Australia Highlights
Sydney
The country's biggest and best-known city is world-famous for its harbour, dominated by the unmistakable Opera House. And if you venture beyond the city's superb parks, museums, restaurants and nightlife, Bondi and Manly beaches offer the ideal R&R, with joggers on the promenade, bodybuilders flexing their pecs, and surfies catching a few waves before work. See also our online city guide to Sydney.
Great Barrier Reef
This World Heritage Site is one of the natural wonders of the world. It's the largest coral reef on earth and also one of the most accessible, consisting of over 2,500 separate, interconnected reefs stretching over 1,430 miles from the northern tip of Australia's continental shelf to Bundaberg in the south. From late April to October it's at its best, the clear skies and moderate breezes offering perfect conditions for coral viewing, diving, swimming, fishing and sunning. Underwater, it's almost sensory overload with vast forests of staghorn coral, whose tips glow purple like Christmas tree lights; brilliant blue clumps of mushroom coral; layers of pink plate coral; bulbous green brain coral and more than 1,000 species of fish and creatures like the dugong, humpback whale and loggerhead turtles.
Wet Tropics Rainforest
Stretching from Mossman through to Cairns, Cape Tribulation and Cooktown is tropical rainforest that's at least 100 million years old (compared with the Amazon's paltry 10 million). North Queensland's rainforest (now protected as part of the Wet Tropics World Heritage area and a patchwork of national parks) has the highest diversity of local endemic species in the world. Fully one-fifth of Australia's bird species, a quarter of its reptiles, a third of its marsupials, a third of its frogs and two-fifths of its plants are here in a mere thousandth of the Australian landmass.
Cradle Mountain, Tasmania
Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park is Tasmania's most famous wilderness area. Moraine lakes, expansive heathlands, excellent mountain vistas, good trails and the chance to spot wildlife like wallabies, echidnas or wombats make this one of Australia's best walking areas. The six-day Overland Trek, through the length of the park, is considered the ultimate Aussie bush-walk. In the northern end, the more accessible, one of the most spectacular views in Tasmania (of Cradle Mountain with Dove Lake) can be had just from the car park.
Ayers Rock Uluru
Australia's great Outback icon, Uluru means "meeting place" and many Aboriginal dreaming tracks or "songlines" intersect here. Ayers Rock is the world's largest monolith, standing 348 meters tall with a circumference at the base of almost 9 km. Spirituality is often grounded in common sense, and Uluru, with its permanent waterhole, abundant animal life, shelter and firewood, has been saving lives for millennia. The rock is sacred to the local Anangu people, who resumed ownership of the lands inside the National Park in 1985 in a historic "hand back" ceremony. The Rock climb is a major attraction for many visitors, but is considered by resident park rangers and rescue teams alike to be a tacky and dangerous activity. Nearby Kata Tjuta or The Olgas has a number of excellent trails. Uluru, like the entire Red Centre, will humble you with its scale and overwhelm you with its beauty.
Kakadu National Park
One of the brightest jewels in the whole array of Australian wilderness lies to the north of Katherine, only 247 km from Darwin. The richness of Kakadu defies description. Here, where the Arhem Land Escarpment meets the coastal floodplains, scenic splendour, world-famous galleries of Aboriginal art and an incredible array of flora and fauna come together. It is home to a quarter of all Australian freshwater fish, over 1,000 plant species, 300 types of birds, 75 species of reptiles, many mammals and innumerable insects. Aboriginal paintings at Ubirr Rock are a top sight. To see what makes Kakadu special, head out to one or more of the waterholes nestled at the base of the escarpment, such as Twin Falls, where the two strands of water drop right onto the end of a palm-shaded beach.
Melbourne
The capital of Victoria is Australia's financial and commercial heart. It is also Australia's most "European" city, a city crowded with Victorian architectural gems that plays Boston to Sydney's New York, and is the largest Greek city outside Greece. Its highlights include some superb parks, topped by the Royal Botanic Gardens, surely one of the finest in the world. Also worthwhile is Victoria Arts Centre, the circular Melbourne Concert Hall and a Museum of Performing Arts. Excursions from the city include driving the Great Ocean Road, southwest of the city, to Port Campbell National Park and its amazing natural rock formation: the Twelve Apostles.
Bungle Bungle Range
Western Australia's Bungles form one of the most astonishing natural features in the world, covering some 247 sq miles of the Ord River Valley with a labyrinth of orange and black, horizontally tiger-striped, domed mountains. The Kimberley is such an isolated region that the extraordinary Bungles were unknown to all but a few locals until 1983, when a photographer came upon them by chance. Within the canyons and gorges of the Purnululu National Park are palm-filled grottoes, enormous caves and white sand beaches.
Barossa Valley
This is easily the country's most famous wine region and only 50 km northeast of Adelaide. It takes about an hour to drive to the valley, a hollow in the rolling wheatfields founded by German Lutherans over a century ago. Many Barossa wineries have not only excellent produce but also magnificent grounds and buildings. Gawler is the major agricultural centre and surrounding towns offer old Lutheran churches of abiding beauty, with spires rising above quaint bluestone villages like Tanunda and Bethany.
Adelaide
Of all Australian state capitals, Adelaide is perhaps the most gracious. The "City of Light" has some of Australia's grandest homes and its central business district is surrounded by extensive parklands studded with majestic gum trees. Well worth a visit during the summer cricket season is Adelaide Oval, the country's most beautiful cricket ground; the South Australian Museum houses the world's largest collection of Aboriginal artefacts, while Adelaide's arts festival, held in March on even-numbered years, is not to be missed.