Oceania

Travel through Oceania by country:

Australia, Indonesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu

Travel through Oceania by popular city:

Auckland, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Wellington

Travel through Oceania by popular things to do:

Cook Islands, Sydney Opera House

Travel through Oceania with our writers:

In the Corner of the World, Work and Play in Queensland

Lowell Thomas Awards Announced

by Erik Olsen on

You might call them the Oscars of Travel Writing…but without the flowing gowns and/or long acceptance speeches. Oh, and the awards were held in Santiago this year, not Los Angeles. But despite their relative low-key nature, for travel writers, The Lowell Thomas (pictured) Awards are a big deal. This year’s selections came out of 1,392 entries, and consist of the very best travel writing that was published on dead trees or on the internet over the course of last year. The biggest award given is probably the one for Travel Journalist of the Year, and 2006’s awards went to the following:

Gold: Jane Wooldridge, The Miami Herald
Silver: Carol Pucci, The Seattle Times
Bronze: Millie Ball, The Times-Picayune, New Orleans

Someday, we assure you, we’ll be at least runners up. But for now, we content ourselves with congratulating the winners, and trying to soothe our festering envy with thoughts of upcoming trips.

Listen to the Kecak Dance

by Erik Olsen on

It’s been a while since we blogged about Russell Johnson and his wonderful site, the Connected Traveler. So we thought we’d pay him a visit to see what he’s up to. Well, he’s up to a great deal, and rather than try and cover it all, let me point you to one story I particularly enjoyed. In this audio story, narrated and written by Mr. Johnson, he discusses the Kecak dance, better known as the Balinese Monkey Dance. For those of you who have seen the film Baraka (one of my favorites), you know this dance well. The men sit in a circle and get themselves into a trance, yelling in synche and moving hands like, well, more like birds than monkeys. In Baraka, I am not sure what the men were after, but according to Johnson, in this story they are asking the gods for a return to the days of high tourism. As folks who follow the news know, the Bali attacks of a few years ago dealt a horrible blow to the regions tourism industry. I hope the Kecak dance helps.

The November 3rd Photo Project

by Adrienne Wilson on

Some folks might call Deia Schlosberg over at RoadJunky the nosey type – always poking and prodding where you shouldn’t, always placing the lens in the public’s face and you know where I’m going. Deia could be considered nosey to the extreme, but I wouldn’t say that. I’d say she’s a curious soul and now with your help and photos you can become part of a pretty awesome curious soul’s project. On November 3rd (a day that means nothing to mostly everybody and was chosen for no good reason) she asking that people from all over the world take at least 10 photos of what your day was like, what you see and experience. There must be one self-portrait and the photos don’t have to be great, which goes to say your self-portrait doesn’t have to be great or even close to good. The photos must all be a true representation of what your day was like and must all be taken on November 3, 2006. Captions should note the time and thoughts.

I don’t know where your pictures may possibly land, but I smell coffee brewing with some delicious pastry set out on the coffee table. Don’t you?

I’m game. Head over to RoadJunky for full details.

Gadling Podcast: Travelistic

by Erik Olsen on

The online video space right now is hotter than Georgia asphalt…hotter in fact than a griddle sitting on a bonfire burning on the surface of the sun. YouTube cashed in to the tune of $1.5 billion when Google scooped them up recently, making several lucky individuals quite rich, and leaving the rest of us wondering whether GoogleTV will come to dominate the online video space. I, for one, hope not. And given the nature of the Web, I doubt it. New players are constantly emerging, finding satisfying niches to fill and offering legions of camera-toting Spielbergs the opportunity to become stars…even if just to a few friends and family members.

One genre that seems ripe for new players and opportunities is travel. You and I both know that if you were heading to, say, Cambodia, in a month or two, you’d love to peruse the various travel vids that others have done. Especially if they were informative (as opposed to people lighting their farts on fire in front of Angkor Wat) you’d get to find out what the best hotels are, and which ones you should avoid. You’d meet all sorts of new people, right from the cozy confines of your cubicle. Video is the new word, as it were, because we all know that a picture can be worth a thousand words.

And it is with real enthusiasm that I announce another Gadling podcast with the leader of a new company called Travelistic who is squaring off to compete in this new travel video space. We blogged about them earlier, and drew their attention, and so their CEO Nicholas Butterworth asked us to come down and have a quick chat. Which we did. The new site officially launches on Monday, but we got a sneak peak and learned a bit more than we knew about online travel video. There’s a lot to learn, including how YOU can possibly become the next “Rocketboom” host of a travel show.

We offer you a chance to hear that conversation, here and now.

(Time – 10:30)

Like Father, Like Daughter

by Erik Olsen on

No, this is not, to my knowledge, the child of Steve Irwin that he, the Croc hunter, dangled over the gaping, toothed, gnashing maw of a live crocodile. This is the one he fed to the sharks. Just kidding. That’s irreverent. Even if he was a bit kooky and put himself in danger with perhaps predictable results, we loved Steve Irwin. The Aussies sure have a way of exporting interesting characters, even if their stars fade quickly. Or they die. And it looks like we may have another Aussie star on our hands, and this one from the loins of the croc man himself.

Yes, Bindi Irwin, the eight-year-old daughter of Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, is set to star in her own series on the Discovery Kids Network, beginning early next year. You read that correctly. Eight years old. The new show is to be called “Bindi, The Jungle Girl”, and was originally supposed to star both father and daughter. In fact, the Discovery Kids Network had begun filming episodes before Irwin’s September 4 death by stingray stab. In a creepy turn of events that I am not sure the producers have really considered how creepy this is, and which if I were she would cause me all sorts of awful emotional problems, Irwin will continue to play a role in the series posthumously, appearing in scenes filmed together with his daughter before his death.