The Wandering Pilgrim

Perhaps I should begin with an explanation. After all, you may well have picked up this book and found yourself wondering what was in volumes 1 to 3 of the Wandering Pilgrim series. Well, the simple answer is that it just happened that my many diaries stretching back to my childhood eventually were grouped and digitised. It was all a bit daunting when I set about trying to get half a million words into digital format, beginning with the idea that I should first publish my mountaineering diaries and my Tasmanian walk trip accounts. For that reason, volume 1 became dedicated to my alpine climbing and Himalayan mountaineering trips. As soon as that was out of the way, I set about putting together accounts of all my various Tasmanian walks stretching from the distant past to the relatively recent times. Hence, volume 2. Once those two books were out of the way, what was left was a bit of a mix - quite a number of accounts of boyhood travels around this wide country of ours, eventually covering my early post-graduate years working at various mines and eventually leading to freelance minerals consulting in quite a range of countries around the world. Eventually, what fell into place somewhat logically was a group of fourteen boyhood travel diaries which are followed by approximately twenty-six work or work travel accounts which begin with the first work I undertook following graduation from Melbourne University in mining engineering around 1971. Volume 4 was always reserved for Antarctica, the Arctic and Scotland (much later trips), but I ended up adding some 'rats and mice' - other trips I had not added to previous volumes. Some readers may also enjoy the extended trip back to Japan, or my hand surgery.Apart from all of that, the approach taken is identical to that of volumes 1-3, namely that the accounts were as far as possible written at the time the activities took place, illustrated as far as possible with photographs taken at the time. All of the accounts here were written when I was aged 50 or over, so I’d not be disappointed if the quality of writing has shown some improvement along the way. 6