Veteran traveller Cliff Peel shares his quirky travel yarns from his extensive tours of the world by train, tram, plane, ship, car, bike and every other conceivable form of transport.
A yarn is a colloquial Australian word for a story or a chat. In these traveller's yarns collected over the past seventy years, Cliff Peel shares the type of stories that you won't find in travel brochures. They include the unusual adventures, quirky incidents and strange characters Cliff encountered as he grappled with local customs, foreign languages and the vagaries of public transport around the world.
If you are already a traveller, these yarns may jolt pleasant memories or shudders as you recall that moment of confusion at airports or border crossings. For those who have not yet 'gone off', Cliff urges them to read the book, buy a ticket and go while the going is good.
Illustrated with photographs from the author's extensive collection, the book is an entertaining and accessible journey to places most people will never see, from outback Australia to the far reaches of Siberia. In particular, Cliff shares his love of rail travel and his trips on all the great train lines of the world.
Author details:
Cliff Peel's early years were spent on a farm near Geelong in Victoria Australia. Now retired, his professional life as an ABC radio and television journalist is the subject of his first book, My Life in Broadcasting - It's been a lot of fun, published by Your Biography in 2016.
Peel, Cliff: - Cliff Peel was born in 1936 on a mixed farm at Gnarwarre near the Australian town of Geelong. After primary school, he became a border at the at Geelong College where one of his favourite subjects was geography for which he got high marks. At the age of 17 he left school and went to work on his father's farm. It was soon obvious that he was not suited to farming, his father helped to pay for a course at the Vincent School of Broadcasting in Melbourne. Cliff's aim was to work in radio, these were the days before television. The Vincent School of Broadcasting was supported by country commercial radio stations who needed a supply of announcers and copywriters. After working a variety of day jobs, his first he was offered a job at 2QN Deniliquin where he prepared a daily local news service. He went on to 4VL Charleville and then became the assistant journalist at the ABC regional newsroom in Rockhampton. With the extension of television outside the metropolitan areas, the opportunity came for a rise in pay and a job at the extended ABC Regional office at Sale in Eastern Victoria. This appointment lasted just under two years when the ABC's Television News supervisor of the day offered him a job in the ABC's Melbourne television newsroom. This meant a new outlook on life and a desire for new learning experiences. Much of this is outlined in Cliff's first book My Life in Broadcasting... It's been fun. In 1967, he resigned from the ABC and spent nine months travelling around the world mainly in Europe. On return, the ABC accepted him back in the Melbourne TV newsroom, until head-hunted by Channel O, run by the Ansett Company. In 1971 Cliff began a lifelong relationship with a young man, Rob. Young, which was illegal at the time but in 2018 they were able to marry, legally. They are still together. After a fall out with Chanel O, Cliff was again accepted back to the ABC. He worked in television news mainly as chief of staff before being asked to go to the radio newsroom and introduced the first sound inserts into radio news bulletins using magnetic tape cartridges. In his last few years with the ABC, he learnt how to operate the new computerised system for newsgathering and presentation and in order to teach his fellow journalists around Australia. What an opportunity or travel. After retiring briefly, Cliff went on to train journalists in Hong Kong, then British, and Malaysia as well as some commercial radio and television outlets in Australia to work in the computer age. In 2004 the final stage of retirement began with the purchase of a unit in the Prospect Hill Retirement Village in Camberwell. This meant time to write his first book, My Life in Broadcasting...It's been fun, and his current book, Yarns of a Traveller.
