Tohoku Dreaming

Simon Sellars Fiction, Travel

‘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 …

Sealand: On the Heap

Simon Sellars Micronations, Travel

Originally published in The Australian, 10 November 2007. All photography by Simon Sellars. I THE room has no windows. It’s dank, pitch-black and deathly still. I’ve lost all spatial co-ordinates. I hear a distant, dull …

Lonely Planet: Micronations

Simon Sellars Micronations, Travel

Here’s a subject dear to my heart: micronations. I co-wrote this book with John Ryan and George Dunford, and between us we managed to drum up quite a bit of publicity for a subject that …

Akhzivland

Simon Sellars Micronations, Travel

Akhzivland is a peaceful anomaly surrounded by the state of Israel. It was formerly the historical village of Akhziv, abandoned after the 1948 War of Independence and later claimed by Eli Avivi, a charismatic ex-sailor who, with his sandals and flowing beard and robes, comes on like a cross between a fit Demis Roussos and the Groovy Guru. Like Prince Roy of Sealand, President Avivi proved the micronational adage that if you look hard enough, you’re bound to find a piece of ‘turf’ nobody wants. Roy and Avivi also suffered the inverse equation: namely, that once you’ve got your hands on some idle territory, the bully boys will always try and take it away from you, even if they have no practical use for it.