Travel Australia

•     Something about Australia

Australia is the sixth-largest country by land area. It is comparable in size to the 48 contiguous United States. Australia is bordered to the west by the Indian Ocean, and to the east by the South Pacific Ocean. The Tasman Sea lies to the southeast, separating it from New Zealand, while the Coral Sea lies to the northeast. Papua New Guinea, East Timor and Indonesia are Australia's northern neighbours, separated from Australia by the Arafura Sea and the Timor Sea.

Australia is highly urbanised with most of the population heavily concentrated along the eastern and south-eastern coasts. Most of the inland areas of the country are semi-arid. The most-populous states are Victoria and New South Wales, but by far the largest in land area is Western Australia.

As a large island a wide variation of climates are found across Australia. Most of the country receives more than 3,000°hr of sunshine a year. Generally, the north is hot and tropical, while the south tends to be sub-tropical and temperate. Most rainfall is around the coast, and much of the centre is arid and semi-arid.

More than most other “Western” countries, Australia seizes the imagination. For most visitors its name is a shorthand for an endless summer where the living is easy; a place where the adventures are as vast as the horizons and the jokes flow as freely as the beer; a country of can-do spirit and easy friendliness. No wonder Australians call theirs the Lucky Country.

This harsh interior has forced modern Australia to become a coastal country. Most of the population lives within 20km of the ocean, occupying a suburban, southeastern arc that extends from southern Queensland to Adelaide. These urban Australians celebrate the typical New World values of material self-improvement through hard work and hard play, with an easy-going vitality that visitors, especially Europeans, often find refreshingly hedonistic. A sunny climate also contributes to this exuberance, with an outdoor life in which a thriving beach culture and the congenial backyard “barbie” are central.

• Sydney

The Sydney Opera House

The Aussie city par excellence, Sydney stands head and shoulders above any other in Australia. Taken together with its surrounds, it’s in many ways a microcosm of the country as a whole – if only in its ability to defy your expectations and prejudices as often as it confirms them. A thrusting, high-rise business centre, a high-profile gay community, a clutch of fascinating museums and some vibrant art galleries, and inner-city deprivation of unexpected harshness are as much part of the scene as the beaches, the bodies and the sparkling harbour. Its sophistication, cosmopolitan population and exuberant nightlife are a long way from the Outback, and yet Sydney has the highest Aboriginal population of any Australian city, and bushfires are a constant threat.

You’ll need at least five days in this unique city to ensure you see not only its glorious harbourside but also its wider treasures. Delving into the surrounding inner-city areas of Paddington, Surry Hills, and Glebe reveal more of the Sydney psyche, and no trip to the city would be complete without at least one visit to the eastern-suburb beaches – for a true taste of Sydney, take an afternoon stroll along the coastal path that stretches from Bondi to Coogee.

The area around is laden with places to visit, which offer a taste of virtually everything you’ll find in the rest of the country, with the exception of desert. There are magnificent national parks – Ku-ring-gai Chase, where you can pat a koala, and Royal being the best known – and native wildlife, each a mere hour’s drive from the centre of town; while further north stretch endless ocean beaches, great for surfers, and more enclosed waters for safer swimming and sailing. Inland, the gorgeous Blue Mountains – UNESCO World Heritage-listed – offer isolated bushwalking and scenic viewpoints.

• Coastal New South Wales and the ACT 

New South Wales is Australia’s premier state in more ways than one. The oldest of the six states, and also the most densely populated, its 6.4 million residents make up a third of the country’s population. The vast majority occupy the urban and suburban sprawl that straggles along the state’s thousand-plus kilometres of Pacific coastline, and the consistently mild climate and many beaches draw a fairly constant stream of visitors, especially during the summer holiday season, when thousands of Australians descend on the coast to enjoy the extensive surf beaches and other oceanside attractions.

South of Sydney, there’s a string of low-key family resorts and fishing ports, good for watersports and idle pottering. To the north the climate gradually becomes warmer, and the coastline more popular – the series of big resorts up here includes Port Macquarie and Coffs Harbour – but there are plenty of tiny national parks and inland towns where you can escape it all. One of the most enjoyable beach resorts in Australia is Byron Bay, chic these days, but still retaining something of its slightly offbeat, alternative appeal, radiating from the thriving hippie communes of the lush, hilly North Coast Hinterland.

• Inland New South Wales

Inland New South Wales

Inland New South Wales is a very different proposition from the populous coast, and although it’s not a stand-alone holiday destination and it might strike you as boring at times, travelling here gives you a real insight into the Australian way of life. The region stretches inland for around a thousand kilometres, covering a strikingly wide range of landscapes, from the rugged slopes of the Great Dividing Range to the red-earth desert of the Outback, dotted with relatively small agricultural and mining communities. The Great Dividing Range itself runs parallel to the coast, splitting the state in two.

West of the range, towns such as Bathurst and Dubbo date back to the early days of Australian exploration, when the discovery of a passage through the Blue Mountains opened up the rolling plains of the west. Free (non-convict) settlers appropriated vast areas of rich pastureland here and made immense fortunes off the back of sheep farming, establishing the agricultural prosperity that continues to this day. When gold was discovered near Bathurst in 1851, and the first goldrush began, New South Wales’ fortunes were assured. Although penal transportations ceased the following year, the population continued to increase rapidly and the economy boomed as fortune-seekers arrived in droves. At much the same time, Victoria broke off to form a separate colony, followed by Queensland in 1859.

• Tasmania

Tasmania

There’s an otherworldly quality to Tasmania, with its landscapes of ancient rainforest and brooding mountains. In its past as prison island Van Diemen’s Land, it became so tainted in the public mind with convict brutality that its name was changed in a rebranding exercise. These days, the island is a far friendlier place. With distances comprehensible to a European traveller – it’s roughly the size of Ireland – and echoes of England, Tasmania has a homespun, small-town charm. The gentle and cultivated midlands, with their rolling hills, dry-stone walls and old stone villages, are reminiscent of England’s West Country – a deliberate attempt to re-create home by colonial settlers. Town names, too, invariably invoke the British Isles – Perth, Swansea, Brighton and Dover among them.

Tasmania is the closest point in Australia to the Antarctic Circle, and the west coast is windswept, wet and savage, bearing the full brunt of the Roaring Forties. Much of the southwest is pure wilderness; a place of wild rivers, impassable temperate rainforests, buttongrass plains and glacially carved mountains and tarns that form a vast World Heritage Area, crossed only by the Lyell Highway, and offer some of the world’s best wilderness walking and rafting. With forty percent of the island protected in parks and reserves, it’s still one of the cleanest places on Earth: a wilderness walk, breathing the fresh air and drinking freely from tannin-stained streams, is a genuinely exhilarating experience.

• Kangaroo Island

See native wildlife in the wild in the ecological haven of Kangaroo Island.
Kangaroos, koalas, wallabies, penguins, echidnas and bird life all call this island home. Walk amongst a colony of endangered Australian sea lions at Seal Bay. See sleepy koalas in the trees. Load up on fresh produce - from Ligurian honey to free range chickens and eggs - and wine produced by 30 growers from Cape Willoughby to Kingscote.
The Island is also home to breathtaking scenery. Rugged coastal cliffs, sheltered bays cupped between steep headlands, vast native bushland and rolling hills of farmland are just some of the breathtaking landscapes on offer.

 Feed pelicans and see giant cuttlefish, seahorses and little penguins at Kingscote Wharf. Meet wallabies, brush-tailed possums and kangaroos on a nocturnal tour along American River. Cuddle koalas and hand-feed lorikeets, hold a possum or get wrapped by a snake at Stokes Bay. Bushwalk past the ducks, swans and waders of Murray Lagoon in Cape Gantheaume Conservation Park. Observe Australian sea lions at Seal Bay and over 7,000 New Zealand fur seals playfully interacting in and around Admirals Arch in Flinders Chase National Park, also home to hundreds of docile kangaroos. You’ll spot koalas pretty much everywhere, but some of their most popular hangouts are in the trees of Hanson Bay Sanctuary and Western KI Caravan Park.
Visit the cellar door of the island’s first and largest winery at Cape Willoughby, shuck oysters in Penneshaw and visit local farms making sheep's milk cheese and mounth-watering Ligurian honey in MacGillivray and Kinsgcote. Kangaroo Island is also dotted with cosy cafes and elegant restaurants. Dine on Nepean Bay oysters overlooking the ocean and sample other premium seafood in season in Penneshaw. Enjoy a five-star feast amongst the wilderness on the South Coast and a sunset seafood and marron platter next to the rockpool in Parndana.  Fill your beach house with gourmet produce, pack a picnic for a day of touring and take home a case of your favourite wines.