Cottesloe Beach. The shade of Araucarias. The warm sunshine soaks in. Salt on skin crackles from a swim. Hot towel dusted with sand. The blue green Indian sparkles. Volleyballers distract. For a moment. There’s a light breeze in my ears. Waves lapping. The deep blue sky. Eyes close. Anxiety empties away.

An early summer morning at North Cottesloe Beach is really quite magical. The warm air scented with Frangipani, tunnels of green along shady paths, the crystal-clear light, and the sparkling water, the Indian Ocean no less, a serene light blue green and a balmy 24 degrees.  You’d think a three-hour time difference from Sydney would…

The Beach Hut has to be one of the Great British Seaside icons, along with ice creams (99’s), sandcastles and cheekily rude postcards. Today, there are reportedly over 20,000 private beach huts in the UK, with nearly 2000 of them along the beaches of Bournemouth alone – 70% of them privately owned.  The beach huts…

There’s a glorious quirky little pocket of West London known as Little Venice, tucked away at the Paddington Basin where the Grand Union meets the Regent’s Canal – an 8-mile-long working waterway built in the early 1800’s, linking the Grand Junction Canal’s Paddington Arm with the Thames at Limehouse. It’s thought that Lord Byron first…

From the 1930’s to the early 80’s, Battersea Power Station was a working power plant, producing a fifth of London’s electricity and, at one point, becoming the largest power station in the UK- dubbed at the time the ‘temple of power’.  This imposing Art Deco brick building, with its four iconic chimneys has dominated the…

Wonga Beach is over 10 kilometres long, stretching from Rocky Point all the way up to the Daintree River mouth and beyond, with crocodile infested Snapper Island just off the coast and the distant Low Isles just perceptible on the reef horizon. It’s at this spot that the lush dense rainforest tumbles down to the…

For three weeks each October (aside from the last two years being cancelled due to COVID), Sculpture By The Sea is the largest annual sculpture exhibition in the world, spreading out along the stunning rugged cliff tops stretching from the glorious sandy beach of Tamarama to Bondi, with jaw-dropping views out to the ocean and…

Our road trip continued out of Melbourne northwards to Castlemaine, staying a couple of days with good old friends and exploring the surrounding gold rush towns of Maldon, Daylesford, Hepburn Springs, Kyneton and Trentham. Thanks to the 19th Century gold rush, these small towns reflect the enormous wealth that was created here, with fine mid 19th Century…

Mr Moon’s laughing face at the Great Scenic Railway (rollercoaster) at Luna Park has been creepily beaming down on St Kilda in Melbourne since 1912 and is now the oldest continually operating rollercoaster in the world. There’s a slightly younger and happier looking version in Sydney built in 1936, both of them designed and built…

The country south of Bermagui is pretty spectacular, rolling lush hills and large empty sandy beaches that seem to stretch on forever. We took the quieter coastal road to Cuttagee, across a low-slung rickety wooden bridge and wound our way through the gorgeous Biamanga National Park with hardly a hamlet or human to be seen….