It’s something you have to do at Ayer’s Rock - see the sunset. The rock changes slowly from golden yellow to red and to purple as the sun sinks below the horizon. It’s memorable.

This was a high point - a 15-minute helicopter over the magnificent Ayer’s Rock, or Uluru. I took a whole roll of film, and was hugely impressed by the sight of the endless red desert, interrupted so startlingly by the Rock, and the Olgas a little way away. To my horror, after the flight I [...]

As Bill Bryson says in ‘Down Under’, ‘You have driven 1,300 miles to look at a large, inert, loaf-shaped object that you have seen photographically portrayed 1,000 times already. And then you see it, and you are instantly transfixed’. Too right. Here are a few more photographic portrayals to add to the tally.

To get from Perth to Adelaide we took the train. Not just any old train, though - this is one of the great train journeys, taking nearly two days to cross the fearsomely empty expanse of the Nullarbor Plain. Some might think this strange but for me, 40 hours on the Great Southern Railway was [...]

We all really liked the Pinnacles. It was a long way to travel to see them from Perth but it was worth the effort. Just before we got there the heavens opened, but the storm soon passed and the departing clouds made the acres and acres of limestone pillars look very striking.

My dad used to work for BOAC, as it was then, and when he’d left had been given some free standby flights. It was a bit risky trying to go to Australia with them because there was a very good chance we’d be waiting several days before we could get on a flight, and when [...]