My journal entries were entered diligently usually at the end of each day or the next on a separate page of an annual Collins diary - I carried two: 1985 & 1986. I bought the 1987 diary in London.

I made rather dispassionate accounts of going from place A to B. I wish I’d made more heart-felt entries that recorded more details about people and events. I also think I was constrained by the traditional one page to a day diary format. I might try and scan a page every now and then to show you I’m not making it up.

To make my accounts on this website more entertaining I’ve tried to capture just individual moments associated with a photo. Brevity is key. If I quote directly from a diary I will use italics and insert the date. Trying to reconcile my photos with a diary entry is going to prove a challenge. All entries are as accurate as my recall 🙂

All the photos were taken on an Olympus OM10 (1979 model) - a hand-me-down SLR camera from my father. I used three fixed length Zuiko lenses: wide angle (28mm, f3.5); standard (50mm, f1.8) and; telephoto (135mm, f 5.6). It had a ‘manual adapter’ on the front so I could over-ride the automatic settings. I used a UV filter and sometimes a polarising filter and always a rubber camera hood. This led to vignetting in some shots.

I loved that camera, the viewfinder gave me plenty of scope to compose my shots (as compared with my former hand-me-down Voigtlander Rangefinder). I used the lenses to suit the shots but invariably relied on the wide angle lens most of the time. Back then you never had review capacity or the ability to discard a shot & take it again. Especially with an action shot you just hoped that you had captured it. I was also miserly with taking multiple shots of the same scene - film was relatively expensive & I needed it to last for 6 months.

The camera took a knock somewhere in the Northern Territory. I took a roll or two of print film when in Darwin & noticed what I thought was a stray hair in the top left of the frame. Turns out it was a cracked shutter that stayed open marginally too long leading to over exposure. This was particularly evident for the slide films that I used for the two months travel through Indonesia. But I was none the wiser - I was sending the films home to Australia by mail for processing.

In Singapore I put through another roll of print film and once processed noted to my dismay the same issue. I took it to a camera repair store and the quote was a massive $150 - about two week’s travel budget at the time. It meant staying in Singapore for 5 extra days and the shop was closed over the Chinese New Year as well. But I’m so glad I decided to get it fixed - I didn’t want to jeopardise my future shots - and they ended up turning out great.

My film was Kodachrome 64 (36 shots per roll - could sometimes squeeze in 37 or 38) that I bought in Darwin duty free in November 1985. I also carried an ancient German telescopic tripod and bought a flash unit along the way. I used a blower brush and camera cloth for cleaning. The camera and lens had separate hard cases to protect them , I did not use a camera bag.

Nearly all my photos were taken on slide film - transparencies - a medium just about consigned to history. Unfortunately I’ve noticed only in recent years that the slides were subject to the vagaries of a subtropical climate - colours were fading and they were developing mould. But thanks to the miracle of modern day technology - slide scanners, digital conversion, software - even computers (!) for storage and display - all is not lost.

In a way, this website mimics my old ‘slide night’ presentations. Back in the day you would organise friends & family (well, maybe mostly family as a captive audience) to see your holiday shots. I’d unravel the slide screen that sat on a tripod, set up my slide projector - often propping it up on multiple phone books on an ironing board to get the distance and angle right, and load up a selection of slides in carousels. It gave me licence to tell the stories associated with particular shots, dispense much sage advice and catch up with mates for a few beers.

These days I can offer my ‘slide show’ to the world! Sure, you can choose to watch what you want & go home early - but you can’t make shadow puppets and bunny ears on the slide screen…

It was the 80s - you could take photos of anything or anyone! Mind you, I was only young and not particularly confident of taking ‘people’ shots. It took me a while and eventually I got to asking if it was ok to take someone’s portrait in some situations. I preferred candid shots rather than staged ones.

I’m curious to see if anyone I travelled with stumbles across this site. I’ll have names of my fellow travellers (for those I can remember) on some of the few group shots I took - and in the text, but usually only a first name. Let me know if you don’t want this on the site. I’d love to get in touch and can upload any shots you may have from that time.

As for copyright, I trust you exercise your moral judgement not to ‘steal’, alter or re-post my shots. I ask you not to use them for your page or site, alternatively, be kind and give me credit for the image and attach a live link back to my website/Flickr account/Facebook page.

I used an Epson Perfection V550 scanner with the highest resolution (6400 dpi) setting for slides. Although I think I sent a few batches through at 4800 (quicker and smaller file size). I didn’t use any of the enhanced settings.

I then imported them into Apple’s Aperture photo editing program, v. 3.6 (last release 2014, now discontinued). The slides had suffered from poor storage - dust; climate - fungus; and age - loss of colour and ‘punch’. I used adjustments to bring back some zing via the exposure, brightness, contrast, saturation and vibrancy controls. There’s a temptation to tweak these controls all the way to 11. I tried to resist that but recognise these results are ultimately an approximation of what I think they were. These shots are full frame - as composed within the viewfinder, I’ve used cropping only sparingly when trying to remove a fault. But the scanner slide frame holder reduces the margins slightly as well which has led to some loss of hands and feet.

For the particularly dusty slides that were sitting in cartridges I’ve had to use the retouching pen when dust specks were on people’s faces or too obvious/ distracting. But for most it’s too big a job so the imperfections remain.

I’ve used Bluehost  to manage my website. The content is uploaded using WordPress. The theme is “Nisarg”. I'm new to this so will be learning on the job, expect to see changes.

The FB site is linked to the website so that only 1 shot is posted & a line of text as a teaser. It would be great, if you are so inclined, to comment, like, share etc. A flickr account (see the link) shows the photos at highest resolution, you can also zoom in and make them quite large on the page.