While discussing options for a winter getaway, we considered a lot of options. Headway was made into plans for both Vanuatu and Magnetic Island. In the end we picked Hamilton Island and this turned out to be a fortuitous decision.

Other than being not cold, the priorities we had for a holiday destination were: Peace and Quiet. Pools to chill by. Spending as little of our time off travelling as possible.

So one of the best parts of Hamilton Island is that there is an airport right on the island. It took longer to get from home to the plane in Adelaide than it did to get from the plane to the bungalow.

The airport is on the back side of a big hill, so it does not interfere with the natural enjoyment of the island once you’ve landed there.

The fact that the island is so small made the whole stay incredibly easy. We were able to walk to everything each day. There are a lot of tourists and other people zipping about in the numerous golf carts, but these are unnecessary. We even walked to the top of One Tree Hill for the sunset.

The hotel/pools/resort are in the sandy cove. Over a small hill there is the marina/ferry terminal and the shops, bakery, pub and yacht club. Behind/past the resort there is beach and walking trails into the bush and up the hills, leading to secluded coves, shady creeks, cool cliffs and a few lookouts.

Everything from breakfast, coffee, pool, shops, mini golf, table tennis, beer and dinner could be reached by foot.

The hiking trails were great. The network crosses and loops around two heads, with plenty of variety and reward in the trails. We had breakfast at various locations on the island the last three days and it was all peak hiking breakfast experience.

The sunrises and sunsets were also fantastic.

And going in July, after the school holidays, was perfect timing. The pools were close to empty. The water was about 20 degrees. Drinking a coffee by the water and then having a swim was a daily activity.

By the end of the second day I had a thong blister.

Did I have to pay $40 for a bad steak sandwich and a beer? Yes. But groceries from the supermarket and coffee were pretty reasonably priced. The resort itself provided free table tennis, shuttle buses, gym and housekeeping.

It was a very nice place. And I didn’t even go snorkelling or see the crocodile.

My first impressions of Whitehaven were not awe at the spectacular landscape, nor sighs of contentment at the tropical paradise so far from home. No - I needed to pee after being rushed off the big boat and then onto the small boat for a 30 minute jolt along the cove.

This was partly my fault, as I'd prioritised lining up for cookies instead of using the head, and partly the fault of all the people in the line who weren't on the full day tour who were disobeying instructions and getting cookies ahead of me.

Our tour guide, who was operating on the opposite of island time, marched us from one side of the cove to the other. I took in the white sand under the blue skies, and regretted drinking that free bottle of water after that extra large coffee.

Eventually the tour took us to some lookouts and a set of long drops. There was quite a queue. The coves of Whitehaven were like Normandy, the boats dropping off the tourists as the helicopters passed by over head.

The long drops, so thoughtfully placed kilometres of land and sea away from civilisation, were being widely panned by the crowd of people before me.

There were 18 heads (and 4 toilets) in front of me (I counted due to cookie greed), and everyone seemed disgusted by the problem they were about to directly contribute to.

I returned to the lookouts and enjoyed the vantage with more patience. It was a beautiful place and the weather was great. The third most photographed location in Australia, apparently. I have some doubts. Unless you're going by the percentages of people visiting. Then, probably yes.

Following our landing boat taking us back to Whitehaven south, we swam briefly in the crystal clear water before enjoying copious meats and salad to follow up the cookies.

The cruise team had a great business idea keeping people on the island for the afternoon sun, while selling cans of beer at a premium from a big cooler.

Instead we undertook one of our favourite activities together - long walks on the beach.

Whitehaven stretches over 7 kilometres of pure white, silica sand.

The further we walked, the more peaceful it became. The tour operators and their flocks were content to linger at the south end with the boats and the beers and the other long drops and the giant size Connect Four.

Whitehaven's silica sand is famous for its exhilarating properties. After 12 kilometres of walking, my soles were feeling pretty smooth.

Eventually we were all alone, or close enough to it. Blue sky. Blue water. White sand. No internet reception.

A warm, summer night in autumn 2025.

I do love me a seasonal playlist to remember a period of my life. And if some of the song lyrics/titles have a literal link to the specific season that I listened to them in - even better.

Lots has changed since my debut one in 2004. First, initially I had a lot more tunes to choose from in humanity's back catalogue. Second, I didn't make them every season, and third, the music listening experience was so different back before Spotify and endless mobile phone data. I feel like my standard for getting on the seasonal mixtape is a lot higher in 2025 than it was say in 2006. I also can't tell for sure if I look back fondly at every track that made a seasonal mixtape back in the day purely because it was on there. In the old days I would listen a lot to whole albums, playing them in my car where I couldn't change to another band on a whim. For the past few years I have had a staging process where anything I hear on an album or through the algorithm gets added to a "Liked from Radio" playlist (I forgot why I called it that back in 2016) and then usually when I'm feeling a tune on that list over a specific season it will get the call up to the seasonal.

Some tunes do hit my brain and go immediately to the seasonal as well.

By the time of Autumn 2025, I felt like making a mixtape for Autumn was tough. The main problem was that it was hot and sunny all the time. Summer lasted until April. Where was the weather I needed for enjoying some down tempo melodies, some darkness, the sound of rain on the roof?

The inverse of this problem was that I was scheduled to leave for Norway in early May, so whatever Autumn I was going to have had to be squeezed between summer finally ending and then.

Optimistically I named my playlist in Spotify Høst 25, which is Norwegian for "Autumn, 2025". And in March I added a couple of folky/dreamy tracks that gave me a feeling of what Autumn might actually vibe like. I also added a song called "Midnight Sun" from Jan Blomqvist's new album, for obvious reasons.

The reality of Autumn was a lot of moving house/selling house fun, ankle pain, and a month long cold. Plus some good tunes from Lawrence Hart, Brother Bird and Of A Revolution that had got me through some late night drives to the self storage or trips in the hire truck.

A 2m x 1m x 1m (approximately) solid chunk of an ending chapter of life.

By the time I took off for Oslo I had eight songs worth of Autumn and I thought I was either going to have to combine this with winter after I got back, or maybe release another seasonal EP (Summer 2022 was the first of those when I went arm first into the CBF).

A lot happened in Norway and I listened to a lot of music there but it certainly wasn't autumn.

On my last night in Lofoten, giddy with the heights of Reinebringen and the endless sunset and sleep deprivation I sought a playlist to soundtrack my drive back to Eggum and I started with Høst. Within about eight minutes I was listening to Midnight Sun while driving under a midnight sun and this was incredibly validating to me as a sign of my musical taste, sense of timing, and good fortune.

Because the drive was a lot longer than the short autumn soundtrack, after Gonna Be Me finished I switched to 2025's Liked From Radio and played it on shuffle.

There were a lot of good songs on that list and some I skipped. And the ones I didn't skip got instantly encoded with the vibrancy and energy of that drive along Lofoten's E10.

The sun still hadn't set when I arrived back in Eggum. Obviously. But autumn had ended. I was about to return to Adelaide for winter and a whole set of new releases and old life. But I wanted to do anything I could to hold on to that drive and that autumn where I pushed through pain and sickness to move house, sell a house, recover from injuries, work hard and then make it to glorious Norway for a life changing holiday.

So I added all the songs I'd just heard to the playlist in the order I'd heard them.

Autumn sunset colours in Adelaide, not Norway.

And now that winter is closer to ending than it is to starting, it's time to commemorate that decision and add Høst 25 to the list of seasons I've had the joy of experiencing with music.

A sensation occurs to me occasionally on this holiday. I power off the hire car in the parkering I scouted out earlier, walk into a building to collect a key and instantly I'm in the right place in a new town or fjord on the right date of the universe's chronology. This often happens after driving hundreds of kilometres. Over 26 days, fifteen locations, five flights, a dozen ferries, two dozen car charges, three dozen Circle K coffees, not once did I get the dates incorrect on my booking, or the location wrong on the drive… One time I got caught out by Circle K Automat - which didn't have coffee - but only once.

I'm not egotistical enough to deny that six months ago I barely knew what a fjord was, let alone which ones were worth visiting and the best way to move between them. And yet somehow I planned a month-long roadtrip using the internet down to the required level of detail to start the holiday. And once the holiday was operational, I ensured we would have the capabilities needed to meet the functional and non-functional requirements of having a nice time in Norway.

There are not many labels I feel a particular affinity too, but architect is one. I feel like it is my cognitive sweet spot to plan for the future and oversee execution. What are the functional requirements for a holiday to Norway? Climb this mountain, walk up to that waterfall, see this view, cruise that fjord. Take some nice photos. Non-functionals include transportation, shelter, food, communication, toilet stops, caffeine.

All of these requirements were met, and NFRs also met within my personal SLAs. I climbed cool mountains, experienced great waterfalls, beaches and other natural wonders. I witnessed impressive vistas and ferried us across many fjords. I hope I got a few good pictures… I drove 3449 kilometres in an EV, which doesn't include the ferry crossing although it does include the occasional circling of town trying to find a working charger. We never ran out of electricity, food, coffee or clean underwear. We had a bed every night although not always the ideal amount of pillows.

The downside to being so organised is that a times I did feel like I was executing rather than experiencing the moments on my overseas holiday. There were times while driving that what should have been novel felt eerily familiar because I'd already seen the same roads and sites on Street View.

As the final implementation steps are executed, and my plane comes in to land, I now conduct an internal retrospective on if this was a well architected holiday. What went well, what could be improved, and what should be done differently next time?

I wouldn't necessarily classify my Norway holiday planning as the waterfall approach, but the detailed design was complete before leaving. I do think there was a strong element of agile methodology to the actual days. Typically each location had a number of attractions or stories and then it was up to us to prioritise and deliver on these when we actually arrived there. For example, doing a walk when the weather was good, or after a cruise ship left.

Forward planning also helped meet the commercials; the budget would have needed to be much higher if we were booking accommodation the days before we arrived, and options would also have been more limited. Some of our stops were in particularly picturesque positions with panoramic views and good kitchens. A more flexible approach would have had merits too. If we didn't like a place, or if we wanted to linger or go further based on vibes, we could have done that.

One NFR is that we need to make 99.9999% of our connections. At work I'd call this availability, and, just like with infrastructure, there are definitely additional costs for such comprehensive reliability. It means I built full day buffers into each leg of the return trip in case of an outage or misfortune. Because everything went smoothly, this meant many hours waiting for the next plane or ferry in locations nowhere near as good as where we could have been, along with extra nights in hotels, extra transportation and more upheaval. One alternative approach would be to live with the stress of tighter connections, and let travel insurance handle any circumstances beyond our control. Riskier but more rewarding. The other approach is to ensure the holiday naturally begins and ends in a location with a major airport, so that the return home can begin from a good place.

One thing is certain, I am clearly ready for my return to work.

Technically 10:19pm Sun

I wasn't exactly sure how my body would react to 24 hour daylight. Having now experienced it, I would say that in the evening after dinner it is amazing for outdoor activities and photographic light. And at sleeping time, it is completely irrelevant. On road trips, in Norway, sometimes you can feel the melatonin kick in when you're driving through a long tunnel...

In Adelaide, I am awake during the light part of the day (save occasional nap and sleep in) and I sleep during a portion of the dark part. In the morning in summer I sleep for a portion of the light part.

Technically 2:45am sun.

In the Arctic Circle, the slightly less light part is called nighttime and so you can associate that with sleep.

One guy I drove past at 10:30pm associated it with a great time to mow the lawn.

I will say that if you do want an argument for 24 hour daylight being unnatural, that I have now seen sheep and cows eating grass and walking around at 2 in the morning so it does feel like some level of human self control is required to regulate your behaviour and not do too much eating or photography when the light is low.

Or maybe they were just lawn mowing too...

Lofoten is an incredibly photogenic place that has exposed how average I am at photography.

While I like some of the photos I've taken so far, I feel like I have failed to capture some of the dramatic scenery. Especially when driving around, where every mountain looms and the water shimmers when the sun is out. The photos look flat. And sometimes the photos are taken just by stopping on the road and sticking the camera out the window. So they're the same angle. (This typically happens on the back roads, which are one way to find the secret places, but like the first of many layers of secret tracks). For example, one of my favourite photos here was only taken because I saw some locals taking photos a few metres off the road right before a tunnel. When we returned that way and got out of the car and went through a gate it revealed this amazing view.

A lot of the hiking is also challenging, even without the rain that rolls in, and the problems finding a place to park.

The one trick I have learned to far is to get in the car and drive when it's raining, in order to get to walk in the sunshine. The rain does come in waves, so unless the walk is right next to your shelter, getting to the start point with the wipers on has had good results.

The colours here are fantastic. And the sun is always somewhere, behind you, in front of you, to the side. You can never run out of light.