Currently based in Byron Bay, eastern Australia, Graham Simmons has been a freelance travel writer/photographer since 1993. He's a full member of the Australian Society of Travel Writers and a founding member of "Global Travel Writers." He took up travel writing with somewhat dishonorable motives, namely to travel the world at someone else's expense. He soon found out that getting a real story demands more than just a whirlwind press tour aimed at covering as many places as possible in the least amount of time. He says that travel is a great way of getting rid of excess baggage, in the form of the preconceptions and mind-boundaries that the traveler brings to an unfamiliar place.