Travels with My Hat

by Christine Osborne

The remarkable story of how an Australian nurse became an award-winning travel writer and acclaimed photographer working alone in some of the most offbeat places on earth. This was trailblazing travel in a time well before the before travel rating websites advised where to stay and before mass tourism disturbed the culture of many countries. In 1979 Christine Osborne travelled with the Buckingham Palace Press Corps to cover Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth's tour of the Arab states. The hat incident of the title refers to a moment in Nizwa, in the Sultanate of Oman, when the Queen became separated from the royal party in the labyrinthine souq. Christine's other adventures in Yemen, Pakistan, Morocco, Ethiopia and Iraq are rounded off with letters to her mother who had never left Australia. Travels with My A lifetime on the road is an extraordinary account by a cool-headed young woman carrying her camera-bag and wearing her trusty blue hat.

288 pages, Paperback

First published August 13, 2014

About the author

Christine Osborne is an award winning writer and photographer who has contributed to prominent newspapers and magazines around the world. She came to prominence in 1970 on receiving the Pacific Area Travel Association award for travel articles on S.E.Asia. The next decades,saw Osborne exploring the Middle East and Africa from a base in London. Following publication of her first book - The Gulf States & Oman in 1977 - she fulfilled writing and photographic commissions on the developing world. The thousands of images collected became the basis of a number of photo stock libraries, including the specialist agency World Religions Photo Library. Her haunting pictures of starving children taken during the devastating Ethiopian droughts of the 1970s were published in a number of European newspapers, including The Times. One of her many assignments was interviewing Joy Adamson, the Lion Woman, in Kenya in 1973. In 1979 Osborne was the only woman photographer accredited to the Buckingham Palace press corps to cover Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth’s historic tour of Arabia. The Queen of Jordan wrote the introduction to her second book, An Insight and Guide to Jordan. Osborne saw many of the earth’s still pristine places before the advent of mass tourism. In 1981 she visited Iraq, invited to Baghdad by the Ba’athist regime under Saddam Hussein. An intrepid traveller throughout her career, Osborne has spent a lifetime on the road. She has written 20 books and travel guides including on Pakistan, Morocco, Thailand, Malaysia, Bali and the Seychelles. Her most recent book is Wajid & The Perfect Pearl, illustrated tales from 'Old Araby". She currently resides in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney.