Category Archives: Nature

Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula is the very best of boutique backyards! Part of Metropolitan Melbourne, this magical peninsula just over an hour south of the city centre is home to history (see: Point Nepean National Park), wild places, cool-climate vineyards, and countless farm-to-table restaurants.  Last winter I managed to squeeze a visit to the region between Covid-19 […]

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The annual Thredbo Blues Festival combines two of my favourite things: mountains and music. Every summer, the delightful village of Thredbo, tucked into the unique alpine flora and fauna of the Kosciuszko National Park, plays host to this eponymous weekend festival. Restaurants, pubs, and public spaces, give themselves over to musicians and music-lovers from near […]

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In some parts of the Tropics, they call it Rainy Season. In the northern reaches of Australia, it is simply The Wet. On a daily basis, the skies open, and it doesn’t rain, so much, as pour. I first experienced this when visiting my son in Darwin, NT, many years ago: mid afternoon, it was […]

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They say that if you have too many lemons: make lemonade. So, it follows that if you have too much sugar by-product, you should make rum. That’s what happened in Bundaberg, a small city in coastal Queensland. Originally reliant on timber and maize, from the 1870s, sugar cane became the mainstay. With its humid subtropical climate […]

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The Eastern Sierra region of California is well known for its magnificent scenery, encompassing unique desert valleys, rugged alpine peaks, vestigial salty inland seas, and lakes of crystal glacial origins.  With millions of acres reserved within national parks, national monuments, state forests, and local reserves, much of it is considered ‘backcountry’, obtainable only by means of […]

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