Читать книгу Travels With My Hat: A Lifetime on the Road - Christine Osborne - Страница 3

It was at an American Independence Day party in 1976 that I first met the author and significantly, the word independence, is one of the major clues to the nature of this expatriate Australian.

Fiercely independent and single-minded, she has photographed and written books about countries as diverse as Tahiti and Oman. I occasionally met up with her and witnessed the mix of guts and perseverance, interspersed with the odd tear of frustration, and a hint of the memsahib that seemed to overcome all obstacles. Once, on point of arrest for some minor infringement over photography, with an authoritarian Pakistani army officer, she suggested they have tea first which they both drank, exchanged pleasantries, and Osborne was allowed to go on her way.

Her fondness of small creatures—birds and fish—often manifested itself. A sock was used as a nest to nurture chickens found in a rubbish heap in Beirut. Tiny fish caught in a mountain stream in the Yemen, were carried home in a jam jar to survive for seven years in her fish tank, along with other exotics in her London flat.

A girl’s own adventure story, Travels with My Hat will put a spring in the step of anyone seeking excitement. It is Christine Osborne’s unique life, from scrubbing bedpans as a young nurse in Sydney, to becoming not only a successful travel writer, but a top flight photographer who would accompany Her Majesty the Queen on her riches-laden tour of Arabia.

AILEEN AITKEN