PERSPECTIVE

• Wastralia was the country where I was born & raised.
• A British 'distant-penal-wasteland-colony' solution for poverty-stricken 'criminals' cast out from Britain's overcrowded industrializing smog and disease affected cities, decimated a 40,000 year old Aboriginal nomadic culture in the process. It was replaced by a 'pub culture' born of nothing else to do, which was literally whitewashed into a 'Larikin' come 'Lucky Country' white-anglo-saxon myth.
• An eventual 'populate or perish' immigration policy inadvertently gave the country a much needed muticultural and cosmopolitan lift. This wrestles with the drain of tax-exempt foreign multi-national ownership - first British, then American, then Japanese, now Chinese - with consequent trifling returns to the local populace.
• An extremely dry continent, the eastern & south-eastern coastal strip, more or less from Townsville down and around to Adelaide, is tolerable and therefore populated by around 80% of the total Australian population of around 24 million. Outdoor sport seems to be the dominant pastime, as local television will attest.
• Traditionally, Sydney is the fun time capital, while Melbourne is the business capital. I was born & raised in the latter. Adelaide, the city of churches, is where I spent most of my marriage; while Byron Bay (the local Arakwal Aboriginal people's name for the area is Cavvanbah, meaning "meeting place") was my post-marriage sabbatical residence.

ADVICE

• Places definitely worth visiting are Sydney Harbour and Byron Bay. The first is best viewed on a Ferry, caught from Circular Quay, for a slow/scenic-concentrated cross-harbour trip to Manly. Once there, take a walk right through to the beach on the other side. On the way back catch a "Fast-Ferry" for the feel of a speedy return to Circular Quay.

PERSPECTIVE

• Poland is the country of my heritage, 'Polish-Catholic' way back to Adam & Eve, and 'that' apple.
• Poland can be divided roughly in half. To the left is PO country, to the right PIS country. Perhaps aptly named, they are the two major political parties.
• In some quarters referred to as a "Dour Race", Poles are more likely hungover from alcohol abuse, forty-four years of Soviet-Communist rule (1945-1989), and the long-lasting total-partition of Poland between Russia, Prussia and Austria - lasting from 1795 to 1918 (a 123 year absence from the map of Europe).
• Catholicism still seems to fill Sunday Masses unlike my country of birth, Australia. As the Catholic Church was a bastion of anti-Communism for a long time, the ties of loyalty and refuge remain strong.
• During my first five years living in Poland, I visited most of the major places in the 'PO' (Western) half of Poland; including the Capital, Warsaw. My only venture to PIS/Eastern Poland, so far, was to Lublin.

ADVICE

• Places definitely worth visiting are Kraków, Wrocław and Toruń. there's also the so-called "Tri-City", consisting of Gdańsk, Gdynia and Sopot, nested on the Baltic Sea coast.
• The food and accommodation are generally of a high standard, while the clubs and public 'Market Square' Summer Concerts occur all over Poland and are really something to behold. I never thought Polish Music would be so rich and modern.
• The best thing about Poland was that I felt at home. And that's not just about it being my spiritual home.

PERSPECTIVE

• I visited New Caledonia while on a P&O Pacific Cruise.
• A longtime French Colony, and it still is. The atmosphere was tense, no pun intended, because my visit was soon after the French nuclear testing at Moruroa Atoll (part of French Polynesia) where the Australian Government strongly protested. So Australians were personae non gratae for the French residents. The Kanaks, the French name for the indigenous Melanesian inhabitants of New Caledonia, were also none too pleased with tourists, due to their continuing struggle for independence from the French.

ADVICE

• A walk through the Capital, Nouméa, particularly to its central square didn't really impress. The predominantly French store owners pretended they did not understand English!