Travel Destinations - Australia

Adelaide: Head for the Hills

Leo Schofield explores the rolling ranges and dells east of Adelaide, home to great wines, tasty cheeses and some of Australia's finest chocolate-dipped figs

There's an obelisk at the summit of Mount Lofty, the centrepiece of the long, lazy mountain ranges east of Adelaide. It was placed there to mark the first sighting by a white man, the explorer Matthew Flinders, of these noble peaks – better known today as the Adelaide Hills.

While [ read more ]

Darwin: At Home at the Beginning of the World

Young boys from the Rembargna aboriginal tribe paint up with pipe clay when visiting the special Dukuladjarranj site in central Arnhemland
Stanley Stewart makes his way around Australia's Northern Territory, where the art is ancient, the birds are bibulous and headwear needs a back story

In the Northern Territory, hats have attitude. I had bought a fine Akuba in the best bush outfitters in Darwin, but no one was fooled. In these parts hats are not mere hats: they are biographies. Paul's hat had been chewed by a crocodile. Tom's hat had never been the [ read more ]

Australia: Larger than Life

The Big Cow - one of six big bovines lording it over Aussie
From oversized fruit to colossal cattle, Sam Ailwood ponders why Big Things are such a big deal in Australia

Last year four men were arrested and fined for stealing the testicles from a giant fibreglass bull in Rockhampton, the so-called Beef Capital of Australia. Still more remarkably, that wasn't the first time it had happened. In fact it's a local rite of passage. "Every year some kids nick his [ read more ]