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Host Auditions - New ABC2 Travel Show “Fanging It”

The ABC is looking for two youth presenters for a “21st Century Race Around the World”, dubbed Fanging It.

Fanging It is “an irreverent and contemporary hybrid web and TV production” with user generated program content uploaded to the web before it airs on television.

Applicants aged 18 or over are asked to upload short videos about their experiences. Five will be brought to Melbourne for an intensive three day factual film making ‘bootcamp.’

Two will be chosen for a 3 week budget tour of Australia for a series of mini-documentaries about their exploits.

Thereafter, the presenters will host a new ABC2 TV travel show. The broadcaster is also asking viewers to submit video clips for inclusion in the finished product, to compete for $2000 in travel prizes.

For more information visit the ABC2 Fanging It website

source: press release on TV Tonight

Trash or Treasure? Souvenirs of travel - Australian National Maritime Museum

So you went on a wonderful holiday and you bought a souvenir that conjures up the magic of that faraway place. Home again, you look at it… Is this something you’ll treasure forever? Or a piece of trash bound sooner or later for the bin?

A new exhibition coming to the Australian National Maritime Museum (Darling Harbour, Sydney) presents an extraordinary range of more than 200 travel souvenirs, spanning 1000 years, and begs this question of all of them: trash or treasure?

Australian National Maritime Museum (Darling Harbour, Sydney)

Variously they are hand-made, quaint, cheap, compact, expensive, stylish, mass-produced, kitsch, unique or beautiful… what they have in common is their ability to carry memories of a distinctive place somewhere else in the world.

Souvenir-hunting is nothing new. Pilgrims voyaging to sacred or holy sites were among the world’s first tourists and not surprisingly they often had a desire to bring home a holy relic or a physical part of the sacred site such as oil, earth, dust or water.

The earliest souvenir in the exhibition Trash or Treasure? Souvenirs of travel, dating from the 10th - 11th century, is a miniature of the temple at Bodhgaya, India, where it’s said Buddha attained enlightenment. The model, finely carved in stone with scenes from the life of Buddha, may have ended up on a pilgrim’s home altar.

Several Christian pilgrim souvenirs from the 14-16th centuries including badges, dress pins and an ampulla (tiny vessel to carry holy water) are also included, along with contemporary equivalents produced for national and international pilgrims coming to Sydney this year for World Youth Day and Pope Benedict XVI’s visit.

The Exhibition runs from 5 July - 17 May 2009. For more information visit the Australian National Maritime Museum website.


Lyndhurst Talc Alf Carvings - Oodnadatta Track

Talc Alf - Lyndhurst - Talc carvings
Driving north from the Flinders Ranges towards Coober Pedy on the Oodnadatta Track you’ll come across the small town of Lyndhurst at the crossroads of the Strzelecki Track and see a sign directing you to “Talc Alf” located a few kilometres out of Lyndhurst on the Innaminka Road.
Talc […]

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Ochre Cliffs - Oodnadatta Track - South Australian Outback

Five kilometres north of Lyndhurst on the Oodnadatta Track in the South Australian Outback you’ll see a tyre beside the road with the words ‘Ochre Cliffs’ crudely written on it.
Follow the side-road for a few kilometres and you’ll suddenly see an open ochre quarry containing spectacular red, brown and white ochre cliffs (an exposure of […]

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Expose Your World Competition: Photo, Video and Travel Writing

The search for the Australian Young Photographer of the Year and the Australian Adventurer of the Year are just two of the new categories in RovingEye’s 2008 Expose Your World photo competition.
2007 Winner “Drought” Credit: RovingEye.com/Rodney Dekkar
The focus of this year’s expanded competition is travel with winners sharing more than $70,000 worth of prizes from […]

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Rochester Cathedral: South of England

GUEST ARTICLE: The main reason for my trip to Rochester was to see Rochester Cathedral.
However, numerous unexpected themes sprang up from all quarters of the city, including philanthropy, Dickens (again!), and the comings and goings of the late Stuart monarchs.
Rochester Cathedral Credit: pistolpeet
The cathedral stands on part of the site of the original Saxon […]

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Antarctica: Encounters at the End of the World (Documentary)

In “Encounters at the End of the World” documentary maker Werner Herzog travels to Antarctica accompanied only by his cameraman and is given unprecedented access to the hidden society of one thousand men and women living there and risking their lives and sanity to conduct cutting-edge scientific research.

Starting from McMurdo station which reminds him of […]

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