oZTralia

I was travelling between Cairns and Mt Isa.......This was the road. Mile after mile of red dusty hard ground.
By the side of the road (not captured on film) were thousands of empty beer cans....The aboriginals would get it together to collect these cans for the aluminium. Just occasionally I would spot a coke can and think "my god there's been a teetotaler along this way".

When I eventually arrived in Darwin....I found out that Territorians dont use Kilometers or Miles as a measure of distance.....they use the unit "Carton". A "Carton" consists of 24 cans of beer.....Therefore a trip from Darwin to Kathrine for example would be a 3 Carton trip, 150kms, or 72 cans of beer. This of course depended on how many people were travelling!.
If you asked how far it was from Darwin to Alice Springs????....Unknown................ because no one ever returned from Alice Springs to tell the tale............

City by the Bay

In 1979 I travelled with a buddy of mine (Pete, now head of Learning and Standards at Guildford College, Surrey) up the West Coast of America from San Diego as far as Vancouver, Canada. We had many adventures.....needless to say one day these will make print (you can believe it Pete).

The experience of travelling in California especially has stayed with me ever since. One of the songs that was being played on the radio at that time was "Lights" by Journey.

The radio stations were like none that I had ever heard before. The music was so, so good.

We never saw the sunrise on the Bay....that I remember.... although I did meet a parrot and the only word he could say was "EARTHQUAKE!!"

San Francisco, California, USA.

"Lights"----Journey 1978

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8JMN0kjPY8&feature=related

It seems incredible that it only made #68 in the US charts.....