Oceania

Travel through Oceania by country:

Australia, Indonesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Zealand, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu

Travel through Oceania by popular city:

Auckland, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth, Sydney, Wellington

Travel through Oceania by popular things to do:

Cook Islands, Sydney Opera House

Travel through Oceania with our writers:

In the Corner of the World, Work and Play in Queensland

Give this man his own TV show now

by Brett Atkinson on

Celebrity TV chefs are all the rage, but I reckon I’ve found the next big foodie star way down in Tasmania. Forget Mr Angry Gordon Ramsay or uber-Cockney Jamie Oliver. The next big star shoud be Craig Williams, a former butcher who now runs Pepperbush Adventures in Tasmania. Craig’s preferred culinary gig is Aussie bush tucker and a few hours bouncing around by 4WD in the north Tasmanian bush with him is more fun (and tastier) than anything I’ve done in a while.

Craig’s a big fan of using natural ingredients from the Tasmanian bush, but too modest by half. His describes his steamed Tasmanian trout with sassafrass, lemon myrtle leaves and pepper berries as “Dead Fish With Leaves”, but it’s way more subtle and delicate than that.

Mind you, dining outside around an open fire as you wait for wallabies to start bouncing around at dusk would make any meal pretty special I guess.

South Seas mountain biking in the snow

by Brett Atkinson on

If you sign up for a morning’s mountain biking on a South Seas island, the last thing you expect is a rogue snowfall, right? Well if you’re on Australia’s southernmost (and only island) state you’d better be ready to literally experience four seasons in one day. Especially if you journey to the summit of Mt Wellington, huddled above the Tasmanian capital of Hobart in spring.

A few weeks back we left downtown Hobart – well worth a look with its collection of raffish harbourside pubs and a great weekend market – in complete sunshine . By the time we’d reached the 1270m summit of Mt Wellington there was a full on snowstorm – probably the first and last time I’ll experience snow in the Land of Oz.

Fifteen minutes later the clouds had parted and Hobart was before us in sunshine. And half an hour later – after a few semi-technical offroad stages – the rain and wind had come rolling back in.

But when a bike ride finishes up at one of the world’s most picturesque old breweries, changeable weather is the last thing you really care about.

Thanks to to Island Cycle Tours for the pic.

One for the Road: Colour – Travels Through the Paintbox

by Kelly Amabile on

This book beckoned me from a front table at Artisan Books on Gertrude St. in Melbourne’s Fitzroy neighborhood. The 2006 paperback version I bought has the bold cover shown here, although I’ve seen several other versions of this book that was originally released in 2002. Regardless of what it looks like, Victoria Finlay’s Colour: Travels Through The Paintbox is a masterpiece. Just as I enjoy looking at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers again and again, so too will I delight in returning to passages from this multicolored exploration of our world.

From ochre to violet, Findlay unearths every possible facet of the rainbow. Her research takes her to Spain, for Consuegra’s Saffron Festival (yellow), to lapis lazuli mines in Sar-e-sang, Afghanistan (blue), and to Mexico, in search of the purple of the Mixtecs (violet). Finlay takes the reader along on this magical journey as she creates a spectacular canvas loaded with pigments, dyes, gems and stones. Her quest to uncover the history and origins of color reveals a rich palette that stretches to every corner of our planet. It would be wonderful to see a map painted to match the discoveries from her color expeditions.

When in Queenstown…S..l..o..w D..o..w..n…

by Brett Atkinson on

Queenstown in New Zealand is renowned as the adventure capital of the world, but after spending a week there researching for Lonely Planet, I’ve realised some of the resort’s adrenaline fuelled activities don’t necessarily give travellers the best opportunity to experience the stupendous landscapes that surround you like out-takes from a Lord of the Rings DVD box set.

In reality some of the more popular thrill rides like the Nevis Highwire Bungy (anyone for 8.5 seconds freefall?) or the Shotover Canyon Swing are really just too damn fast to take in the incredible scenery that overwhelms every vista. But tandem hang gliding? Now that’s a different story…

I’d done skydiving before, but hang gliding is a whole new gig. Yes, it really did feel like flying as my Argentinean pilot Gerard surfed the glider on the slipping and sliding thermals rising around the ridges of Queenstown’s Coronet Peak.

Still thrilling as hell, and I’ll take fifteen minutes in the air surrounded by the dramatic peaks of the Remarkables mountain range over a sub ten-second injection of adrenaline any time.

A Bittersweet Reminder of Global Warming

by Brett Atkinson on

Excuse my absence from Gadling for the last couple of months. but I’ve been discovering what’s new and different in the South Island of New Zealand for the next edition of Lonely Planet’s guide to my home country. Normally my LP ventures with laptop and notebook take me overseas, but it’s been kind of cool to poke around off the beaten track in my own backyard.

Between being surprised by the increasing number of great Kiwi microbrews and dangling off a hang glider above Queenstown, the most bittersweet memory is an excursion by inflatable boat onto the waters of Lake Tasman. The lake’s just three decades old, and its increasing size is being fuelled as global warming melts the Tasman Glacier, still New Zealand’s largest river of alpine ice, but 5 km shorter than it was 30 years ago.

The lake’s now a similar length and dotted with icebergs of all shapes and sizes that are continually rearranged by the mountain winds like giant floating chess pieces. The crystalline ice is up to 500 years old, and a lack of air bubbles trapped from earlier centuries produces an almost diamond hardness.

Out on the lake, a surprising late spring overnight snowfall had settled on the icy monoliths, and the gossamer sprinkling was enough to disturb the delicate balance of several icebergs that turned and rebalanced during the early morning.

Beautiful yes, but also a poignant and tangible reinforcement of the impact of climate change.