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Climbers may be barred from Uluru

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 07:22:05 GMT

An Australian government proposal to stop people from climbing the famed Uluru, in deference to the wishes of indigenous people, sparked debate today with lawmakers opposing the plan.

Trail of the Unexpected: Parkes in New South Wales has two big claims to fame

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 23:00:01 GMT

On the adrenalin scale of thrills, Parkes scarcely rates. Or so it seemed at first. This sleepy bush town of 11,000 people is five hours' drive from the heart of Sydney, Australia, threading west beyond the wheat fields of Manildra, across dry creeks, on narrow capillary roads that are studded with wilting cypress trees and drooping eucalyptus.

Thrills and skills: All hands on deck and on shore in Fiji

Fri, 01 May 2009 23:00:01 GMT

You can see Fiji from many perspectives, but this one is special. Start in the town of Nadi, which lies on the western side of Viti Levu, Fiji's largest island. Handily, this is also the location for the archipelago's main international airport. Here you board an eight-seater plane for a 90-minute flight over ridiculously beautiful seas and tropical atolls. Your destination: the island of Taveuni in the north-east of the Fijian archipelago... and a journey aboard Tui Tai.

Pitch camp in the middle of Sydney Harbour

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 00:00:01 GMT

For several years it lay abandoned, a ghostly presence in the heart of Sydney Harbour, accessible only to those determined to reach it by boat. Now Cockatoo Island, has become a waterfront campsite in the middle of a city on one of the world's most beautiful harbours.

Tahiti's top attractions lie beneath the waves

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 00:00:01 GMT

I am paddling amid a group of five blacktip sharks which are cutting a smooth path through the warm, shallow ocean. It's my first encounter with the legendary underwater beasts – each at least two metres long – but their indifference to my presence is calming.

A world apart: Discover bicycle heaven and abundant birdlife on Lord Howe Island

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 00:00:01 GMT

It takes a while to get tuned into the Lord Howe Island way of life. The traffic on the narrow roads around the island consists mostly of bicycles. People wave at one another as they pass. Traffic signs are distinctly unusual: one shows the silhouette of a seabird and bears the message "Mutton Birds – Drive carefully". Collecting us from the small airstrip on our arrival from Sydney, the representative from the self-catering lodgings explained that we would not be getting a key to the lodge. On Lord Howe, nothing is locked. It's not that sort of place.

Into the Outback: Exploring Australia's Northern Territory

Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:00:01 GMT

There, peeking out from behind the scrub and the dawn mist, is a row of nonchalant whistling ducks. We hold our breath (and cross our fingers inside the boat) as a crocodile swims languorously towards them, and we breathe out again when he alters course. Able to concentrate again on the guide’s commentary, we realise that we are listening to a recipe for roasted whistling duck, “delicious served with wild lime”.

Best for far-flung inspiration: Australia

Sat, 07 Feb 2009 00:00:01 GMT

At Cable Beach, near Broome in Western Australia, the sun is showing off again, setting the skies carelessly ablaze as it descends beneath the horizon. Onlookers linger until the last shadows have vanished from the broad sweep of pearly white sand, and the rust-red rocks that frame it. Renowned for its sublime sunsets, Cable Beach is one of the world's most beautiful strands. Part of its appeal, though, is its proximity to Broome, a town like no other in Australia, steeped in multiculturalism, perched in splendid isolation on the continent's far north-west coast and custodian of an exotic history as hub of the international pearl trade.

On The Road: Systems failure on South island

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 00:00:01 GMT

I take the bus from Dunedin to Invercargill, the last town of any consequence in New Zealand's South Island. I am going to get my van out of storage, where it has been for the past 15 months. It starts first time. Unbelievable. Massive celebrations. One hour later, I go to the post office to secure a new registration, thinking it'll just need backdating.

Feeling blue? Sign up for the good life in Queensland

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:00:01 GMT

From October to April, extravagantly toxic Chironex box jellyfish drift into Queensland's shallows to breed, rendering vast tracts of shoreline hazardous to uncovered swimmers. So, wearing a protective Lycra catsuit that would make Terry Wogan blush, I perched on the side of the trawler and tumbled backwards into Blue Pearl Bay, beneath the rocky cliffs of Hayman Island in the Whitsundays.

Five luxury escapes in Polynesia

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 00:00:01 GMT

An island fling in New Zealand

Sat, 27 Dec 2008 00:00:49 GMT

Tea on Mou Waho Island, in the middle of Lake Wanaka. We had paused at an idyllic spot in the Southern Alps of New Zealand's South Island. As we admired the vast glacial lake, surrounded by snow-capped mountains, an uninvited guest strolled into view.

Trekking in the Australian Alps is no skip through a meadow

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 00:00:01 GMT

The cry went up: "Tiger snake!" Some animals have misleadingly fearsome names, such as the antlion, which isn't a lion. But "tiger" and "snake" carry baggage, especially in Australia. In the time it took me to work this out, and study the undergrowth for the reptile, I noticed I was now alone. My four walking companions had taken an eighth of a second to put 50 yards between them and danger.

Travel by numbers: The Australian Outback

Sat, 20 Dec 2008 00:00:01 GMT

The real star of 'Australia' is the Kimberley Mountains

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

On a bright October morning, I bumped along the graded Gibb highway toward El Questro, a million-acre ranch in the back end of Aussie nowhere. Iron-red cliffs competed for attention with 1,000-year-old boab trees, distant relations to Madagascar's celebrated baobabs. Their swollen, water-storing trunks underlined the all-embracing dryness, as the 4x4's air con struggled with a thermometer hovering around 42C. And it wasn't even 10am.

Let the good vines roll in New Zealand

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

There is no more sublime way to travel than in a hot-air balloon, I thought, as we drifted towards the town of Martinborough, on New Zealand's North Island. But to the sheep munching weeds in the vineyard below, the appearance of this monster was the signal to scatter in panic.

My holiday in Australia: Polly Burton, aged 7

Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:00:01 GMT

Five island havens in Australia

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 23:00:01 GMT

24-Hour Room Service: Henry Jones Art Hotel, Hobart, Australia

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 23:00:01 GMT

When the Tasmanian government took possession of a seen-better-days line of 19th-century warehouses and a disused jam factory on Hobart's blustery waterfront in the Seventies, it could have done two things: knock the whole lot down and commission a steel-and-glass number in their place, or preserve the historic façade and wait for someone with funds and imagination to do something interesting with the shell. The island's government took the controversial second option – then waited 30 years before Australia's first dedicated art hotel opened in 2004.

Stay The Night: The Royce Hotel, Melbourne

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 23:00:01 GMT

In the 1920s, the rich people of Melbourne would swagger around the Rolls-Royce showroom on St Kilda Road, a leafy highway that drills south from the city centre. Today, the building is a recently refurbished, five-star, family-owned boutique hotel, appropriately named The Royce Hotel.

Ride like the devil in Tasmania

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 23:00:32 GMT

When I told people I was coming to Tasmania, even seen-it-all Aussies, they said: "Ah, you'll like it there. It's like Britain in the 1950s." I was expecting a genteel sort of place with comfy boarding houses dressed with lace curtains.

Hotel Of The Week: Ohtel, Wellington, New Zealand

Sat, 09 Aug 2008 23:00:01 GMT

Although New Zealand is dead cool for the kind of traveller who enjoys dangling at the end of a bungee cord, nobody ever accused its cities of being hip. Ohtel, which opened this year in Wellington, the capital, aims to do something about that: it proclaims it is New Zealand's only designer boutique hotel.

Australia and New Zealand in winter: a photographer's guide

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:35:28 GMT

Mauritius: The life aquatic

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 23:00:26 GMT

If you like your towels fluffy, your bathtubs vast and your waiters attentive - and I certainly appreciate all three - then Mauritius is the place to come. Then again, I've always been worried that there's something ever-so-slightly pathetic about rolling from your oversized bed straight onto a padded sun lounger and then, well, back again. Even spa treatments involve lying flat on your back most of the time.

Serene dream: Ruby Wax thinks big in Thailand and Laos

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 23:00:01 GMT

My dream was always to go to Laos before it got Starbucked to death by my people, before a great deluge of tourism washed over its enchantment. I was told to get there fast, before the crowds came. But you can't reach Laos directly from the UK, which was how I found myself in Chiang Mai – a city in northern Thailand that, I'd heard, was also fairly untouched. Wrong. Chiang Mai, whatever anyone tells you, is a nightmare: a beehive of dishevelled bamboo shacks on stilts filled with plastic, giant-headed cats and insanely grinning tin Buddhas, as well as over-lit restaurants that seat 800 people.