Pubs can be the best kind of museums. Lobster claws, false teeth, big fish, offbeat photos – you’ll never guess what the next watering hole will deliver.
In Marrawah, on Tasmania’s west coast, the local is festooned in tiger snake skins. Near Mount Beauty, in Victoria, the Bogong Hotel boasts the country’s longest gum leaves, [...]
Every year, Alice Springs (NT) goes psychedelic between the ears. Reds, greens, ochres and polka dots: the wool is utterly wild in the desert’s own Beanie Festival.
More than a gimmick, the beanie bash is a celebration of the traditional crafts among the local Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara women, as Alice tends to get real chilly in late [...]
‘What sort of bowler is this fellow?’ the young Don Bradman asked the wicketkeeper.
‘Don’t you remember this bloke?’ came the reply. ‘He bowled you out in the exhibition match in Lithgow a few weeks ago, and has been boasting about it ever since.’
With that reminder, a 24-year-old Bradman belted 33 off Bill Black’s first eight-ball [...]
If you’ve never seen a platypus in the wild, or a ghost in your bed, then Malanda Lodge, on the Atherton Tablelands, 80kms southwest of Cairns, looms as your chance to kill two birds.
According to http://www.strangenation.com.au/casebook/ghostroom17.htm, the ghost occupies Room 17. Noeleen Stagg the cleaner was the first to notice the spook. She’d mop the [...]
If you haven’t already, this is your last week to send us a photo for the Cassowary Crossing competition. Entries are steady without being a flood, so there’s every chance your offbeat snap may snag a trip around Oz for two, going Greyhound coaches on fully flexible tickets.
The link http://www.penguin.com.au/cassowary/ will spell out the finer [...]
Five minutes from the Cadbury chocolate factory, on Hobart’s Derwent River, is a mummified cat-head. The moggy once prowled the palaces of Luxor, until going the way of most royal Egyptians.
The Sacred Book of the Dead also caught up with Ankh-pefy-hery, a priest from the Nile town of Kroptos, whose sarcophagus lies a few paces [...]
BOTHWELL, TAS – Transplanted to Tasmania, Scottish migrants missed golf like an arm and a leg. So Edinburgh-born Alexander Reid turned part of his Tassie sheep run, Ratho, into a nostalgic 9-holer.
That was around 1822, long before America and much of England could boast their own golf links. Is it possible? Can sleepy Tasmanian claim [...]
SHARK BAY, WA – The rabbit-proof fence of Western Australia has become the ‘feral barrier’ of Nanga Bay, keeping the likes of cats and foxes out of the eco-sensitive peninsula.
As Phase One of Project Eden, the fence lies across the Taillifer Isthmus, just east of the Nanga Bay turnoff in the Shark Bay World Heritage [...]
RUTHERGLEN, VIC – What Howard Anderson and his daughter Christobelle don’t know about Methode Champenoise you could write on a grape. These two oenologists (flash term for wine experts) make one of Australia’s few on-site champagne ranges, not that I can say champagne. (But it bubbles and pops, it’s won prizes and it’s not Pepsi [...]
Tramp-cum-clown Bill Bryson described Hay as a ‘modest splat’ in his travel book, Down Under. And flat, you reckon? This crop-and cattle splat on the black-soil plains, roughly halfway between Sydney and Adelaide, is flat as a roadkill cat.
Meaning it’s picture-perfect for possibly the best inland sunset in Australia (after Uluru), with barely a blip [...]