As the Harbor stretches its turquoise tentacles into every inner suburb of Sydney, the 70 beaches that lace the city’s edges have created a hedonistic surf culture on a par with Rio and Waikiki.  The most beloved of the urban beaches is Bondi (pronounced Bond-eye).  Here, between sandstone headlands at the eastern fringe of the city, the long glassy rollers of the Pacific Ocean thunder onto a half-mile of golden powdery sand.

In the 1920s, Bondi was a modest version of Coney Island, where city dwellers in need of fresh air would travel here by a rattling tram to cool off with an ice cream or cheap fish-and-chips by the sea.  In the 1950s, the surf craze arrived from Hawaii, luring thousands with their boards into the crashing surf.  And since the 1990s, Bondi has gentrified, attracting millionaires and movie stars.

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Sydney Harbor is Australia’s most renowned natural feature – a glorious, deep water inlet where yachts flit past the vast pearly shells of the Opera House and under the  soaring steel arc of the Harbor Bridge.  (Completed in 1932, it is referred to locally as “the Coat Hangar”).  Today, over 200 years since it was settled by the British, the Harbor remains surprisingly in touch with nature.  Much of the shorefront, Australia’s most valuable real estate, is still protected as national park land: Walking tracks curve through eucalyptus-fringed wilderness filled with boisterous native birdlife and up along high sandstone cliffs riddled ancient Aboriginal rock carvings.  Read the rest of this entry »

A free entertainment newspaper, Barfly is published every Thursday and will guide you to the after-hours hot spots and local music scene in Cairns. Be sure to pick one up.

Once considered a sport for Australia’s elderly, lawn bowling has made a comeback. Grab a beer, kick off your shoes, and join the trendy at Paddington Bowling Club for this quirky pastime.

It’s hard to believe today, when Australia’s wines are world famous and fine vintages are readily available in every pub and café from Wagga to Oodnadatta, but it was not until the 1970s that Aussies really began to appreciate the virtues of the grape. Thanks to the post-war waves of immigrants from Italy and Greece, Aussies shifted away from their traditional passion for beer, port and rum and began what experts have dubbed the Great Wine Revolution. Read the rest of this entry »

For nature-lovers, a visit to the Great Barrier Reef is a quasi-religious experience. The 1600 mile long organism, which can even be identified from space, is actually a web of 2,900 self-contained reefs that lie between 40 and 100 miles off Australia’s north-east coast. From a plane, the Reef looks like a giant blue rash, but beneath its placid waves lie canyons of brilliant coral, each one a mini-galaxy of sea life, including wildly colored fish and anemones, giant turtles, moray eels, sharks and manta rays so large they can blot out the sun’s light as they pass overhead. Read the rest of this entry »

Fishlips Bar & Bistro

If you want to go where the locals go for seafood in Cairns, this is the place. You can try the local barramundi or be more adventurous and order the pan-fried crocodile!

Fitzroy Island

Just a short ferry ride from Cairns, this island is an outdoor adventurer’s paradise. Try windsurfing, canoeing, or snorkeling—and be sure to try one of the most delightful experiences: the rainforest walk to the mountaintop lighthouse! Read the rest of this entry »

Almost everything has two names in the Outback these days. Ayers Rock, the symbol of the Red Center, is now more correctly known by its traditional Aboriginal name, Uluru. The famous monolith sprouting from the desert had been given its stolid English title in 1873 by the first European explorer to clap eyes on it in 1873, Ernest Giles, in honor of his dull British benefactor, Sir Henry Ayer. Read the rest of this entry »