"So the road trip yet again had me contemplating things slowly. Stillness has made me often think of movement, and now I learned that it was true when the concepts were put vice versa too. It was as though I’d travelled 1000km to go nowhere." At long last I left the train carriage, to go on a road trip, somewhere that was simply elsewhere. And then I came back again.

"I am realising that at some point I must come to terms with the fact that some separations will never again be sutured up. I have plotted out much of my life in the past ten years with travel in mind, and although partings are commonplace, I am always thinking of returning to certain countries, of reuniting with old friends and revisiting past experiences. But now I am in a train carriage, going nowhere, and realising that in all likelihood there are people I will never see again, good mates, worthy companions." Living in a train carriage out in the bush, I find myself thinking about the meaning of separation, of being apart.

"But in the end, from map to map, these landscapes have been altered by the decisions made about what to do with the land." I have gone looking through my box of maps to find what stories lie within the lands sketched out in them. Join me on the journeys I take through these countries of many colours.

"I begin seeing fungi of exquisite blue growing from fallen timber in the bush around me. Some call them pixies’ parasols: little brollies for the fairies to shelter beneath when the rainfall comes down hard." It's autumn again, and interesting colours have appeared in the bush around my train carriage -- encouraging interesting reflections on landscapes and history.

"And I empathised when I heard a fellow storyteller in Edinburgh reflecting on his life thus far and comparing himself to a racehorse who has left the blocks with all the others but isn’t looking so crash hot yet. He looked at me and said, would it not seem to most punters that were the wrong horses to have backed? But like me, I think he was counting on, at some point, a lucky break." I have been spending some time contemplating the nature of luck. Join me for a series of stories looking at the philosophy of fortune and fate.

“I was in the ocean, she said, when I saw an orca. I swam fast towards it in a sort of spiralling motion, like I’d made myself into a torpedo. As I got nearer I could hear that the orca was making a series of ethereal sounds; it was the most beautiful music I’d ever heard.” I have spent part of the past months half-deaf, hearing only part of the sounds of the bush around my train carriage. So, here, I find myself contemplating sound, music, ears, and silence.

"The writer Gustav Flaubert suggested that if you look at anything closely enough, you would find it interesting. I reckon that’s about right. Take something as mundane, as fundamentally bland as my computer. I’m glaring at it right now from the other side of the room." I live in a train carriage that's been converted into a shack; it's not very big, but even still, I find myself surrounded by objects.

"There was another animal I could name in childhood: the sugar ant. You see, I was a bit of a sweet-tooth as a boy: and when they told me it was called a sugar ant, and I saw its amber-coloured thorax, I was sure it would taste like a flake of caramel. Like I say: every ecosystem is ready to explode with surprises, and surprises sometimes teach the most poignant lessons." I live an old train carriage surrounded by bush, and frequently visited by animals. Lately I've been wondering: what would I have made of this landscape if I was here as a child?

"He would emerge, gasping for oxygen, dripping wildly. Hoisting himself from the river and onto the rocks, he saw his chest had been sculpted by the water. Looking out on the river he saw a reflection so warped that he thought he might be beautiful, and when he walked away, you could see that he was a little different, that day by day he was carrying himself with a bit more satisfaction." I have a great deal of love for the Cataract Gorge in Launceston. These stories are about how a person can connect with a place in such a way that it changes them entirely and sets them up for a different type of life. This work is a collaboration with harpist and Launcestonian, Emily Sanzaro, to who has produced original work for this storytelling project.

"When I was a teenager I was almost dashed, like so many ships, against the sharp granite of King Island: caught in a current, I struggled to swim against it, lost a flipper in the process, and was carried to a baroque-looking rock to which I clung and from where I eventually managed to extricate myself." It's summer at the bottom of the world, and time to go swimming. Here are some stories from creeks, rivers, seas, estuaries, straits and dams.