian and Adriatic Seas from the Aegean Sea, and […]
SMALL’S THE GO ON ROAD TO SUCCESS David Ellis WHEN he was on a plane coming home from a business trip to Alaska a near 20-years ago, Sydney travel industry public relations man John Savage got chatting with the passenger next him, who it turned out was also in the travel game. And he mentioned […]