Tag Archives: Ursula Wall

Time lost all meaning for me in Egypt. The 63 tombs in the Valley of the Kings might indeed be over a thousand years younger than the magnificent Pyramids of the Old Kingdoms at Giza (see: Stories in Ancient Stone), but even the graffiti defacing them is older than the buildings I grew up around! […]

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Once upon a time, our waters were sapphire blue, emerald green, and foaming diamond white. Once upon a time, our sands were pristine shades of white and yellow. Once upon a time, we could walk among the she-oaks, the wattle, the Banksia, and the eucalypts. Once upon a time … before our spectacular conflagrations razed communities, […]

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Another year has rolled around… I normally head for the fresh air of the Alpine slopes this time of year, but we spent this New Year’s Eve at home blanketed in smoke, with out-of-control fires raging on three sides. The roads to the mountains were unsafe, and there is no fresh air to be had […]

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Liverpool: hometown of The Beatles and so many other popular musicians that the city boasts more No. 1 hit singles than any other in the world; home to the top-tier English football club that is so renowned that I have seen their red-and-white t-shirts in some of the most remote corners of the globe; site […]

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The desert is a magically beautiful place. It is also unforgiving. You have to be tough to forge a life in these hostile, barren expanses where almost no precipitation falls. Bedouin or “desert people” – from the Arabic badawī – have made the deserts of North Africa and the Middle East their home for thousands of years. Even […]

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