| Other Interesting Stuff |
It has occurred to me that this trip I am doing with Greg is, in some ways, history repeating itself. In 1959 my dad Gerry (a.k.a. Jules), a 25 year old kid from New Zealand, set off to travel overland from Singapore to London in the company of a couple of friends. Quite a significant achievement in those days, if they pulled it off.
However, things went a little awry in Calcutta, when his two travelling companions had visa problems and had to leave. After spending the most wretched and lonely night of his life there, he bumped into an eccentric and irascible young Australian fellow called Geoffrey Watt (who incidentally happens to be the (now deceased) father of Australian Olympic gold medal cyclist, Kathy Watt), a marathon runner and, by all accounts, a bit of a lunatic.
In much the same manner as I'm doing now (although naturally without the aid of all this high-tech gadgetry), Dad penned an account of their exploits as they travelled across the subcontinent and into Asia Minor. It's quite a read, and it makes an interesting counterpoint to the trip I'm doing now. I happened to have a copy of it backed up on my web site, so I thought why not make it generally available? There's quite a bit of it, so you might want to have a quick read of Chapter 1, and if you like it, print it all out and read it at your leisure.
It seems I come from quite a long line of literary pinings. A couple of years ago, a relative in New Zealand unearthed a manuscript written by my great-great-great-grandfather D. W. Virtue (David Wilson Virtue), telling of his journey out to Port Phillip (Melbourne) in 1839 (yep, that's 1839!), and the subsequent years of his life in Australia and New Zealand.
If you like historical documents, this is the genuine article, completely unabridged, and you can find it here.
Now you know where both my middle names (Geoffrey and Wilson) come from.
I can't let my forebears hog all the limelight. You might as well have another generation's jottings to add to your collection.
Several of my friends have already seen this - a little dialog I came up with discussing the nature of life. If this doesn't sound too New-Agey for you, click here.
Hmmm. Let's see. Other links that you might be interested in....
It's just possible that some of you might want to check out the Virtue Clan (Australia and New Zealand branches) web site, set up for all of us by my cousin Nod from Auckland. It's called Virtues on the Web, has odds and ends from all of us, and can be found at http://www.virtue.gen.nz.
My friend Greg Sullivan (not the Greg I'm travelling with, the other Greg) has a web site with a few digital photographs of the gang at various parties and things. Check it out if you want to http://albums.photopoint.com/j/AlbumList?u=27007 Tell him I said Hi).
You might remember that when Greg Dutton (this time it is the Greg I'm travelling with) had to return to Australia, it was to fix up some business stuff. Well, that business (a software company specialising in databases) has a web site, and can be found at http://www.worksgroup.com.au.
My friend Rhett Gladman asked me to take some special photos of Jost Van Dyke while I was there. I posted the photos to Rhett's own home page, http://members.xoom.com/grhett.
Last, and quite definitely least, my little one-man freelance company back in Australia (Virtual Creations), also has its own web site, showing the world what professional skills I have to offer (to my knowledge, noone has ever visited the site with a view to hiring me - pretty sad, huh? I kinda just made it to see if I could). It's exceptionally boring, corporate and business-like, and can be found http://www.zip.com.au/~mvirtue/vc (before you click, you might want to ask someone to come in and wake you up in half an hour - it's that dull).