WWII monument on Peleliu. Photo: Simon Sellars.
Originally published in Dynasty, China Airlines’ inflight magazine, August 2009.
Deep in the North Pacific ocean, 800km east of the Philippines and over 3000km south of Tokyo, lies the Republic of Palau. You may know it from the Survivor TV show, which filmed two series here, making full use of [...]

‘Tohoku Dreaming’, originally published in Flightless, Footscray: Lonely Planet Publications, 2008.
The last job they gave me was book-ended by madness.
It began somewhere in the labyrinthine insanity of Tokyo. I was trying to sleep in a tiny apartment, sweat pouring off me in great sheets. I was on assignment for one of the major guidebook publishers [...]

Photo: Simon Sellars.
Originally published on ballardian.com, 11 November 2008.
Sorry for the long absence — I promised ‘daily updates’, well, that didn’t happen. It’s taken me ages to get my thoughts down about Barcelona and Kosmopolis because the experience was so rich, but contributing factors included jet lag, computer problems and a lengthy spell of writer’s [...]

All photography by Simon Sellars.
Originally published on ballardian.com, 26 April 2008.
In May 2007 I found myself in England for the J.G. Ballard conference at the University of East Anglia. With that out of the way, I did what comes naturally. I took the train to Shepperton: Ballardian Ground Zero. I had intended to take photographs [...]

Approaching Sealand. Photo: Simon Sellars.
Originally published in The Australian, 10 November 2007.
THE room has no windows. It is dank, pitch-black and deathly still. I’ve lost all spatial co-ordinates. I hear a distant, dull hissing, like soil leaking through a coffin lid. Before the lights went out, I noticed the ram’s skull above my bed. It [...]

I recently wrote a piece on the island of Yap for Where to Go When, a forthcoming book to be published by Dorling Kindersley.
Here are some advance details.

‘Hey now, baby, I’m beginning to see the light…’ The author, waiting to go through customs, ponders the notion of ‘flightless travel’ (photo: Simon Sellars 2007).
On my recent trip to the UK, I kept a blog over on the old Sleepy Brain site. I hadn’t quite finished it when Sleepy Brain went offline, but I’m [...]

In June 2007, I updated and rewrote Weissmann’s destination report for Melbourne. Weissman provides destination reports for travel buyers, planners and arrangers around the world.

In May 2006 I returned to the Netherlands to update the Dutch chapters I’d previously written for the Europe On A Shoestring and Western Europe guidebooks. This time, I was also co-author of the Netherlands country guide with Neal Bedford: I wrote the Amsterdam, Zuid Holland & Zeeland, Overijssel & Gelderland, and Utrecht chapters. [...]

Station Pier (photo: Simon Sellars). There used to be a sign here saying ‘Melbourne Welcomes You’, the first thing we saw when we got off the boat, I imagine.
by Simon Sellars

Originally published on Sleepy Brain, 19 January 2007.

I was asked to contribute some thoughts about my family’s immigration story to the second book in Jim [...]