Preview: for publication in 2012

Travels with My Hat is the memoir of an Australian nurse who through skill and determination, switched careers to become an award-winning travel writer and photographer. It is a colourful record of her experiences defined by travel, undertaken on her own initiative, often without official help, and frequently against all odds. “We don’t know who you are,” she was told by the travel editor of the Daily Telegraph on arriving in London in 1974. “To get a name here, you need to write a book.” Which is exactly what she did. Publication of The Gulf States and Oman in 1977 brought a deluge of commissions on the Middle East. Books followed on Jordan and Pakistan. Christine was invited to visit Iraq by the Ba’athist regime of Saddam Hussein. Since visas were not issued to British journalists, she returned home and obtained clearance from the Iraqi Vice-Consul in – of all places –Bondi! Her journeys to Iraq, Ethiopia, Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan and Morocco are rounded off with letters to her mother who had never left Australia. We join Christine avoiding bandits in Yemen, diving in the Red Sea, and dining with Arab sheikhs in a racy account of forty years of travels when only one of a thousand and one problems, was being a young, western woman working in a man’s world. I have occasionally wished I were a boy, she writes in a chapter on Yemen. Not for the penis per se, but for the freedom it allows a man, since reality for a woman traveller is that her sex presents constraints…

Photos by Christine Osborne

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Experience, travel and

Travels with My Hat: from Chapter 3 Member of the Royal Press Corps

...The Concorde bringing the Queen to Saudi Arabia touched down in Riyadh......Suddenly there was pandemonium. Everyone, including the State Guards, was running this way and that and after years of working alone, I forgot our strict orders not to leave the press group. Dashing outside the airport, I hailed a passing taxi.

‘Quick! The Nasirya Palace!’ I told the driver.

The Queen and the Duke were to stay here while the Britannia sailed to Dhahran, in the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. A photo-call at the palace was not on our itinerary, but I hoped to sail in on a bit of bluff. Especially since I was an honorary man!

The Indian taxi-driver entered into the spirit of the moment as though his country was still under the British Raj. Speeding along the sandy highways and byways of Riyadh, he screeched to a halt in front of a mammoth building flying the Union Jack. And above it, fluttering in the desert wind, was Her Majesty’s personal standard.

‘This is the Nasirya Palace memsahib,’ he said, reversing the dented red Datsun in between gleaming black limousines.

Racing up the palace steps, I nodded at the Bedouin guards. Did they think I was an advance on the ladies-in-waiting? Without asking, they waved me inside a vast foyer lit with chandeliers the size of flying saucers.

It took courage to stand there surrounded by many princes of the estimated 7,000 members of the House of Saud: tall, erect men all wearing the bisht edged with gold, the mark of nobility. My eyes roamed over onyx tables and huge vases of flowers, but my flashlight sparked a buzz of conversation and feeling vulnerable, I wound my long black scarf around my face like one of their own women.

When a Rolls Royce drew up at the palace steps, attention shifted from me to the Queen. Trained not to flinch, Her Majesty passed me with only a brief look of surprise. Had I gone completely native? Trailing behind her, the Duchess and Lady Susan looked perturbed. Could Buckingham Palace have erred? Should they too be veiled. Dresses brushing the marble floor, they swept towards the majlis and before anyone could enquire why I didn’t follow them, I scampered back to the taxi.

‘It's the most exciting day of my life!’ said the old Indian. ‘Finally something to write home about from this god-forsaken country.'

Back at the Riyadh Inter-Continental, my luck was in when a helpful MEA pilot offered to take my films to London. My editor, Ita Buttrose, had been insistent we beat rival Woman's Day to press. Leaving Riyadh at midnight, the films were collected next morning from the Kensington Hilton in London and were Sydney-bound that afternoon.

A week later my article - CARRY ON DOWN THE GULF MA'AM - THE SHEIKHS LOVE YOU! captured attention 'Down Under’.

Image: Her Majesty is welcomed by King Khalid at Riyadh International Airport.

FROM MUM IN THE GARDEN TO HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN

People often ask how I started out taking pictures. Well, it was with a Kodak Box Brownie at the age of eight when I took a photo of my mother and the family spaniel - captioned 'Mum and Betsy in the Garden.’

From this inauspicious start, I became keen on photography spending hours developing pictures in the blacked-out kitchen and while ultimately my most enthusiastic supporter, there were occasions when Mum grew cross.

‘You never clean up properly Chris,’ was a frequent comment.

My first picture of Djibouti - sold with a story to the Sydney Morning Herald in 1965 -started my career as a travel writer and photographer specialising in the Muslim world.

The Queen received a copy of my first book - The Gulf States and Oman as background reading on the royal visit to Arabia in 1979.

I was also the only woman photographer on the 3 week tour which was action packed - just as Concorde carrying Her Majesty approached Kuwait, my driver went off with my cameras in his car. Fortunately I retrieved them in time, but ever since I’ve never let them out of my sight, turning down many courteous offers to carry my heavy camera bag.

I’ve always specialised in developing countries - mostly in Africa, South Asia and the Arab Gulf where I hope my record of traditional life may have value for future generations.

Gauging your subject's sensitivity is essential to getting a good picture and to protect your equipment. A slight hand movement, or someone carefully putting down their load of melons often means a quick decision on whether to shoot. Or not.

Fortunately there have been few occasions on my travels when someone has become really angry. But occasionally it was touch and go.

Commissioned to photograph a tribal migration in Baluchistan, I stood my ground as the leader walked over waving his rifle. As he got near I grabbed his hand and shook it vigorously but when he uttered, it was not abuse: he wanted a cigarette (I gave him the packet).

One means of acquiring a subject is to give away small items to earn goodwill, or to distract attention. I always carry coins, sweets and balloons which I blow up for nuisance children. Recently I gave one to a youth in Zanzibar who taking it and looking me straight in the eye, asked in fluent English, was it a condom?

I`ve had many different cameras since the original Brownie. Several ‘old mates’ have bitten the dust - a pair of Pentaxes stolen from my hotel room in Palm Springs, another taken at knife point in The Gambia, a Canon smashed when I fell in Fujairah.

Although I endeavour to work unobtrusively, being tall and fair and feminine has not always helped. Frustrated with a crowd of curious men in Jacobabad in Pakistan, I devised the idea of drawing a line in the dust and telling them to stand behind it which they obediently did!

But one of the strangest encounters occurred on top of the National Museum in Sana’a.

I’d climbed up to take the view when a Yemeni holding a Polaroid asked could he take my picture and I noticed his hands were shaking so he couldn't hold it steady.

‘He is an escaped political prisoner and this is his only way of earning a little money. Would you pose for him?’ said my guide.

And as one who has taken thousands of pictures, I naturally agreed.

The Queen with Sheikh Isa in Bahrain, 1979.

Powindah migration through the Bolan Pass, 1981

A market in Tangiers, 1964

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400 YEARS OF RELIGIOUS & ROYAL MEMORABILIA

What I relish about living in London is the sheer number and variety of fascinating exhibitions on at any one time.

Today I visited the 'Treasures of Lambeth Library', marking the 400th anniversary (1610-2010) of its founding in Lambeth Palace, historic residence of the Archbishops of Canterbury, on the south bank of the river Thames.

I`d expected to find a sea of purely ecclesiastical volumes from the collection of around 6,000 early books and manuscripts lining the Great Hall.

Instead I found myself gazing on such unique items as Charles Ist`s leather gloves (handed to the Bishop of London who attended him on the scaffold), a letter written by Elizabeth I informing the Earl of Shrewsbury of her recovery from smallpox, and the royal physician`s report, dated 1811 referring to the `malady` of King George: `He was so turbulent this morning we had to use restraints”…

Evocative stuff, but the main body of the exhibition is devoted to early books, many lavishly and meticulously illustrated such as the twelfth century Lambeth Bible whose frontispiece to the Book of Genesis is considered a masterpiece of Romanesque art and the pocket-sized MacDurnan Gospels, written in Ireland and gifted to Christ Church, Canterbury by the King of Wessex c.939.

Equally fascinating is the personal prayer-book of Elizabeth I believed to have been designed by Levina Teerlink, the Flemish miniaturist who served as painter to the Tudor Court.

Other key items which caught my eye were an extremely rare Babylonian Talmud, a Byzantine manuscript from Constantinople and papers relating to the reconstruction of St Paul`s cathedral following the Great Fire of London.

Great names from the past jog the memory: there is a set of the works of Aristotle printed in fifteenth century Venice and a nautical chart on vellum depicting the voyages of Magellan in the then known world. Samuel Pepys is among several historic celebrities noted in a book of benefactors.

I could only gaze in awe at such treasures and while to name a single item is almost invidious, I would say the copy of the warrant for Mary Queen of Scot`s execution, signed by Elizabeth I is not to be missed.

Such a unique exhibition will never travel overseas so London visitors are well advised to visit the library before the heavy doors swing shut on 23rd July. open 10.00-17.000 Mon-Saturday.

Images courtesy: www. Lambethpalacelibrary.org

MacDurnan Gospels, 9th century St Matthew`s Gospel.

Prayer-book of Elizabeth I depicting the Queen kneeling in prayer.

Copy of the warrant for the execution of Mary Queen of Scots

signed 8 February 1587