I still have vivid memories of my first trip to Australia. I spent about a day exploring the rainforest and then stopped for the night in a small town in the middle of nowhere. I was as far away from the UK as I could get, in a bizarre remote world of wombats and giant conifers, but it felt like walking into a pub in Yorkshire.
Perhaps this is what makes Australia so fascinating for British tourists: it offers a remarkable contrast between the exotic and the familiar. There are familiar pops everywhere – place names, rugby posts on sports fields, Sydney’s Victorian terraces and Melbourne’s colourful beach huts. Where should I start travelling? Australia is vast – roughly the size of Europe – and its landscapes range from the green rainforests of Queensland to the vast red wilderness of the outback, from the bikini beaches of Bondi to the vast expanses of empty sand that surround much of its 21,000 miles of coastline.
Australia’s outback has long captured the imagination of a large number of visitors, and even more so at Uluru, the geographically and spiritually burning heart of Australia. Estimated to be over 500 million years old, this sandstone monolith radiates an array of fiery colours at sunrise and sunset. It is its sacred status that makes this place so special. Hear the fantastic story of how this magical landscape was formed and learn about the world’s oldest surviving civilisation. Meanwhile, adventurers can even jump into puddles, hike through the ochre-domed Olgas or trek along the steep cliffs of Kings Canyon to experience the environment first-hand. It’s also the perfect place to gaze at the unpolluted night sky and take a helicopter ride over the fiery red landscape during the day. Attractive indeed!
Yes, there’s no better adventure destination than Australia, a country so vast it’s a continent of its own. If you’re a rail enthusiast, there are two iconic train journeys: the 2,700-mile east-west Indian Pacific route between Sydney and Perth, passing through the legendary Nullarbor Plain and the Blue Mountains, and the 1,850-mile north-south Gann River route between Darwin and Perth Adelaide makes a brief stop at Alice Springs and passes through the country’s striking red heart. These routes are popular with travellers – especially Australians looking to learn more about their country – who are looking for comfort and joyful company.
If the freedom of the road is more your thing? There’s nothing more scenic than the Great Ocean Road, which runs between Torquay and Alansford in Victoria. Pick up a car in Melbourne and head south-west for spectacular ocean views, sandstone cliffs, tropical rainforests and the touching stories that tell of how the road was built. The journey from Melbourne to beyond the Twelve Apostles and back can be done in a day; but the best experience is to take your time and savour it as part of a wider journey through Adelaide, South Australia.
