Travel

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  Hunters and Collectors

  First published in T Australia: New York Times Style Magazine, June 2021

  “YOU CAN FILL up there,” says our guide, Nic. Several members of the group are already crouched on the creek’s mossy banks to bottle its flow. “Is here OK?” I ask, dunking my flask into a rocky pool. We’re mere hours into the six-day Overland Track and a bout of gastro would be calamitous. Renowned Tasmanian landscape artist Peter Gouldthorpe, here to paint en plein ...

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  Cape Naturaliste to Cape Leeuwin walk

  First published in The Australian, September 2021

  When our guides leave late on day one, it’s as if they fade into the scrub. That’s how tightly tucked Injidup Spa Retreat is in the acacia, pig face, kangaroo paw and beard heath that carpets the coastline of Leeuwin-Naturaliste national park. And yet. “I go past 16 wineries, four breweries and a chocolate place on my way home,” says our Walk Into Luxury guide, ...

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  Gone to seed in Tasmania

  First published in The Australian, July 2021

  Botanists are always in the mood. Especially when they are in the Tasmanian wilderness world heritage area with permission from Parks and Wildlife to go off track if a “target” species is spied. I’ve joined eight walkers on a botany-themed version of the Overland Track run by Tasmanian Walking Company, the only operator with private huts on the 65km trail. The Overland, on Palawa country, ...

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  Sprouting new life

  First published in The Saturday Paper, June 2021

  It’s foolishly late to be fuelled by coffee and cortisol, bumping down a dirt road in a national park full of suicidal marsupials. An owl glares at us from a bough. Strange things are happening in the trees. Eucalypts wreathed in regrowth is nothing new but a charred stump covered with clusters of white blossoms? We stop to look at it and hear the ocean ...

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  Around the traps

  First published in The Saturday Paper, January 2021

  The swiftest way to interest people in Baiame’s Ngunnhu (the Brewarrina Aboriginal fish traps) is to state, as many have, that the stone traps are the oldest surviving human-made construction in the world. It’s some elevator pitch. But superlatives such as ‘oldest’ “don’t come from us,” says Ngemba man Bradley Hardy.  “That’s not us competing, it’s the archaeologists,” he says. “Within our nature, within our ...

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  Hot bore baths, ancient traps and chaotic courtesy buses

  First published in Guardian Australia, November 2020

  Borders are closed but Australians are still travelling, swapping our top three destinations of New Zealand, Bali or the United States for our own backyards instead.  Yet in this year of domestic travel, Australia’s majority non-Indigenous population should remember these aren’t “our” backyards. Indigenous sovereignty was never ceded, though this truth is not made plain. In preparation for our trip around northwest NSW, and on ...

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  Valley of the god

  First published in The Australian, July 2020

  The ‘paparazzi free’ hashtag on Hermes Estate’s Instagram page is not ironic. The pre-COVID plan for this private retreat on NSW’s north coast was to entice international elites who’d be more dissuaded by a drone-operated camera than an $11,000 per night price tag. Originally slated to open in March and still faced with closed borders, Hermes Estate’s husband and wife team have swung open the ...

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  Scents and sensibilities

  First published in The Saturday Paper, July 2020

  “A Catholic funeral.” “Rotting oranges.” “Burnt hair.” We’re sniffing strips of cardboard freshly dipped in a jar of aldehyde. In 1920, when Coco Chanel was deciding on her signature scent, her perfumer accidentally put 10 times too much aldehyde in his blend. “That’s the one!” Chanel apparently declared.  “Until then women had smelled like vanilla and violets,” says Saskia Wilson-Brown, founder of the Institute of ...

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  Historic pubs full of cheer

  First published in The Australian, May 2020

  Soak up the atmosphere at these regional NSW watering holes. The Prince of Wales Hotel, Gulgong Gulgong radiates 19th-century charm with its veranda posts, original shop facades and occasional horse trough. After poking through the fascinating Henry Lawson Centre museum, head to the Prince of Wales Hotel, a favourite for pub grub such as its award-winning steak sandwich. Run by the Ellis family since 1976, ...

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  Under the spell of Santa Fe, home and sanctuary of Georgia O’Keeffe

  First published in The Australian Financial Review (Life & Leisure), March 2020

  Some call painter Georgia O’Keeffe the mother of American modernism. The Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe – one of just a few in the world dedicated to a female artist – describes her simply as one of the most significant artists of the 20th century. Either way, her paintings of flowers and New Mexico landscapes, in particular, are luminous and unforgettable. “There is a huge interest in O’Keeffe’s life ...