Linda Fairbairn

he started filling in and posting home a Journey Jottings Map Journal with his route marked in different texta colours to show where and when he completed each Big Lap. A year later he shared with us the breakdown of days he spent doing his 33rd Big Lap ~ The best part of having a job that involves driving across this wonderful country of ours is naturally the opportunity to see stunning outback scenery kilometres… as recorded here on Graham’s odometer… Cannot be without its dramas – Such as 6 years ago when his truck caught on fire Or in early 2019 getting cut off in Richmond in northern Queensland due to rains flooding and closing the road to all traffic for 10 days. Or getting within sight of home on the 50th Big Lap and having a blow out on your front steering tyre sending you careering airborne off the highway. I’m stocked up with Journey Jottings maps and coloured textas to mark this journey daily for my grand children to have a momento of Pops 50th lap.

Then lay back on the sand to watch the mesmerising evening entertainment of the tide slowly but surely inching its way towards our feet until the moment came that we could float our kayak up over the inundated long sandy beach (exposed at low tide) rather than have to carry it’s dead weight up to above the high water mark for the night! we watched the lapping water engulf and dissolve all traces of them, until once more the water was high enough to make re-launching our kayak a breeze 🙂 With camping gear all safely stowed once more ‘below decks’ in the spacious holds, we again felt the sand squish between our toes as we pushed off and hopped in to paddle back out to sea crossing Bark Bay and circumnavigating Pinnacle Island. Where this fur seal was peacefully soaking up the early morning sun Coming back in off the open sea we explored Sandfly Bay Lagoon (only accessible two hours either side of high tide) And paddled up the Falls River to the swing bridge that takes hikers/trampers along the Abel Tasman track – with all of our equipment laying in our bow we effortlessly slipped silently beneath. We also ventured into Frenchman’s Bay, but as we came back out into the open sea, a squall hit making rounding North Head, crossing Torrent Bay and circumnavigating Pitt Head, a little more interesting!

And, My Map of Central Australia And just to the right of it, in the very same cabinet, was my (yes you read that right) my hand drawn map of Central Australia that I’d created for Lonely Planet’s 2nd edition of Australia back in the late 70’s. The overall theme being that come the 20th century, maps no longer were merely navigational for telling us where we were in the world, but rather they were being used to tell us more about who we were – maps were being used as a tool to influence our thinking via propaganda and marketing persuasion. What is particularly nice is the display case with your map, the Geoff Crowther Central & South America notebook and the 1983 edition of Geoff’s South America on a Shoestring, also includes a map of Middle Earth drawn by Tolkien in 1948 and used by him as he plotted the activity as he wrote Lord of the Rings. It was such an interesting, enchanting, thought provoking and confronting selection of cartographic works – While some were beautifully artistic and inspiring, others were heartrending as they conveyed the destruction of war; some were political and clandestine, while others took you on a hop skip and a jump back to childhood with board-games with maps as their central theme, and pages from the UK Automobile Association’s personalised map itineraries (which for me brought back many happy memories of map reading in the back of the car as a real live Sat Nav directing my father to turn left and right as we headed off on summer family holidays to the hills of Snowdonia in Wales or the North Western Isles of Scotland); as well as the simply gorgeous end papers from Winnie the Pooh, with the map of 100 Aker Wood.

The ‘Less is More’ Way to Recording Your Travelling Tales Story-Map travel journals are effortless to ‘read’ – It’s only the factual bits that I’m compelled to spend that 15 minutes committing to paper before the day is done because it’s surprising just what can fall between the cracks if I don’t do that before the clock strikes midnight. Less is More’ in both Size & Shape I’ve tried various configurations of travel journals for doodling my story maps – portrait, landscape, large and small, but I love the concertina or accordion journals that can fold out into a continuous sheet so the pages and the days are all connected – Or staring at a computer screen scrolling, culling and enhancing xxxx photos As a first port of call for recording your travel memories consider taking a mere 15 minutes to turn your day’s experiences into pictograms and try story mapping your travels –