"Travel with a pen", these days, is a metaphor for travelling with a laptop. I went to Tasmania for two weeks, intending just to keep a diary of my experiences. I was going there to graduate from my Diploma of Family History course, and I was going to Oatlands, in the midlands, to explore more of my great great grandmother's story as a young Irish convict in the 1850s. And I was hoping to see places I hadn't seen before.
The diary grew into something more, this book. It is easy, when in possession of a laptop, to slip from observation and reporting into reflecting on experiences. For me, it evoked the idea of Boswell's London Journal.