go-see-do guide for adventurous travellers
Are you ready to return to that magical land of mountains awash with rocks and rainforest; steep passes, plunging waterfalls and patch-worked plains; green and glowing with magnificent sunsets? What land is this? It’s Australia’s amazing Scenic Rim Region that I introduced in Part One HERE! Don’t recall? Check it out NOW! I’ll wait … … OK! You’re back! So[…]
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There’s a magical, mystical land where ancient, dense rainforests cloak majestic mountains, their serrated silhouettes marching across a dramatically sensational skyline. Where vertically columned cliffs fall into fertile valleys patch-worked with produce and criss-crossed by rocky streams. Picturesque hamlets dot the landscape providing shelter, food and a base from which to explore their impossibly scenic surroundings. Numerous National parks showcase[…]
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By Northern Hemisphere standards, winter in many areas of Australia isn’t particularly cold. But that doesn’t stop a mass exodus from the ‘cold’ south during the Aussie winter (officially June/July/August), to the north where it’s actually hot! But it’s not just the average daily maximum of around 30 °C that makes the Kimberley region stretching across the north of Western[…]
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Australian Opal I didn’t understand all the fuss about SiO2.nH2O until 2004. That’s when I first visited Coober Pedy. It’s slap bang in the middle of absolutely freakin’ nowhere in the South Australian Outback. And it’s where I first found a piece of SiO2.nH2O I wanted to take home with me. You might know SiO2.nH2O better as Hydrous Silica. Or[…]
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1 The Gun Birder* Driving a bouncing 4WD with 4 passengers along a rough station track in search of Australia’s rarest bird wasn’t cramping the gun birder’s style one bit. All I could see were the vast, rolling plains of grass and samphire stretching to the horizon against an endless blue sky. But our driver and guide on the Broome[…]
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1. Happy Campers – Bright Big 4 Caravan Park From the expletives, it appeared the rain-lashed grey nomads repeatedly jack-knifing their massive van into the bushes around their campsite as thunder rumbled thorough the night were NOT “Livin’ the Dream” their van proclaimed. Although their inadvertent behavioural benchmark reinforced the pact between Pilchard and I. ‘If I ever …’ Pilchard[…]
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1925 D17 Class Steam Locomotive ‘Capella’ in Tumoulin, Queensland Over 100 years ago on 31 July 1911, regional Parliamentary representatives invited to the Herberton-Tumoulin railway line opening were too busyto attend according to a local historian. Exactly 100 years later – and how things have changed!! Crossing the trestle bridge, Tumoulin to Ravenshoe So, on 31 July 2011, during a[…]
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Think of ‘Australia’ and ‘Paradise’ in the same sentence and I’ll bet you’re thinking tropical. White sandy beaches, palms and and clear blue sea. Colourful fish, corals and lush rainforest. Balmy, moonlit nights and cocktails under the stars. But that splendid vision – while undeniably fabulous – is only one of many versions of utopia in this country of diverse[…]
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Red and friends at Kambah Travellers heading downunder don’t always consider the Australian Capital Territory’s Kambah as an alternative to more well known adventure destinations such as Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef. Sure, overpaid bureaucratsgovernment workers and fat cats politicians form a disproportionately high percentage of OZ capital Canberra’s ~400,000 population, with champion drinkers students making up much of[…]
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Fogg Dam Conservation Reserve# The muggy tropical night enclosed me in its warm fist, immediately bonding the long-sleeved light shirt I wore to my sweaty glowing skin. A squadron of mosquitoes lined me up and zoomed in for the kill – until they reached the tropical strength DEET forcefield surrounding me and fell back, choking on the blood they’d sucked[…]
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