Published Sunday, July 2, 2000. Shimmering Sydney for the Olympics, then a week at large in the Australian vastness - DAVID WICKERS and MARK OTTAWAY, Sunday Times writers, comb the continent for 12 dream-ticket holidays
ON WEDNESDAY, Australia celebrates 100 years of being a federated nation state, a day when its 18 million residents - including its leaders who are visiting Britain - will pause to look back on their short constitutional history. But the people of the Lucky Country know there are greater things to come: not least of these in September, when Sydney hosts the millennium's first Olympic event. No wonder your average ocker, is aglow with
national pride.
Australia is a nation transformed. In
the space of a generation, it has gone
from seducing the poms to emigrate there by dangling £10 air tickets to the most aspirational holiday destination on earth. Even the so-called tyranny of distance is now interpreted as a positive attribute, as the rest of the world grows more crowded, troubled and overtouristed.
Just a glance in the stock cupboard
will tell you why Australia has become
so enormously desirable. Its landscapes encompass tropical rainforests, vast deserts and the most awesome temperate forests left on the planet. There are
superlative-busting beaches, adrenaline-surging adventures and a culture more ancient than anything Europe can offer. The multicultural and Pacific Rim-
fusion tucker, flushed down with some
of the finest wines in the world, now inspires chefs on the far side of the globe.
The natives also seem genuinely pleased to see us, and for no particular reason ("How's England?" they might ask in a remote post office, as if inquiring after a fading relative). And, with the pound high, the Aussie dollar low, and air fares cheaper than ever, down under is irresistible.
The Games will be mostly held in and around Sydney, where even the first-day event, the women's triathlon that starts with a plunge into Sydney Harbour and swim to the Opera House, will be pure "Come to Australia" picture postcard. But with airlines from the UK serving a number of cities besides Sydney, it is remarkably easy to tack on another slice of Oz at the same time.
September, Australia's spring, is a particularly opportune time to see something of the tropical north: its dirt roads are passable, temperatures more bearable and lethal jellyfish don't limit the possibilities of sea swimming. Spring is also outback time - before the searing heat of summer.
All the holidays detailed below have Sydney as their point of entry or exit and prices are geared to the period of the Games, which run from September 15 until October 1. The length of stay and expense of the Sydney Olympics portion of the holiday is up to you - but even if the Games hold little interest, Sydney is such a high point of Aussie pleasures that we would recommend you give the city a week if you can, or at least a short break at the beginning or the end of the trip
(our packages include flights back to the UK from Sydney, but the itineraries work just as easily in reverse).
Because we're visiting during the Olympics, we haven't listed accommodation in Sydney. Beds are still available, both for independent travellers and for those wanting to travel on a package; however, just as tickets for the most popular Games events have long gone (see Travel Brief on getting tickets), city-centre beds are mostly sold out for the period.
That said, if you are happy to decamp to the suburbs or stay out of town in places such as the Blue Mountains or Hunter
Valley (both wonderful destinations in their own right as well as within easy reach of the action), you will still find
a room at the inn (again, our Travel Brief has details of alternative sources of accommodation for DIY visitors).
Despite fears of air-fare surges prior
to the Games, prices are no higher than their usual seasonal level, and there are even signs of their creeping down as the Games approach.
TOP END TO RED MIDDLE
The Northern Territory is where you'll find the classic outback, Australia's frontier country, where nearly half the land belongs to the Aborigines. More than 60 national parks and reserves fall within its boundaries, habitats of amazing wildlife.
Crocodile Dundee's pied-à-terre was the Kakadu National Park, a 12,000- square-mile World Heritage Site, a
tropical wilderness of untamed rivers,
wetlands, gorges, galactic landscapes, 20,000-year-old rock paintings and, of course, those fierce old salties whose teeth cry out for something a lot more substantial than dental floss.
Darwin is the prime gateway to the north country. Rent a car from the airport and, after a day or two in town (one that is fast gaining a reputation as a bit of a foodie haven), you might also want to explore the lesser-known Litchfield National Park, famous for its giant termite mounds and stunning waterfalls. Continuing south along the Stuart Highway to Alice Springs, through a series of timeless outback towns, you'll pass Tennant Creek, a 1930s gold Klondike, and the Devil's
Marbles, where huge red boulders balance precariously at the sacred Aboriginal site of Karlukarlu.
Sample package: fly to Darwin, spend one week driving to Alice, fly from Alice to Sydney for the Games, then home from Sydney. From £1,095 with Tailor Made Travel (01386 712000), including the first two nights' accommodation in Darwin (www.tailor-made.co.uk)
A HOUSE ON WHEELS
Rent a camper van, follow the coast from Cairns to Sydney and go from a tropical to a Mediterranean climate. Flexible, family-friendly and terrific value for money, a camper van also lets you tap into such roadside pleasures as picnicking on produce picked up from wayside fishermen's co-ops, wine shops and farmers' markets.
If all the way from Cairns sounds like too long a driving stint, compromise with the 600 miles between Brisbane and Sydney. For a break, you could linger in the Miami Beach-like Gold Coast, including Surfers Paradise, where the "life's a beach" philosophy is famously put to first-hand practice; but Byron Bay, epicentre of Australia's alternative lifestylists, gives a far better idea of what makes the beaches special. The country's most easterly point is also a
popular haunt for whales, with September marking the start of the viewing season (until November and again in June and July).
Sample package: with Travel Mood (020 7258 0280;
www.travelmood.com), a week's camper-van hire (sleeping two plus two) would cost £574 plus A$200 for the one-way drop-off, payable locally, plus return airfares to
Australia (see Travel Brief).
DOWN ON THE FARM
For an infusion of real, uncut Australia, look no further than a Host Farm.
They come in varying degrees of seriousness, from what are basically B&Bs with a paddock (which in Oz means an mere 1,000 acres), to real working farmsteads where you can get your hands dirty and your bottom saddle-sore.
Sample package: drive 99 miles from Perth to Gelfro for a working farm in
the Dryandra Forest, with the option to shear, muster or feed the 2,000 sheep. Price about £70pp full-board per night, with a minimum two-night stay, bookable through Travelbag (0870 737 7792;
www.travelbag.co.uk); flights to Perth, on to Syndey and home from £871; car hire from £24 per day.
SAILING THE WHITSUNDAYS
The Whitsundays, discovered by Captain Cook, are a dream archipelago for modern sailors, complete with untrod white-sand beaches. Only seven of the 74 islands have resorts; the rest are uninhabited and protected as national parks.
Sample package: a one-week bareboat (ie self-drive) yacht charter through Sunsail (023 9222 2222; www.sunsail.com) costs £1,390 for an Oceanis 321 (sleeping four to six), plus £819pp for flights to Sydney and connections to Hamilton Island, the No1 resort and yacht base.
GO TROPPO
The Bloomfield Rainforest Lodge is an intimate, informal retreat of timber cabins in between the blues of the Coral Sea and the greens of a World Heritage Site rainforest in far-north Queensland. Guided walks and croc-spotting cruises are included, with jaunts to
the Barrier Reef, 4WD safaris, aromatherapy massages and
picnics on deserted beaches among the optional extras.
Sample package: one week,
including all meals and scenic flight/launch transfers, costs £743, plus £889 for flights
from London to Cairns, then Cairns to Sydney and back to London, with Trailfinders (020 7938 3939).
INTO ALICE
There's plenty to do in Alice, including visits to the School
of the Air (the largest classroom in the world), the Flying Doctor HQ and the Didgeridoo University for lessons in boom-erang-throwing as well as music-making. At the Desert Springs Park you can even
sample the outback without leaving the city boundary;
here, three-quarters of the entire country is on show, a fascinating microcosm of all its various desert habitats and their indigenous wildlife.
But Alice is the ideal launch pad for playing bush, best in a 4WD, with nights spent surfing the stars in a swag, the most comfortable camp bed imaginable, one that you simply unfurl on the ground next to a fire.
Sample package: Travel Portfolio's (01284 762255) outback adventure costs £1,837, including two nights in Alice, three on a Peter Yates safari and a final night at the foot of Ayers Rock, the five-mile-round blob of rock standing almost as high as the Empire State Building, as well as flights to Alice via Darwin, then Ayers Rock to Sydney and home.
FINE WINE
Treasures from the Barossa
and Hunter valleys are on show in an off-licence near you. But the best place to sample wines of the lesser-known but equally exciting Margaret Valley is
on location. Many are predicting that, within a decade, the region, about five hours' easy drive south of Perth, will be
up there with Bordeaux, Provence and Tuscany as one of the great wine-tourism destinations of the world. Aside from fine vintages, the area has
miles and miles of empty beaches, dramatic hardwood forests, whale-watching and some great little hotels with good restaurants, such as those at Vasse Felix and the Driftwood Estate, with menus designed to bring out the best in the wines.
Sample package: One week with Jetset (0870 700 3000), with flights to Perth, then to Sydney and home: £1,295.
TASTE OF TASSIE
Imagine the whole of rural Britain as an empty wilderness and you begin to get the picture. No, it's not the best time to go, but there is nowhere else in temperate climes where you feel the enormous power of nature as you do here. From the southern shores of the Tasman peninsula, on cliffs savagely eroded by the swell of seas fuelled by the Roaring Forties, the feeling is one of utter isolation.
Tasmania lays claim to Australia's cleanest air, the greatest historical site (the Port Arthur penal colony), the best apples, and the newest (since December) hiking trail. The Bay of Fires is a four-day escorted walk along the remote northeastern coast of Tasmania, through the pristine Mount William National Park. Deserted sweeping beaches, rocky headlands, heathlands and lagoons, with sightings of kangaroos, echidnas, wombats, Tasmanian devils and brush-tail possums, will
fill your days.
Sample package: roughly £465 from Launceston, including three nights' accommodation (two under canvas, one
in a lodge), all meals, day pack and waterproof jacket and
luggage transfers.
Details: 00 61 3-6331
2006;
www.bayoffires.com.au or
www.cradlehuts.com.au
BARRIER CREAM
The only way to take in the 1,250-mile-long Great Barrier Reef, the world's biggest living organism, is from the porthole of a spaceship. But there are rewarding compromises.
Such is the diversity of the 19 resort islands that there's bound to be one to meet your needs. At the top of the style league
is Lizard, which reopened on July 22 after a six-month, A$13m upgrade that includes a new spa pavilion. It offers diving at Cod Hole (famous for its school of 6ft-long potato cod and wrasse), snorkelling, fishing for marlin and bush-
walking. A less costly alternative is Heron, a one-mile-around island sitting right on the Tropic of Capricorn and both a wildlife - terns to turtles - sanctuary and a divers' island, with a range of accommodation from simple cabins to luxurious beach houses.
Sample package: Austravel (0870 055 0206;
www.austravel.com) has one-week packages to both: Lizard £2,818, including all meals, flights to Cairns and out to the islands, then to
Sydney and back to the UK; Heron £1,568, room-only, with flights via Brisbane.
HOLY SMOKE
Holy Smoke, soon to be released on video (September 18), was filmed in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia. The location is a brilliant microcosm of the
Aussie outback, with rugged mountains broken by gum-lined creeks and dark stands of native pines, hills sculpted like lapping waves, red sands and dramatic gorges that have long drawn Aussie landscape painters.
The area is also studded with aboriginal rock paintings and petroglyphs, abandoned mines and settlements such as the township of Parachilna, population seven. This includes those who run the Prairie Hotel, a proper old (1876) outback pub in the middle of nowhere, with railway gangers, kangaroo shooters, West End Draught, country rock in the bar and "feral food" (kangaroo stir-fry, emu prosciutto, etc) that has
an award from Gourmet Traveller magazine. Rooms start at £22 a night.
The Prairie is one of the "Little Gems", a unique collection of Australian B&Bs, guesthouses, lodges and boutique hotels ranging from fire stations to log cabins and outback pubs to sheep stations. With an average of seven rooms, each has a story to tell: most are
featured here for the first time in a UK brochure available through Bridge the World (020 7734 7447;
www.bridgetheworld.com).
TRAIN SETS
The convenience of air travel in Australia is also its shortcoming. A far better way to get a handle on the size of the place is to travel by train. There are several options.
The Ghan, named after the Afghan camel herders who
pioneered the route, sets off from Alice, cuts through the Macdonald Ranges and crosses the terrifying nothingness of the Simpson desert en route to Adelaide, where it now continues once a week to either
Melbourne or Sydney. A first-class sleeper for the two-day, two-night journey to Sydney, leaving Sundays, costs £455, including all meals.
The Great South Pacific Express (020 7805 5100),
part-owned by Orient-Express, is the only "five-star hotel on wheels in the southern hemisphere". It operates from Brisbane to Cairns (weekly) and Sydney (fortnightly) From £520 for a one-night trip between Brisbane and Sydney (September 9 departure), including all meals and excursions.
The Indian Pacific links two oceans and two cities, Sydney and Perth, on a 65-hour,
2,704- mile service via Adelaide, across the Nullarbor Plain to Kalgoorlie, including the longest straight stretch of railway in the world - 300 miles without so much as a kink: £750, one-way, to Sydney.
Other trains include the Overland, linking Adelaide and Melbourne; the Sydney-Melbourne Express; and the Queenslander, between Brisbane and Cairns.
All are bookable through
Leisurail (0870 750 0222;
www.orient-express.com).
SEASIDE BOULEVARD
Running broadside to the yawning "Great Bite" of the Southern Ocean is a classic in the
global gazetteer of spectacular drives. It officially begins in Warrnambool and ends in Geelong, a distance of some 200 miles, but from a practical perspective - airports, car hire and so on - it really runs all the way from Adelaide to
Melbourne.
The highlights? The immense, desolate lagoons of the Coorong, a wetland sanctuary for millions of birds, including the world's largest colony of nesting pelicans; the wineries of the Coonawarra; the old whaling station of Port Fairy, where, each night, a million short-tailed shearwaters return to their homes in the dunes after a day's fishing; the 120-mile Shipwreck Coast, including the splendid maritime museum at Flagstaff Hill; the calving whales at Logan's Beach
(September marks the end of the season); the gallery of pale-yellow caves, arches, stumps and stacks, including London Bridge and the Twelve Apostles; and the Otway Ranges National Park.
Sample package: one week with car hire, accommodation (including Adelaide and Melbourne) and flights to Adelaide, then Melbourne to Sydney and home, costs £984 (if booked before July 10) through Quest Worldwide (020 8547 3111).
GETTING THERE: you fly to Oz in less than 20 hours, and into one city and home from another at no extra cost. While the official published fares hover around the £1,800 mark, those sold through consolidators are much better value and, despite the Olympics, prices have not soared as some predicted. One of the best current deals - which needs to be booked before July 10 - is with Singapore Airlines: £699, including tax and one free internal
flight, for September travel and bookable through Bridge the World (020 7734 7447;
www.bridgetheworld.com).
Other sources: Flightbookers (020 7757 2468), STA (020 7361 6262), WEXAS (020 7589 0555) and flynow.com (020 7835 2000) have return fares for about £800 at Games time.
INTERNAL AIRFARES: in Australia these are not cheap, but there are big savings available to travellers from abroad when booking an air pass with their international ticket. There are two types: the Qantas Boomerang and the Ansett G'day passes, with fares for a single zone starting at £77, or £99 when you cross from one zone into another.
TOUR OPERATORS: BA Holidays (0870 242 4245); Supertravel (020 7962 1000); Kuoni (01306 740500); Qantas Holidays (020 8222 9129); Classic Connection (01244 355310); Boomerang (0800 428787); Hayes and Jarvis (0870 898 9890); Travel 2 (0870 606 3222).
MORE INFORMATION: telephone 0906 863 3235 (60p/
min) for a copy of the 2000/
2001 Australia Travellers Guide.
BEST GUIDEBOOK: Australia guides published by Lonely Planet and Rough Guide.
DOING THE OLYMPICS: the bad news for those who have yet to book their ringside seats is that virtually all the key events, as well as the most central hotels, are now sold out. However, all is not lost. If visitors are happy to watch B- or even C-list fixtures they will still be able to buy either tickets or packages including flights, hotels and tickets. For details of ticket availability, call Sportsworld (01235 550904, or 01235 554844 for details of remaining inclusive tours).
Ray White has the rights to
all residential accommodation throughout the Games, either self-catering Homestays or Homehost properties, which are shared with the owners. As an alternative to Sydney itself, consider the Blue Mountains, with its good train link to the Olympic site. Prices range from A$90 to more than A$500 per bedroom per night. Details: 00 61 2-9262 3700, or www.raywhite.net. For details of a Pubstay programme, call 2-9281 6922.
