It was a bit of a shock to hear last week that there would be no more Study Tours operated by Sydney University's Centre for Continuing Education (CCE). Its Study Tours have been something of an Australian institution, not only for photo tours (a relatively recent innovation) but for its scholarly tours in search of a greater understanding of architecture, art, archaeology, creative writing, and more.
On a personal note I'm a bit miffed because I certainly considered this to be the best job in the world. I've always believed that the tours made a profit, but apparently this wasn't the case last year so the bean counters had their say and 'bingo', no more study tours. Although it might be easy to blame Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al-Assad for disrupting several of CCE's 2011 tours, causing (completely unforeseen) additional expenses, I think the problem for its impromptu termination lies considerably closer to home.
Anyway, as a result of this debacle my planned study tours to Bali (Oct 2012) and Africa (mid-2013) have now been cancelled.
However, it is not all doom and gloom (for me anyway). You might be interested to hear that the Africa Tour at least, is now being handled by Academy Travel, a specialist small group tour company that's based in the city. Some of you will already be familiar with its tours - Academy's classical tours take small groups all over Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia, so it is an idea group to handle the requirements of a photo tour to Africa. Though still in its planning stages, feel free to check in with tour specialist, Mark Lalor for the latest information on this and other upcoming tours. (I've posted more info about upcoming CCE photo classes here).
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