Watching the sun go down at Telunas Beach.

This is extraordinary when you consider how many resorts there are. Heaps of them. It’s an amazing achievement for a place which started with absolutely nothing but a beach in 2004. I’ve watched it grow since I first went there in 2005, and I am in awe of the work the team have done.

I declare an interest here. Telunas Beach organises for me to visit them each year to run writing workshops for international school students from Singapore. I’ve visited at least ten times on this basis. I love it.

So how does Telunas score so highly, in competition with places that can offer five star luxury, reef diving, golf courses, skiing in spectacular alps or herds of elephants wandering past a safari camp?

Here’s the thing. Telunas Beach, located in Indonesia’s Riau Islands south of Singapore, is not luxurious. It is nothing like your typical resort, and it’s only fair to say it may not be for everyone.

Facilities are basic – ‘rustic’, the owners like to call them. That means traditional-style huts built on jetties over the water, with the sea lapping gently beneath and visible through the floorboards. There is no air conditioning, though there are ceiling fans and the weather is balmy. A few rooms have hot water for showers; most do not. The sea water is warm too.

There is beer available but no bar, no swimming pool, no jet-skis, no surf. There is no gym, spa or massage and wellness centre. There is no piped music and no house band. There is mobile phone coverage, but no internet access. There is no TV. The best coffee you can get there is made with the plunger.

So what’s so good about it, and why does anybody go there?

It is a staggeringly beautiful location. It is totally quiet, except for the lap of the waves and the gentle hum of the Telunas generator. There are no roads on Sugi Island so the nearest car is at least 50km away. Few resorts in the world can make that claim.

There is a modest library, mostly of books left by guests (including a few of mine). Staff and guests are encouraged to play music together and there are spontaneous jam sessions whenever I’m there.

Guests can choose to relax on the private beach, swim with the kids (it’s shallow enough to be very safe by the beach, and deep enough for diving from the end of the jetty), read a book or do nothing. Or if they are energetic, they can do some kayaking, fishing or shrimping, hike with guides into the jungle to swim in a waterfall, or visit a local fishing village.

Many of the staff are doing their first paid work. The guides, hosts recruited mainly from Java, all speak excellent English. The kitchen staff are women from local villages, none of whom had ever worked in a commercial kitchen until they came to Telunas. The maintenance staff and boatmen are also locals, used to plying their trades in villages rather than having paid jobs.

The food is excellent without being haute cuisine, a mix of western and Indonesian, with vegetarian and child-friendly options. You have special dietary requirements? No problem.

When we visit local villages, getting there on open pancung boats, there is nobody hassling visitors to buy things. There are no souvenirs or crafts for sale. There are no hawkers plucking sleeves. There is no begging. The island villages have no hotels, restaurants and usually no tourists either.

People go about their ordinary business, smile and wave at us, and if they have time, they come and talk, whether we understand them or not.

I suspect that a large number of Telunas’ votes on TripAdvisor came from Singaporeans, who all too seldom get away from it all, and Americans, who all too seldom get the chance to mix with people from developing countries. Telunas’s Indonesian staff are wonderful catalysts for this interaction. They know how to make us feel like family guests rather than employers.

In the TripAdvisor reviews of Telunas the most used words are ‘relax’, ‘peace’, ‘quiet’, ‘wonderful staff’ and ‘paradise’. People value these things more highly than all the luxury in the world.

I was out at Telunas last week, and the good news is, I’m going back there tomorrow.

No internet access, remember? Hope you don’t miss me too much and I’ll be back in cyberspace soon.

The sea, the sky, a boat and a fish trap. Riau Islands.

There may not be a great deal you can do about this, but you can't say you weren't warned.

Singapore was once wild enough for Alfred Russel Wallace to spend time here, for people to avoid the area because of a tiger plague and, more recently, for Jane Goodall to get involved in a monkey protection project at Bukit Timah.

Bukit Timah Rd, at 25km the longest in Singapore, was the site of the final attempt by the British and Commonwealth troops to defend Singapore from the Japanese invasion in 1942. When it fell, the surrender took place in the Ford factory on the road.

Bukit Timah Reserve is a patch of jungle surrounding the highest mountain in the country, a towering 163 metres high. There may be apartment blocks taller than that.

That's Bukit Timah between those buildings.

Once we get behind the apartment blocks, the jungle really does become, well, jungly.

Into the wild...

...shh! I think that's a wild mountain biker. There are a few of them in the forest and they're becoming more numerous as their habitat is preserved.

There are some delightfully Singaporean touches, like the Reflexology path.

Take off your shoes and give yourself a free foot massage here.

A small museum teaches us about the fauna and flora of the park, and celebrates the work of Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwin’s competitor and generous colleague, whose work on origin of species is less well-known although it deserves as much credit as Darwin’s efforts.

The last tiger in Singapore was shot by Mr Ong Kim Hok in October 1930. He was proudly photographed with his victim. This one is stuffed.

The walk around the reserve took us about two hours, including photo stops at scenic points. My companions tell me they whip round the loop in an hour when they need a strenuous workout.

Hindhede Quarry. The granite miners have gone, leaving a lake for the turtles and kingfishers.

Beware of carnivorous pitcher plants - if you're a fly.

Ginger adds a splash of colour to the forest, and the blog post.

'A' marks the spot - Bukit Timah is not far from central Singapore.

Thanks Alice for being our guide, and Ron, Kate and John for having me along on the trip.

*Monaco is number one.

Wallpaper from old can labels, barbers' chairs and others made from shopping trolleys and road signs. Nothing is too strange to be part of this design.

I stayed in Wanderlust Hotel, formerly a Chinese school in Singapore’s Little India (that in itself was quirky), which now features perhaps the most ‘out there’ interior design in town.

They gave me the ‘Yellow Submarine Room’. It’s a song, by the Beatles, according to the yellow neon sign above my bed.

Yep, it sure is yellow.

Yellow walls, yellow curtains, yellow tiles everywhere – under the claw foot bathtub, in the shower and even on the step up to my bed.

Fittings and linen were classy, the grapefruit shampoo in the shower was a nice touch, and after a few tries I even managed to get the in-room Nespresso machine to work. If George Clooney can do it, so can I.

‘None of the architects had ever done a hotel interior before,’ Wahidah informs me. Three different firms were each given a floor to work on, and eagerly set out to make an impression.

The design companies’ names give you the idea…Asylum, Phunk and ffurious.

The flower room

The Space Room - LED lights in the wall make it into a Planetarium in the dark.

A comfy sofa in the Typewriter Room. I should have stayed here myself.

You may not find it totally relaxing to sleep in a loft designed to resemble a treehouse (the cleaning staff hate it too), or to sit on a bench of typewriter keys, but it is fun, and I can guarantee you will have bragging rights.

There's no room for a pool or gym, but they did squeeze a jacuzzi onto the outside terrace.

Sharing of tables is encouraged in Cocotte, the French restaurant and breakfast room.

For more information and room rates, see wanderlusthotel.com.

Telunas Beach - not a bad office to go to work in.

Yes, I really will be working, running writing camps for high school and elementary school students from Singapore.

We take them out to Telunas Beach, a rustic resort on the island of Sugi in Indonesia.

The route from Singapore to Batam-Sekupang and on to Telunas Beach. At least, I think this is the route. Someone else does the driving.

It takes an hour to get from Singapore to Batam, then another 90 minutes to travel out to Telunas in one of these pancung boats.

Once there, we explore the beach, the jungle and deserted islands (there are over 2000 of them in the Riau Archipelago), and visit local fishing villages to meet the people there.

It gives everyone plenty of material to write creative stories about, under my expert guidance of course.

Riau Island fishing village.

There’s no internet access for guests at Telunas Beach, but I wouldn’t have time to blog anyway. As you can imagine, I’ll be flat out.

It's pretty damn spectacular when you reach the Pacific Ocean.

He liked the look of the ones he’d seen around North Head. He’d even named the area Manly, after the manly specimens of the species that camped there. So Phillip kidnapped a gentleman called Arabanoo and took him back to Sydney Cove. It was the sort of thing governors did in the days before pesky human rights commissions made it all more complicated.

All went swimmingly for a while. Arabanoo learned English and taught the new arrivals some of his Cadigal language. But a year later Arabanoo died in a smallpox outbreak, and Phillip himself was speared (not fatally) at Spring Cove, just round the corner from Manly.

North Head is a spectacular outcrop overlooking the entrance to Sydney Harbour. It’s been a great vantage point for taking potshots at passing ships, so it’s not surprising to find a fort there, which once housed an Artillery School and Artillery Museum.

For me, at the end of my epic trek around Sydney Harbour, it was a great vantage point for shooting photos of some of the places I’d been.

First I had to get there, trekking around the shoreline. Manly Beach was packed on a fine sunny day, but there was a hidden gem at Collins Flat.

The few people who know about this secluded beach at Collins Flat may not be happy that I'm advertising it in cyberspace.

From there I trekked up to the main road leading out of town to the North Fort. There was an intriguing sign by the roadside…

Is there anywhere else in the world where they publish bandicoot road toll figures?

I made a short detour off the road and back to the water’s edge to continue my education.

The word ‘quarantine’ comes from the Italian ‘quarantina’ or forty days – the time suspected carriers of bubonic plague were quarantined in 14th century Venice. There – maybe you didn’t know that either.

If ever I’m unlucky enough to catch bubonic plague, the Q Station on North Head would be an excellent place to recuperate. Not everyone who came here in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries was so lucky.

Headstones retrieved from the Quarantine station cemetery. Too many, too young.

From the early days of the New South Wales colony, it was necessary to quarantine new arrivals from ships suspected of carrying plague, smallpox, TB or cholera. The Quarantine Station operated until the 1980s, when it was converted first to a museum, then to its current use as an up-market guesthouse, with eating facilities and history and ghost tours.

The Boilerhouse by the dock where inmates landed is now a smart bar and restaurant.

For those with no fear of smallpox-riddled ghosts, the Q Station could be an excellent place to stay in Sydney.

Over 1500 samples of graffiti left by unfortunate quarantine inmates are now carefully preserved.

The museum, shop and restaurant are open to visitors and strongly recommended.

From there it was not much more than a stroll up the hill to reach the Fairfax Walk looping to the lookout. It was a popular spot for tourists, so there was no problem finding someone to take my photo as a harbour-conquering hiker.

See all that behind me? That's where I walked.

Was it a good thing to do? Absolutely! I have some modest bragging rights, and I’ve even managed to sell the story about my adventures to a paying client. Stay tuned for more.

Walked today – 12.6km

Total walked to date (ie Grand Total for the whole trip) – 184.4 kilometres.

Route from Manly to North Head (and back again)

Coming up next – nothing!

Rick Everett (horizontal) and Dean Cross (vertical) in Snow on Mars. Photo Branco Gaica

I was delighted to see that Snow on Mars, our production in last year’s Sydney Festival, won the Sydney Theatre Award as Best Production for Children.

These are the awards voted on by a panel of Sydney’s professional theatre critics. Normally we pay no attention to reviews and awards; critics are idiots who wouldn’t know a decent show if it walked up and vomited on their foot (to misquote Steve Martin).

So imagine our surprise to discover that these particular reviewers are people of such intelligence and discernment.

It was Hell on Earth getting Snow on Mars to the stage. The story I wrote was simple enough, but the show required extraordinary technical work in video, aerobatics, music and choreography. It needed to fill the stage of a large theatre, on a very limited budget.

It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get it on, so it’s great that the achievement was recognised.

Thanks to all the production team from Kim Carpenter’s Theatre of Image under director Gale Edwards and congratulations to the terrific hard-working multi-talented cast.

This is the second time in two years that Theatre of Image has won the award – The Book of Everything won in 2011. Note to self: Write a new play very quickly to avoid missing out in 2013.

That's North Head in the distance. The end of the road is in sight.

If you want a nature walk by Sydney Harbour, this is as good as it gets. The ten kilometre track through the national park from The Spit to Manly is easy to walk if you don’t mind a few steps, gives lovely views out over the water and offers a useful coffee stop by the water at Clontarf.

Picking up the route from Balmoral was a bit of a bore, since I soon had to turn away from the coast and trudge uphill, then wind my way through suburban streets. A little bit of bushy track down to Chinaman’s Beach was a welcome break from the bitumen-bashing and after that the Spit Bridge was within, well, spitting distance.

Spit Bridge marina

Waterfall

Past the bridge and around the corner, things became considerably nicer. Fisher Bay and Sandy Bay led me to Clontarf and the aforementioned coffee stop. There was not even an extra charge for an extra shot in a large flat white.

Around the depths of Balgowlah Heights a track winds up into Sydney Harbour National Park, at Grotto Point suddenly opening out onto an area of Aboriginal rock art.

Aboriginal rock art at Grotto Point. Explanation is below...

It's a kangaroo or wallaby, standing on its head from this angle.

Around Dobroyd Point there are brilliant views across to the heads, with the Pacific Ocean beyond. That’s one of the views in the photo at the head of this post.

Banksia serrata - scary banksia men.

At high tide, there’d be more of that road-slogging needed to get around to Manly, but at the time I was there it was possible to rock-hop around the points.

I could have continued up onto North Head, but there’s enough up there to explore another day. I particularly want to have a look at the former Quarantine Station, now converted to holiday apartments which visitors can share with smallpox-ridden ghosts.

For now, the ferry is waiting…

Sir, your ferry is ready for boarding.

The route from Balmoral to Manly.

Travelled this stage – 13.6 kilometres

Total travelled to date – 171.8

Coming up – the final stage – Manly to North Head.

Can't get enough of those Sydney Red Gums (angophora costata).

The end is in sight. I estimate I’ll be able to walk around the rest of the harbour foreshore in about three more days. And I’m moving into some of the nicest areas now, at least as far as natural bushland goes.

The 3 kilometre walk from the zoo, around Bradley’s Head to Clifton Gardens is one of Sydney’s most popular bushwalks.

They were lining up for the zoo buses, but there was no queue for the walking.

I wasn’t quite alone on this section of the track, though it certainly wasn’t crowded. The path is particularly well maintained, with railings and metal walkway sections to keep us on the right track.

That’s not only to make it comfortable for walkers; it also protects fragile bushland from the tramp of many feet.

Clifton Gardens has a pleasant bit of sand, a couple of cafes by the water and a kayak hire business. I took a short coffee break and moved on, past Middle Head and down a winding bushland track to Balmoral Beach.

Opinions vary on which is Sydney Harbour’s best beach. Watson’s Bay and Nielsen Park have their fans, and the shark nets there are reassuring to those with white pointer phobia.

For a non-beach swimmer like me, Balmoral Beach wins, mostly because of the rocks at the western end.

Balmoral - Sydney Harbour's best beach.

Low tide at Balmoral...

...and an Australian darter dries his wings.

This isn’t a long or a difficult stage of the walk, but it was one of the best.

Oops, there’s a bus coming…gotta go.

The route from Taronga Zoo to Balmoral (plus a short climb to the bus stop).

Total walked on this stage 11.00 kilometres.

Total travelled to date 158.2 kilometres.

Coming up – Balmoral to Manly

The city viewed from the leafy North Shore.

I’m back on the track again, picking up my epic journey around the water. I went to the zoo, walking the 11.7km of coastline between the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Taronga. Along the way, I met some famous artists.

The leafy lower North Shore gazes smugly across the harbour at the city skyline. Most of the shore is lined with apartment blocks, and with a few exceptions the houses are not particularly grand. But the exceptions – Admiralty House, residence of the Australian Governor General Quentin Bryce, and the neighbouring Kirribilli House, the Prime Minister’s Sydney pied-a-terre – outgrand the lot.

We common folk normally only get to see Admiralty House from the deck of a ferry.

This was my view of the Admiralty House garden as I passed it on my walk. Security prevented my getting any closer.

I pushed on into Neutral Bay, where I was made to feel more welcome. Nutcote, the former home of Australian artist and children’s author May Gibbs, is open to the public. In the late 1980s a number of us children’s authors were involved in a campaign to save the house and convert it into a centre for children’s literature.

I’m pleased to see that it’s still a successful shrine, run by a dedicated band of volunteers, where a steady stream of visitors comes to pay homage to Ms Gibbs and her work.

The harbour from Nutcote's garden.

What child wouldn't be afraid of a banksia man?

However, her cute gumnut babies have become instantly recognisable Australian icons and big bad Banksia Men have terrified several generations of Aussie kids, including me.

For most of my early life I was too scared to open the book.

We walkers should express our gratitude to Mosman Council for keeping a lovely walking path around Cremorne Point open to the public. It’s well-maintained and surfaced, with gardens tended with care by the locals.

The path around Cremorne Point.

Near the Mosman ferry wharf a sign told me I was at the start of the ‘Curlew Camp Artists Walk’. Australian artists including Arthur Streeton, Julian Ashton and Tom Roberts used the foreshore here as a temporary home from the late 1880s until 1912. You can still see what inspired them.

The foreshore at Curlew Camp.

Early Sydney vandals carved the word CURLEW into this rock. Despite Mosman council's anti-graffiti campaigns, it's still there.

The route from the Harbour Bridge to Taronga Zoo.

Distance this stage – 11.7km
Distance travelled so far – 147.2km
Distance still to go (officially, though I have my doubts now that I’ve failed to go all the way up the Parramatta and Lane Cove Rivers) – 169.8km.

Coming up next – Taronga to Balmoral Beach.

The Festival of Sydney is on again.

It’s a fabulously simple concept – invite kids and parents to build their own communal artwork, a jungle of tangled coloured elastic, then play in it.

The stage is a forest of golden poles, topped with interesting shapes. As the music starts, pleasant, environmental and a bit New Agey, we are issued with balls of elastic and given some simple instructions.

Take a ball of stretchy elastic...

...tie one end to a pole...

...then start weaving, any way you like.

Little by little a tangle emerges...

...until everyone is caught up in the event.

The adult performers guide the activity when needed, occasionally helping to hoist the tangle higher up the poles to make a canopy, or adding different coloured elastic to the mix, transforming the art.

Everyone has a great time. For video evidence, click here.