Travel Features
IN THE HOOD – Herald on Sunday
Hip-hop is a dominant force, but today’s young artists have some big shoes to fill. Jehan Casinader gets an education in old school hip-hop culture in its birthplace, New York City. Bling and booze; profanity and promiscuity; guns and grog. Hip-hop has suffered a bad rap at the hands of modern artists, but the old-timers are still around, and they’re keen to challenge the stereotypes. There’s no better place to do so than New York, where the genre was born. Hush Tours claims to be the original hip-hop sightseeing tour company in New York, but if you listen to Kanye West and Snoop Dogg, you’ll find yourself on the wrong tour bus. This excursion is run by hip-hop’s forefathers and pioneers. Read more…
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It’s late afternoon on the Nile, in the heat of the African summer. A large fleet of cruise ships is slowly making its way along the river, approaching the city of Edfu in the south. We’re sitting on the sun deck of the TuYa having afternoon tea when there is a great commotion on one side of the ship. Two modest rowboats, each carrying two men, have latched their ropes on to the side of the cruise ship, which is still in motion. They cheer at their success. It seems they have hitched a free ride to the shore. It quickly becomes apparent, however, that these young men have a different motivation. They begin heckling the tourists on board; imploring us to peer over the handrail of the ship. Read more…
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North Stradbroke Island provides a summer getaway as carefree as any other. The sporadic visitors from Brisbane, on the mainland, seek little more than balmy nights, decent meals and chilled beers that quickly become lukewarm in the sub-tropical Queensland weather. That’s exactly what they get. The island is quiet for much of the year, but when it is enveloped in summer’s haze, they come. Off the barge with the four-wheel-drives. Mum, dad, kids, dog. White, tanned, burnt to a crisp. Matt Burns watches the vehicles roll off the ferry. His badge describes him as a “cultural officer”, but he insists he is not part of the Western institution known as the tourism industry. Born to an Aboriginal mother, he has lived on North Stradbroke all his life. Read more…
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AN ISLAND ESCAPE – Sunday Magazine
Jehan Casinader heads to Fiji’s remote Caqalai Island and finds civilisation is grossly overrated. A great deal of time had passed since we wound our way through narrow mangrove swamps and past small clusters of trees, out into the middle of the open ocean. The sun was rising quickly and silence had enveloped our motor-powered bum-boat, heading out to Caqalai Island, a little-known Fijian haven. As the modest motorboat dragged itself through latter part of the hour-long journey, there was nothing to be seen but the mountains of some distant mainland. Eventually, Caqalai Island came into view, like a delicate slivered almond resting gently on the water’s surface. Read more…
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ELECTRIC ARTS – Herald on Sunday
Jehan Casinader visits the grand old electricity plant that is powering Brisbane’s cultural scene. For almost three decades, it was a decrepit, unused electricity plant, languishing by the Brisbane River. Once known as the New Farm Powerhouse, the building had supplied energy to the city’s tram network and suburbs. It was the grand old dame of the industrial age, but after the coal-fired plant was decommissioned in 1971, the Powerhouse quickly absorbed a rather curious identity. Vagrants and squatters moved in, and turned the empty, cavernous rooms into shelters. Avant-garde artists used the walls and floors as canvases. Read more…
