Inspiring Travel Writing from Andrew Bain
Andrew Bain prefers adventure to avarice and can usually be found walking when he should be working. He is the author of Headwinds (the story of his 20,000-kilometre bicycle journey around Australia), A Year of Adventures, and lead author of Lonely Planet's Walking in Australia and Cycling Australia guidebooks. His work features in magazines and newspapers around the world, and he was awarded the Australian Geographic story of the year for 2003. He was formerly commissioning editor of Lonely Planet's outdoor adventure series of titles.
Andrew is a reformed sportswriter who decided he preferred the open road to the half-forward flank of an Australian Football League match. He has trekked, cycled, kayaked and ambled his way through various parts of five continents. He's unwittingly smuggled goods across the China-Russia border, shared his bed with a crocodile in the Northern Territory, and been deported from Estonia. He lives in Hobart, a city that satisfies his need to be constantly near the mountains.
Andrew is a reformed sportswriter who decided he preferred the open road to the half-forward flank of an Australian Football League match. He has trekked, cycled, kayaked and ambled his way through various parts of five continents. He's unwittingly smuggled goods across the China-Russia border, shared his bed with a crocodile in the Northern Territory, and been deported from Estonia. He lives in Hobart, a city that satisfies his need to be constantly near the mountains.
Articles by Andrew Bain
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Nullabor
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Andrew Bain
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Australia
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South Australia
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Nullabar
Australia’s Nullarbor plain is a place of superlatives: the world’s largest and driest block of limestone; the longest unbroken line of sea cliffs in the country; the longest straight piece of road in the world. The caves are deep and the horizons...
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Cycling Bali
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Andrew Bain
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Indonesia
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Nusa Tenggara/ Southeast Islands
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Bali
The road is a river, awash with monsoonal rains. The midday sun has darkened to a candle of light and thunder resounds like cannon fire across the sullen Bali sky. “It is God’s music,” Wayan assures me from inside the shelter of his roadside stall...
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Maradona's Manchester
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Andrew Bain
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Argentina
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Buenos Aires and the Pampas
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Buenos Aires
Many cities pride themselves on the immensity of their sporting passion but few are in Buenos Aires’ league. Here, in one of the city’s most notorious barrios, is a neighbourhood that’s a soccer team and a soccer team that’s a neighbourhood. La Boca...
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Blowing through the Andes
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Andrew Bain
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Argentina
An Andean condor turned on the currents, wheeling across the sky, its wings sawing through the air, fizzing like electricity. Below, in a virtual echo of the sound, our feet crunched across the alpine top of the Cordon Catedral ridge. Soon, there...
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Kakadu v Litchfield: Australia's National Parks
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Andrew Bain
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Australia
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Northern Territories
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Kakadu National Park
Travelling in Australia’s Northern Territory you hear one refrain so often it verges on a chorus: Kaka-du, Kaka-don’t, retreating tourists chant, encouraging others to shun the World Heritage-listed national park. Invariably the chant is appended...
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A Latin Cotswold
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Andrew Bain
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Uruguay
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River Plate
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Colonia del Sacramento
The river was like liquid chocolate, brown and thick, the highlands of Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay washing past into the Atlantic Ocean. The Rio de la Plata is said to be the widest estuary in the world and far away, yet only on the opposite bank,...
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Taupo Volcanic Zone
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Andrew Bain
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New Zealand
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North Island
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Taupo
In AD 186 Roman and Chinese writers recorded months of blood-red sunsets, the sky stained with volcanic ash. What they were witnessing was not the blast of a Sicilian or Kamchatkan volcano but the world’s largest volcanic explosion of the last 5000...
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Tour du Mont Blanc
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Andrew Bain
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France
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French Alps
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Chamonix
In unforgiving circles it is known simply as Cursed Mountain. Though benign in name and appearance, Mont Blanc – White Mountain – has killed more climbers than any other mountain on earth. The annual death toll regularly passes 100, and for every...
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Hinchinbrook Island
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Andrew Bain
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Australia
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Queensland
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Hitchinbook Island
Coconuts littered the beach but every one of them was hollow and fleshless. A small hole had been bored through the husks, giving the nuts the empty-eyed stare of a skull. New coconuts fell and by the next morning they, too, were hollow. The island...
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Moab - Mother Of All Biking Towns
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Andrew Bain
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United States
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Utah
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Moab
Moab. It sounds more like a brand than a town, a catchy street label that any dusty, scab-covered, self-respecting mountain biker would shun if only it weren’t, well, Moab. This remote Utah town was founded as a quiet Mormon outpost in 1855, and...