echo "hey, it works" > /dev/null

It's the most beautiful time to be at the farm. The sun is shining, there isn't any wind, at least in the morning, and the nights are cool enough to have a fire. First thing this morning we went for a walk in the hills, and were greeted by two kookaburras, sitting in a tree not ten metres away and laughing their heads off. If you've never heard a kookaburra laugh in the wild, you're missing something special. Same goes for magpies, which are bountiful at the moment. There are also lots of galahs, and while they're amazingly bright pink, they make a horrible screeching noise.

There was a fire in the hills a couple of years ago (which was pretty scary, as a wind change would have taken out both the houses), and there's a lot of regeneration. By far the most active regrowth is the prickly acacia. They're not a particularly attractive tree and they're wickedly, well, prickly, but they're native to the area so we're happy enough. And their green foliage looks pretty good amongst the burnt black trunks of the big old eucalypts.

From the very top of the hills we could see to the gulf, which is about an hour and a half drive away. That's close enough that we should get over there more often. I'm supposed to be holed up doing research coding but we might take a day off and drive over there.

The old roo is still up there too. He stared at us as we walked by, a hundred metres away, but it was obviously too much hassle to hop away like most of them do. I hope to take some cues from him this week; breathe slowly, relax, don't get too worked up over things.

The beloved was convinced he was dead or dying. He is usually very punctual, and after two hours of waiting, I too was beginning to fear that something untoward may have happened along the hour and a half drive from the farm to the airport, though my melodrama gene is somewhat less developed. So we were stuck at Adelaide airport, worrying for the health of the beloved's father, who I will call Slap for the purposes of this story. And I won't explain why I'll call him that. We spoke to a couple of cops to see if they had ...

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I've been to Western Australia about half a dozen times, sometimes flying and sometimes driving. Flying is a damn sight cheaper than it used to be, thanks to the death of the Qantas/Ansett duopoly, and only takes around four hours. Driving is a damn sight more expensive now that petrol is more expensive than really expensive things, but the trip across the Nullarbor is something that every Australian and visitor to Australia should do. It's a humbling experience. Things are big in Western Australia. The spaces are big, the houses are big, the cars are big. When we're there we ...

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The traffic in Iran is different to that in East Asia, though both are daunting to someone who's grown up in outback Australia. In Asia the traffic is like a river, it flows in a smooth line, moving easily around most objects. To cross a road as a pedestrian, you have to take a leap of faith, look straight ahead and step out into the traffic. Walk steadily across and don't make eye contact with the drivers, because as soon as you do they'll think you're a crazy loon of a whitey who doesn't have a clue, and then no-one ...

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Travel is always surprising. That's what makes it so rewarding, and it was one of the reasons I chose to travel to Iran. Having worked closely with an Iranian for five or six years, and partaking of regular political and social debate with him (though we agreed most of the time), I felt I was better prepared than most for my visit to Iran. Nonetheless, of course I was still surprised, and more often than not it was my biases that got me. First off, Iran is not a developing (or third world) country. I guess I hadn't really ...

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One of the stated reasons for the Lonely Planet sale to the BBC earlier this year was to expand the "digital" aspect of the business, an area where they had so far failed to leverage their reputation. For digital we really have to read online. After all, the Thorn Tree is great, but it's really just a forum. The recent story about technology issues at the BBC (via) make one question whether it was the right partner for online innovation. Here's Tony and Maureen Wheeler talking about the sale.

When travelling, I keep a journal. I've been doing this for almost eight years now, with varying degrees of commitment, and have filled a couple of moleskines. This last trip to Iran is the first trip I've done since I started blogging and using Twitter, but I realised that I've been doing both for years, albeit low tech paper based blogging and tweets. Typically I'll have a couple of entries like, "Mannequins are freaky enough but someone got an import deal in Iran for extra freaky mannequins" and "Found veggie soups!" and then a longer entry about somewhere we've visited ...

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Almost every time I told people I was going to travel to Iran for a holiday, the response was an incredulous, "Why Iran?" Very few thought it was an exciting and interesting proposition. I believe the question reflects a successful demonisation of Iran, and while there is plenty wrong with the country, it's all too easy to overlook the great things. So, I'll try to answer the question, and when I get back I'll post about what it's really like here. I'm not going to pretend that this is a well-researched politically-aware piece of writing; just my very humble opinions ...

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