, setting you up for our top ten do-it-now dream trips:

Australia

JUMP START: A kangaroo at home in Queensland

PLUS: , .

Go Feral

Kangaroo Island’s got fauna in spades

AFTER A PLEASURABLY hectic week in Sydney and the Blue Mountains, followed by a long, serpentine drive along the spectacular Great Ocean Road (Australia's Big Sur, between Melbourne and Adelaide), it was time for a strong dose of solitude—and for an intimate encounter with the wildlife of Oz.

Kangaroo Island's untamed west end gives you both. Ninety-six miles long, the nation's third-largest island is 70 miles southwest of Adelaide and a short ferry ride across Investigator Strait. This isolation from the mainland has preserved an abundance of native species—the island has invasive pigs and goats but lacks the cats, foxes, and rabbits that wreak havoc on indigenous wildlife elsewhere in Australia. Moreover, a third of the landscape is protected in 21 national and conservation parks. Much of the east end is rolling, pastoral lowland and farms, but Kangaroo Island tilts upward as you head west, and juts into the Indian Ocean, with sheer cliffs rising as high as 900 feet. At the far southwestern tip, there's nothing between Cape du Couedic (pronounced cootie), in Flinders Chase National Park, and Antarctica, except the Roaring Forties and 3,000 miles of open water.

The best introduction to the island's natural history is a stay at one of three century-old lighthouse keepers' cottages at Cape du Couedic; like the lighthouse itself, these were built from limestone quarried out of the Cape's own rock, strong enough to withstand the fiercest southern gales. The dim, cool, echoey interiors are furnished with funky period furniture, wood-fired cookstoves, and—according to the guestbook—ghosts. (There have been more than 50 shipwrecks along the Kangaroo Island coast, and the survivors' tales make for grisly reading.) Our only visitation came daily at dusk, when nocturnal Tammar wallabies—miniature 'roos nearly extinct on the continent—appeared at the back door, nibbling the grass.

The wallabies were only a taste of the critter action to come. Just down the road from Cape du Couedic are the high cliffs surrounding Admirals Arch, a massive open-sided cave lined with convenient haul-outs for a colony of 6,000 New Zealand fur seals, presided over by power-mad beach-master males. Despite violent breakers and an intense reek of seal poo, wooden walkways and stairs allow unparalleled viewing of the bellowing, frolicking, moshing, and bickering populace. (Seal Bay, on the island's southern coast, is another great place to ogle pinnipeds; rangers escort groups on walks to view Australian sea lions—some scarred by encounters with great white sharks—and, if you're lucky, their pups.)

Elsewhere in Flinders Chase National Park, we were approached by a few harmless K.I. kangaroos (a subspecies of the western gray) that were interested in our water. But soon we were staring up: Koalas, wedged in the forks of a eucalyptus tree, were swiveling their teddy-bear heads in slow motion, staring down at us. And that was just in the parking lot of the visitor center.

On the Rocky River hike, which starts at the center and takes you along dense bush trails to blinds along the Platypus Waterholes Walk, you're likely to spot Cape Barren geese, goannas, and wallabies crossing your path. The fur-bearing, egg-laying platypuses are more elusive, but we were thrilled to see the bubbles rising from their underwater dens.

The birdwatching was first-rate during our entire week on Kangaroo Island, the highlight being our sighting of a white-bellied sea eagle soaring low over the dusty Playford Highway, on the north shore. The only disappointment: Our late-afternoon ferry from Penneshaw back to the mainland sailed before we had a chance to watch the nightly parade of fairy penguins returning to their harborside nests after a day spent at sea. Next time.

For bookings at the lighthouse cottages and information about Flinders Chase National Park, 011-61-8-8559-7235, . Kangaroo Island information, 011-61-8-8553-1185, .

Sea Star

The Great Barrier Reef’s greatest hit—Lizard Island

ASK AUSSIES the ultimate Great Barrier Reef trip and they’ll sigh for Lizard Island, a resort in the middle of the world’s most stellar dive sites, with enough high style to lure the likes of Vince Vaughn and a honeymooning Russell Crowe. A light plane ferries guests an hour north of Cairns, skimming over interlocking reefs until the green, coral-ringed isle rises 17 miles off the coast. Part of six-island Lizard Island National Park, the 2,500-acre paradise is shared by only 80 resort guests, four scientists at the island’s research station, a handful of campers, and a few moored yachties. Once the plane departs, silence descends, broken only by the coos of bar-shouldered doves and the popping of corks for the welcome libation.

The digs are equally glam: a string of villas along a white-powder beach framed by smooth boulders, the favorite basking spots for statuesque goannas, the Aussie monitor lizards that give the island its name. Each cabana is a miniature temple to nature, with timber floors, a sundeck, and the blue horizon filling every view.

Amazingly, some visitors make it no farther than the Azure Spa, for a seaweed mud mask, or the open-air restaurant, to scarf up mangrove jack reef fish. The water draws the rest: Lizard sits on top of the reef, so you can dash straight from your villa to snorkel over a rookery of yard-wide giant clams. And it’s only 50 minutes by powerboat to the fabled outer reef, the fertile coral ribbons where you can spot the largest fish. In one hyperactive day, I dived the Cod Hole, where 150-pound potato cod tore bait from my fingers; cruised with the predators of Shark Alley; and swam with dwarf minke whales. Then it was back to the resort for sips of Bollinger while the lizards eyed me contentedly from their rocks.

From US$584 per person per night, including meals and many activities; 800-225-9849, . Lizard Island National Park, 011-61-7-3405-0970, .

Devil’s Deep

Tasmania’s luxe new look

freycinet lodge

View from outside the Bay Restaurant

PADDLE A SEA KAYAK on Coles Bay, off the stunning east coast of Tasmania, and the only sound you’ll hear is the slice of your blade through the water. Or the squeaking of dolphins at your bow. Or maybe the plink of your jig just before you haul in a squid for dinner.

Welcome to “Tassie,” a pleasure-packed paradise filled with vast wilderness areas, spectacular beaches, and an ever-expanding number of deluxe eco-lodges, expeditions, and adventure ops.

Situated about 150 miles south of the mainland, Tassie was once considered the Appalachia of Australia—a derided island outback with a timber economy and no pizzazz. But thanks to the state’s growing commitment to courting eco-tourists and protecting landscapes (national parks and preserves make up more than 40 percent of the island), Tasmania’s wild character is paying off. In the past five years, the number of climbers, paddlers, divers, and other visitors has increased by 50 percent.

Spend a day on the eastern shore, along the Freycinet Peninsula, and it’s easy to see why. You can swim, bushwalk, or wildlife-watch on gorgeous Wineglass Bay, then retreat to the Freycinet Lodge to slurp down local oysters with boutique Tasmanian wines. Or sea-kayak on Great Oyster Bay with Freycinet ���ϳԹ���s, and enjoy upscale camping and canapes on the white sands of Hazards Beach. Before the bliss overload sends you to sleep, you’ll be lucky to hear one more thing: the scuffle of wallabies and wombats foraging in the bush.

Doubles at Freycinet Lodge, US$248–$377; 011-61-3-6257-0101, . Half-day-to-five-day sea-kayaking trips with Freycinet ���ϳԹ���s, US$65–$1,066; 011-61-3-6257-0500, .

Lush Life

When the Kimberley goes green, it’s a splash

“YOU CAN’T GET much more outback than the Kimberley,” says 60-year-old Russell Willis, of Darwin-based Willis’s Walkabouts. And though this vast wilderness in northwestern Australia remains largely inaccessible, it has attained mythic status among Aussies. It could be its pioneer history, rife with cattle rustlers and gold speculators, or maybe it’s the sheer grandeur. From white-sand beaches to endless red-rock canyons, the Kimberley has it all—except crowds. “Imagine a scenic area the size of Arizona with only 30,000 people,” says Willis. Then there’s “the Wet.” From May through October, the Kimberley is bone-dry, but a metamorphosis occurs in November, when the rainy season hits: Boab trees leaf out, waterfalls gush, and shallow gorge pools become deep, inviting swimming holes.

One of the best ways to see the area at its greenest is in January and February on Willis’s 16-day canoe-and-hiking trip into the interior. After a few days exploring the valleys, gorges, waterfalls, and Aboriginal art around the town of Kununurra, you spend five days paddling the Ord River about 34 miles, from Lake Argyle—a birder’s paradise of purple-crowned fairy-wrens, yellow-rumped mannikins, and 200 other species—back to Kununurra. You’ll cruise past freshwater crocs, rock wallabies, and flying foxes, stopping for optional two-to-four-hour cross-country hikes to the top of the canyon. “There are no trails in this part of the world,” says Willis. “It’s pure scrub bashing 100 percent of the way.”

From Kununurra, groups are choppered into Keep River National Park, 354 square miles in the Northern Territory, a land of mind-blowing red-rock arches peppered with palm trees. With a comfortable camp—private tents and a three-course dinner—and the Keep massif as your base, you’ll boulder, climb to caves filled with Aboriginal rock art, and cool off in waterfall pools. Yes, sometimes inaccessibility is a very good thing.

US$2,358 per person; 011-61-8-8985-2134, . Keep River National Park, 011-61-8-9167-8827, .

Baa-Nanza

Home on the woolly Flinders Ranges

SILVER-HAIRED RANCHER Dean Rasheed plunges his Land Cruiser into the deep stream. Water slaps the windshield and licks the side-view mirrors. Rasheed, 60, lets out a howl and turns onto a steep track, where a family of western gray kangaroos grazes among his 7,500 sheep. Rasheed calls this work. He drives this road a few times a week to monitor his flock and give tours of Arkaba Station, his stunning 63,000-acre sheep ranch in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia. I have arrived in the outback.

The Flinders are not big mountains (the highest is 3,832-foot St. Mary Peak). But they have their majesty—rolling red-clay hills scattered with pale-green blue bush, sheer rock faces, and caves with Aboriginal art. Travelers who want to taste the real outback—where wildlife are the neighbors and the earth is boss—come here, to the Rasheeds’ place. Dean and his wife, Lizzie, accommodate four guests in ranch-house bedrooms with Flinders views and fill you up with home-baked bread, mutton, kangaroo, and fine South Australia wines.

Then there’s the outdoors—jaw-dropping gorges in nearby Flinders Ranges National Park and the rock formations of 32-square-mile Wilpena Pound. Or you can work: herding sheep, cleaning troughs, or, if you arrive in September, playing barber in the 19th-century shearing shed. When you’re on Arkaba, amid endless acres, the outback invades your soul, and you understand its ultimate attraction: space.

US$318 per person per night, including meals and activities; 011-61-8-8648-0004, .

Bush Tucker

Aboriginal adventure in Kakadu National Park

SAB LORD is demonstrating a traditional bush remedy for sore throats. Grabbing a nest of green ants from a paperbark tree, the 45-year-old safari guide explains that these nests work nicely for a quick vitamin-C fix. Grinning impishly, he flattens the fist-size morsel, rolls it into a ball, pops it into his mouth, and begins sucking the lemony enzymes from the ants’ posteriors. Within seconds, he spits out the remnants of his snack and offers a fresh nest to a rapt audience of novice bush foragers.

The small group has gathered in Kakadu National Park—a 4.9-million-acre expanse of red cliffs etched with ancient rock carvings, and verdant wetlands rich in birdlife and croc-infested billabongs, 186 miles east of Darwin in the Northern Territory—to learn about Yolngu (East Arnhem Land Aboriginals) beliefs and practices. Lord, an ex-pro rugby player, a white guy, and owner of Lords Kakadu & Arnhemland Safaris, would be an unlikely guide to indigenous culture except for one key fact: Thanks to a childhood spent on a water-buffalo station in Kakadu, he was ceremonially adopted by an Aboriginal family in the Mamakala community.

He learned the ant-nest trick—and plenty more about indigenous foods, or “bush tucker”—from his adoptive grandmother, Rosie Lundduy. Four feet nine inches tall and utterly engaging (“Leeches are some tasty tucker!” she cries), Lundduy is one of several Aborigines leading food-foraging tours through Kakadu and adjoining Arnhem Land, a 24-million-acre Aboriginal-owned wilderness.

The entertaining duo of Lord and Lundduy will help you carve a digging stick to root up bush yams and demonstrate how to strip pandanus leaves—also used for weaving bags—to get to the artichoke-flavored hearts. You can sleep out in the bush, relaxing at night in a fully equipped safari camp, or opt for day trips and the comfort of one of the park’s six hotels. But whatever you do, leave your taste for Taco Bell at home.

Lords Kakadu & Arnhemland Safaris’ custom Maningrida Arnhem Cultural Tour includes a bush-tucker course and a sunset barbecue; 011-61-8-8948-2200, .

It Rips

Sydney’s endless summer

WHAT COULD BE BETTER, when you know the surf's cranking, than waking up to a room-service cappuccino under a feather quilt at the InterContinental, overlooking Sydney's spectacular harbor? Or pulling on boardshorts and descending to the lobby, where the concierge procured you a Cohiba the night before? The entire bellhop corps seems drawn from the local surfer population, so don't be surprised if one tanned 'hop tells you the morning surf report while another picks out a board from your quiver, which they've politely stored in the luggage room.

Then it's time to catch the ferry to Manly, a quaint beach town at the northern mouth of Sydney Harbour, where there's nothing left to do but paddle into first-class beach-break surf.

Think of it as the Ultimate Urban Pleasures Surf Safari, the best way on earth to get your warm-water waves and high-end sushi, too. Numerous world champions have been minted on these breaks, including female shredder Layne Beachley. A drive north from Manly brings you to clean beach breaks like Freshwater, Curl Curl, and North Narrabeen. Drive south from Sydney's Bondi Beach, near Aussie actor Heath Ledger's home, and there's another string of great breaks en route to lunch at the Pavilion Cafe, in Maroubra Beach.

Après-surf, kick back at Sydney's Newport Arms, the classic surfer pub. Or stroll to Rockpool for celebrity chef Neil Perry's salad of wild greenlip abalone, mussels, clams, tea-smoked oysters, and fine noodles. You just might be ready to get tubed again in the morning.

Doubles at the InterContinental, from US$228; 011-61-2-9253-9000, . Dinner for two at Rockpool, US$192–$230; 011-61-2-9252-1888, . Manly's Dripping Wet Surf co. rents boards for US$35 a day; 011-61-2-9977-3549, .

Path Perfect

On the Cape to Cape Track, you walk alone

TAKE A SUN-WASHED coastline with white-sand beaches, add a wildflower-filled 83-mile trail along limestone cliffs—with warm surf below and, a brief jaunt away, prized wines to sip—and you’ve got an overcrowded tourist trap, right? Wrong, mate, if you’re on the Cape to Cape Track, in 49,400-acre Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park, between Cape Naturaliste and Cape Leeuwin.

Located in one of the most isolated coastal areas on earth—three hours south of Perth in Australia’s southwestern corner—the track and parkland are barely on the radar for most travelers.

But just minutes from the trail by car lies the trendy town of Margaret River, a hot new epicenter of epicureanism and home to some of Australia’s best wineries. And just a mile and a half away are the cushy chalets of the Merribrook Retreat, whose owners, veteran guide Richard Firth and his wife, Lorraine, run a variety of Cape to Cape trips.

The Firths’ six-day trek winds through headlands above sculpted dunes, empty beaches, and world-class surf breaks. Watch for southern right and humpback whales during migration season, from October to December. Or let Firth rappel you 150 feet down into one of the park’s huge limestone caves.

At day’s end, a chilled wine will be ready to pour, and Firth, a skilled cook, will snag seafood for that night’s dinner from your own private coastline.

Merribrook Retreat’s six-day Cape to Cape walks cost US$1,422 (based on double occupancy); doubles at Merribrook start at US$177, including breakfast; 011-61-8-9755-5599, . Check out for do-it-yourself information.

Spinning Uluru

The monolithic Ayers Rock gets some respect

AYERS ROCK IS LIKE an inverse Grand Canyon. Instead of a giant chasm, the near-six-mile-circumference, 1,115-foot-high, 300- to 400-million-year-old arkose sandstone monolith sticks out of the surrounding outback like a giant mood ring. Clashing perceptions of Australia’s iconic symbol are a good measure of the outback’s politically charged temperament. In the eighties, the Australian government returned 327,578-acre Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park to the local Anangu Aboriginals, who changed the rock’s name back to Uluru. Then they leased the parkland back to the government, giving the 400,000 annual tourists continued access to the steep, mile-long hiking trail that trespasses a sacred Aboriginal site en route to the top.

But just “because it’s there” doesn’t mean you have to summit. In fact, dodge a karmic bullet by circumnavigating Uluru instead. On a perfect late-September day, I cycled the six-mile-plus ribbon of pavement around Uluru. Sure enough, as the sun sank, this massive shade-shifter absorbed the universe. Lap one was brilliant yellow. Lap two was bright orange. Lap three was deep purple. By that last lap, it was evident that Uluru was in an ebullient mood—and so was I.

Stay nearby at Longitude 131°, a luxe tented camp (US$690 per person, all-inclusive, based on double occupancy; 011-61-2-8296-8010, ). Ayers Rock Campground offers mountain-bike rentals for US$23 per day (011-61-8-8957-7001, ).

Essential Australia

GETTING THERE*
With the QUANTAS AIRPASS, you can fly nonstop from L.A. to Sydney, Melbourne, or Brisbane for $999–$1,599 (800-348-8145, ); purchase includes three domestic flights within Australia. AIR TAHITI NUI (877-824-4846, ) flies from L.A. to Sydney for $998, and from New York for $1,198, including stops in Tahiti and Auckland, New Zealand.

PRIME TIME
Hit the south during Australia’s legendary summer (December–February), or enjoy the less steamy months in the tropical north between May and October.

GETTING AROUND
To do Australia right, you need to cover a lot of ground. QUANTAS operates out of 59 cities (800-227-4500, ); VIRGIN BLUE hits 23 destinations (011-61-7-3295-2296, ). Ride from Melbourne to Cairns with the EAST COAST DISCOVERY PASS (valid for six months; $302), or take a three-night, 2,700-mile transcontinental rail journey on the Indian Pacific to see the spectacular country between Sydney and Perth (from $330 per person; ATS TOURSs, 310-643-0044, ). Considering Oz’s vast distances and incredible national parks, camper vans are a popular option for road trips. KEA CAMPERS offers decked-out, pop-up rides from $46 per day (011-61-2-8707-5500, ). Avis, Budget, Hertz, and National all rent cars; rates start at $27 per day.

LUXURY BASE CAMPS
DAINTREE ECO LODGE & SPA, Daintree, Queensland. Sleep in one of 15 tree houses on stilts at this award-winning 30-acre eco-resort, where you can explore the world’s oldest living rainforest or dive into the nearby Great Barrier Reef. Doubles from $349, including breakfast (011-61-7-4098-6100, ).
NORTH BUNDALEER, Jamestown, South Australia. This restored four-room 1901 mansion sits on 470 acres near the 17-mile Riesling Trail, which leads pedalers to tasting rooms at Clare Valley wineries ($19 per day; Clare Valley Cycle Hire, 011-61-8-8842-2782, ). Doubles from $369, including meals and drinks (011-61-8-8665-4024, ).
FARAWAY BAY, THE BUSH CAMP, Western Australia. Set in a secluded cove on the Kimberley Coast, this permanent camp of eight cabins combines wilderness luxury with awesome scenery—think crocodiles and dolphins cavorting off a white-sand beach backed by red cliffs. Open April 1–October 31; $1,500 per person for two nights, including air transfer from Kununurra, meals, drinks, and excursions (011-61-8-9169-1214, ).
ECHOES BOUTIQUE HOTEL AND RESTAURANT, Katoomba, New South Wales. All 13 suites in this eclectic hotel have panoramic views of the craggy buttes and temperate rainforests of the Blue Mountains, a World Heritage site. Explore the stunning sandstone range by rock-climbing with High N Wild Mountain ���ϳԹ���s (half-days from $84; 011-61-2-4782-6224, ). Doubles from $258 (011-61-2-4782-1966, ).
CAPELLA LODGE, Lord Howe Island, New South Wales. Overlooking both the lagoon and the signature green mountains of Lord Howe Island, 434 miles northeast of Sydney, the Capella Lodge offers Zenlike suites, an insane adventure menu, and exceptional dining. Doubles from $346, including breakfast, dinner, and airport transfers (011-61-2-9918-4355, ).
SEVEN SPIRIT BAY WILDERNESS LODGE , Cobourg Peninsula, Northern Territory. This rainforest eco-lodge in Garig Gunak Barlu National Park has 23 hexagonal “habitats”—swank screened bungalows with garden showers secluded in the bush. Open March 17–December 15. Doubles from $995 for two nights, including round-trip flights from Darwin, all meals, and wildlife safaris to see buffalo, crocodiles, and cockatoos (011-61-8-8979-0281, ).

Essential Australia

MORE EXPLORING
SAIL AND DIVE THE WHITSUNDAYS: Island-hop this archipelago of 74 coral-fringed, rainforested isles on the Great Barrier Reef aboard Bliss, a skippered 60-foot yacht that sleeps six (double cabin from $1,346 for three nights, with meals; diving is extra; 011-61-7-4946-5433, ).
DRIVE THE GREAT OCEAN ROAD: Roll the 219 miles between Torquay and Warrnambool on one of the world’s best drives, past old lighthouses and the famous 12 Apostles rock formation (011-61-3-5222-2900, ).
COMMUNE WITH THE TINGLE FORESTS: Get dwarfed in Walpole-Nornalup National Park’s Valley of the Giants, Australia’s answer to the Redwoods, 280 miles south of Perth (011-61-8-9840-1027, ).
RUN THE FRANKLIN RIVER: Take a mind-blowing nine-day whitewater trip with Tasmanian Expeditions through pristine Tasmanian wilderness ($1,761 per person; 011-61-3-6339-3999, ).
OFF-ROAD ON THE CAPE YORK PENINSULA: Ford rivers, dodge crocs, and bathe in waterfalls. Getabout 4WD ���ϳԹ���s offers 16-day guided, self-drive camping trips from Cairns to Cape York ($3,947 for two; 011-61-2-9831-8385, ). BIKE THE OUTBACK: For the full Mad Max tour, try Wayward Bus Touring Company’s new “Outbike” tour, a fully supported two-week cycle from Alice Springs to Coober Pedy ($1,553; 011-61-8-8410-8833, ).
DIVE WITH WHALE SHARKS: From April to July, migrating whale sharks converge on Western Australia’s central coast near Exmouth ($284 per day with the Exmouth Diving Centre; 011-61-8-9949-1201, ).
INDULGE IN THE WILSON ISLAND EXPERIENCE: Spend five days at permanent luxury camps on two coral cays, Heron Island and Wilson Island, on the Great Barrier Reef ($1,533 per person, including meals; 011-61-2-8296-8010, ).
KITEBOARD IN ST. KILDA: Melbourne’s hip beach ‘hood is a magnet for kiteboarders and windsurfers. RPS, a local surf shop, offers half-day lessons for $192 (011-61-3-9525-6475, ).
SURF BYRON BAY: Paddle out to Tallows, Byron’s hallowed beach break. Byron Bay Surf School rents boards for $23 per day (011-61-2-6680-9761, ). Then chill at the Byron at Byron Resort and Spa (doubles from $230; 011-61-1-300-554-362, ).

BEST EVENTS, 2005-2006
MELBOURNE CUP CARNIVAL (October 29–November 5): Experience Australia’s version of the Kentucky Derby. COMMONWEALTH GAMES (March 15–26): These Olympic-style games, which occur once every four years, come to Melbourne in 2006. IRONMAN AUSTRALIA TRIATHLON (April 2): Hundreds of finely sculpted masochists race in Port Macquarie, New South Wales. RIP CURL PRO at Bells Beach (mid-April): Surfers and wannabes descend on Victoria during Australia’s top pro-surfing contest. SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL (June): Rub shoulders with Nicole Kidman, Baz Luhrmann, and Cate Blanchett in the heart of Sydney. HOG’S BREATH RACE WEEK (August 10–17): It’s party time when one of Australia’s most competitive regattas kicks off in the Whitsundays.

OUTFITTERS
OUTBACK ENCOUNTER is one of Australia’s premier luxury tour operators (011-61-8-8354-4405, ). WILDERNESS AUSTRALIA specializes in custom guided safaris (011-61-2-9231-2113, ). BACKROADS runs a nine-day multisport adventure in Queensland (800-462-2848, ). WILDERNESS TRAVEL offers 12-day Wild Australia and 10-day Wild Tasmania trips (800-368-2794, ).

RESOURCES
For general information, visit . And to try to make sense of Aussie slang, pick up a copy of A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms (Oxford).

The post The Great and Wonderful Oz appeared first on ���ϳԹ��� Online.

If Nicole Kidman went feral,” a friend told me one night in Sydney, “she’d hang out on the south coast.” I remembered this dubious recommendation—which was made, I should add, at 3 a.m. in a raucous Bondi Beach pub—as I was piling a rental car high with camping gear for the 650-mile road trip southwest to Melbourne. The Princes Highway may connect Australia’s two biggest cities, but it also skirts some of the wildest coastal bushland in the whole country. Imagine a stretch longer than San Francisco to San Diego, with wilds as beautiful and empty as Alaska, and you get the idea. For a little added challenge, I’d lured my wife, Lesley, and our five-year-old son, Henry, along on this seven-day grand excursion, so we had enough gear for an Everest assault.

Cape Conran Coastal Park

STAIRWAY TO PARADISE: the path to Salmon Rock, far off the beaten track in Cape Conran Coastal Park

Mollymook/Durras

On foot near Mollymook (left), a beach goer near Durras (right).

Cape Conran beach

GOOD ON YA, MATE: Cape Conran beach

map of Australia

My vision of a hardcore camping trip lasted about three hours. Some 120 miles south of Sydney, I turned onto a gravel track straight into virgin forest—and came upon a rustic refuge called Paperbark Camp. Wild and remote, yes, but not your average campground. Ten “luxury tented facilities” imported from South Africa’s high-end safari circuit had been artfully placed among soft paperbark trees. Each tent was raised on stilts, with its own soft woolen-draped bed, solar-powered lights, and open-air bathroom stocked with handcrafted Australian cosmetics. A glassy creek, with canoe and paddles at the ready, meandered nearby. There was even a chic restaurant serving the latest modern Australian inventions, such as cumin-encrusted kangaroo fillets with caramelized-onion-and-red-wine jus.

What was going on? A few years before, visitors would have been as likely to find a decent caffe latte south of Wollongong as they would a three-star chef in Sprott, Alabama.

It’s a sign of the times that a touch of glamour has reached the southeastern coast, sometimes derided as “daggy” (Australian for “uncool”). For generations, Sydney folks have preferred to head north to find their escapes. Now they’re realizing that the often ignored road to Melbourne not only connects mile after mile of empty beaches and chunks of pristine wilderness but also contains extra enticements. Scattered at convenient intervals on the route are unexpected nodes of comfort and hipness—a string of small hotels and lodges that are designed to take full advantage of their settings.

Some of these, in fact, are shamelessly deluxe, like the Bannisters Point Lodge, in Mollymook, south of Jervis Bay—a funky retro motel recently renovated into a sleek jet-age love nest by the sea. The comfortable minimalist rooms offer sumptuous whirlpool bathtubs, while the lodge’s rimless infinity pool, suffused with colored light, allows 300-degree views of the Tasman Sea. And then there are the Cape Conran Cabins, some 460 miles into the route, designed by trendy urban architects to integrate into the bush environment, using expansive decks of native timber and windows set in corrugated iron.

Other hotels have taken advantage of historic landmarks that happen to possess stunning locations: At the 335-mile mark, Mallacoota’s Karbeethong Lodge, a revamped 1920s guesthouse overlooking a large inlet, has the soothing ambience of a Buddhist retreat. The isolated lighthouse at Point Hicks, deep in the otherworldly Croajingolong National Park (roughly 350 miles from Sydney), has turned its pair of atmospheric lighthouse keeper’s cottages, built in the 1880s from shipwreck timber, into hideaways fit for Phileas Fogg. Each of these places offers the heady pleasures of a night in the Aussie bush without having to set up your tent.

This had been obvious from the moment we rolled the car into the lavish Paperbark Camp. We contemplated the prospect of driving to a regular campground, laying out our little tent, and rustling up some dinner—say, pasta and canned sauce. But an hour later, we were kicking back in the open-air restaurant over a bottle of Tasmanian chardonnay.

“Not bad for camping food,” Lesley said as we worked our way through the Aussie cheese plate—Milawa blue and cloth-bound Pyengana cheddar, with muscatels. When it comes to modern Australian cuisine—a fusion of Asian and Mediterranean styles, using local ingredients such as yabbies (crustaceans), wattles (prawns), and emu prosciutto—reading a menu can require both a map and a gastronomic dictionary.

We couldn’t have gotten closer to nature if we’d parachuted into the outback. There we were, unwinding beneath the Southern Cross and listening to cicadas while a trio of plump ringtail possums cruised the restaurant’s railings, watching with saucer-shaped eyes as Henry consumed every bite of dessert. Posted on our bathroom door was a helpful illustrated guide to the local panoply of venomous snakes, which had names like punk-rock bands—copperhead, death adder, red-bellied black. Our next morning’s workout was to paddle a canoe along Currambene Creek, the tranquil green waterway that runs three miles east to Jervis Bay’s sugar-white sands.

The memory of Sydney began to recede with every click of the odometer. South of Jervis Bay, the Princes Highway traces a coastline of national parks with tongue-twisting Aboriginal names like Wadbilliga, Murramarang, Eurobodalla, and Coopracambra, and small fishing or farm villages called Ulladulla, Tilba Tilba, and Nowa Nowa. This place feels like a lost world, with remnants of dagginess surviving in the townships. In Bermagui (mile 242), abalone divers nurse their beers in the same frayed pub where western author Zane Grey relaxed after a deep-sea fishing trip in 1936. Farther south, in Eden (mile 310), the main attraction is the Killer Whale Museum, home to an impressive orca skeleton.

But nobody comes to the southeastern coast in search of giddy cultural life: The bush is still in charge here. We could randomly choose any turnoff from the highway and have our own private sand dunes, with pounding surf and wallabies sunbathing by a lagoon, with an ancient mollusk midden as the only sign of human activity. At Ben Boyd National Park, I scanned north and south to see sea cliffs twisting one after another to the horizon. Absolute remoteness can be achieved in Croajingolong National Park: Roughly equidistant from Sydney and Melbourne at Australia’s southeastern tip, its 220,000 acres of raw bush are a serious schlep.

There’s no doubt that Croajingolong is ideal for camping—bush walkers revere an eight-day, 60-mile trail along its sandy, windswept edge, where the coastline is punctuated only by dramatic headlands and salty estuaries—but who could turn down a stay at Point Hicks Lighthouse, especially after the tooth-jarring 20-mile ride on the dirt access road? Until the track went through in 1954, the lighthouse keepers received supplies twice a year by boat. But it still felt like The Ghost and Mrs. Muir as we bunked down in the original lighthouse keeper’s quarters next to the whitewashed tower. I watched the sunrise from a chair made of driftwood, while offshore, fur seals frolicked on sea-battered rocks.

Perversely, after a week of bushland luxury, I was feeling mildly frustrated. Every morning, I would emphatically declare that tonight we would use the tent—but by the time dusk rolled around, we had found yet another unique place to stay.

On the last night of the road trip, when we reached Cape Conran Coastal Park—a reserve so far off the beaten track that few Aussies have heard of it—I knew this was my big chance. Henry was already feeding our dinner steak to the kookaburras, and I was just rolling out the sleeping bags, when Lesley spotted a cluster of stylish cabins hidden among the trees nearby: the Cape Conran Cabins. It transpired that, for not much more than the price of our campsite, we could have our own personal wilderness lodge, with a private sand path to a beach 15 miles long.

“No, no, no,” I insisted. “We’ve got to use the tent!”

I looked at Lesley. We both looked at Henry. Henry had already started for the cabins.

I knew when I was beaten; but it was a happy defeat. We were still deep in the bush, only with soft mattresses and running water. I spent the dusk hours lounging on the deck, grilling steak as monitor lizards prowled the tree trunks and fruit bats came out to play. The final perk? When our mud-encrusted car finally rolled onto the fashionable streets of Melbourne, I didn’t even have to clean the ground cloth.

The Slow Road South
The first step is getting yourself to Sydney. Qantas Airways (800-227-4500, ) flies there daily, with specials as low as $840 round-trip from Los Angeles. Then, hit the road to Melbourne. Commuters and truckers use the inland Hume Highway; for a road trip, follow the coastal Princes Highway and allow at least a week to travel the 650 miles. You can bring camping gear—Holiak Hire (011-61-2-9437-0278, ) allows you to rent in Sydney and drop off in Melbourne—but there are so many great hotels, many people never even break out the sleeping bag.

DAY ONE: Follow the signs from Sydney to Wollongong, but continue south until you reach Jervis Bay, about two and a half hours south of Sydney; turn off at Falls Creek for the luxury tents of Paperbark Camp (doubles, $337, including gourmet meals and use of canoes and bikes; 011-61-2-4441-6066, ).

DAY TWO: Dive with gray nurse sharks and fairy penguins in Jervis Bay Marine Park ($100 for a two-tank dive; Pro Dive Jervis Bay, 011-61-2-4441-5255, ). Then it’s a 40-minute drive to Mollymook and Bannisters Point Lodge (doubles from $104; 011-61-2-4455-3044, ).

DAY THREE: Head for Depot Beach, where kangaroos leap along the sands, then sign on for a sea-kayak trip from Durras with Bay and Beyond Sea Kayak Tours ($32 for a half-day; 011-61-2-4478-7777, ). Take the coast-hugging road past Mimosa Rocks National Park to the old whaling town of Eden, still one of the best places for whale watching ($55 for a half-day; Cat Balou Cruises, 011-61-2-6496-2027, ). Complete the nautical theme by spending the night at the Crown & Anchor; it was built in 1843 by German and English craftsmen from small rough stones and a lime render of seashells, horsehair, and termite nests. It’s now a comfy B&B with dramatic sea views and roaring log fires ($100–$114, including breakfast; 011-61-2-6496-1017, ).

DAY FOUR: In the morning, call in at Ben Boyd National Park, where a six-mile trail hugs the pink sea cliffs from Saltwater Creek to Bittangabee Bay (011-61-2-6495-5000, ). After the Princes Highway crosses the state line from New South Wales to Victoria, take the turnoff east to Genoa. Karbeethong Lodge is a renovated 1920s guesthouse with a garden and relaxed ambience (doubles, $68–$93; 011-61-3-5158-0411, ). At dusk, hire a “putt-putt” to explore the waterway (about $20 an hour at the docks), and take a fishing line.

DAY FIVE: Make the most of spectacular Croajingolong National Park by staying at one of its remotest spots, Point Hicks Lighthouse (cottages from $164; 011-61-3-5158-4268, ). This is the ideal base for day hikes to the giant Thurra sand dunes, Mount Everard, or West Beach. The epic Wilderness Coast Walk through Croajingolong can be either the full eight-day, 60-mile slog or an abbreviated two-day sampler from Bemm River to Point Hicks. Unless you can juggle transfers and have your own your camping gear, go with the Melbourne-based outfitter Echidna Walkabout (tailor-made walks from $143 a day; 011-61-3-9646-8249, ).

DAY SIX: Return to Princes Highway, then detour along Cabbage Tree Road to Cape Conran Cabins, a set of comfortable wood-and-corrugated-iron cabins in the reserve, run by Parks Victoria ($59–$89; 011-61-3-5154-8438, ). Stroll along the vast beach or take the three-hour hike to Yeerung Gorge to enjoy its black-rock pools.

DAY SEVEN: Dash the final 246 miles to Melbourne.

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Australia’s fabled surfie hangout emerges as a multisport playground Byron Bay may be the modern surfer’s idyll—Australia’s most consistent waves pound the white sands around Cape Byron, which rises like a giant snake’s head from the blue Pacific—but veterans of the sport still reminisce about the days preceding its discovery. Indeed, there was a time before the late sixties when the hippies, Buddhists, Hare Krishnas, and naturists of all stripes flocked to the easternmost point of Australia, 570 miles north of Sydney. This fabled era, when Byron Bay was a working-class town supported by logging, dairy farming, and whaling, evidently had its pluses and minuses.

Consider the salutary tale of Bob and Terry, a couple of Sydney beach bums who in 1962, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, tossed their malibus onto a train and made their escape to Byron Bay. Picked up by a friendly passerby at the railway station (“G’day—did you come to find some waves?”), they spent a day riding the perfect swells at an empty beach called Watego’s. It seemed to them a reasonable approximation of paradise. Unfortunately, local cops roared into their campsite, grabbed them by the hair, gave them a short-back-and-sides trim, and then dropped them on a road out of town.

But 40 years is a long time in Aussie beach culture. Not long after Bob and Terry got rolled, redneck Byron Bay became Australia’s countercultural Shangri-La—a half-mythic place where surfers could park in their panel vans by the beach, sign on for the dole, and live on a diet of bananas, fish ‘n’ chips, and illicit local herbs. Today, surfing is not only respectable at Byron Bay; it’s downright establishment. In fact, while I was reading Bob and Terry’s Easy Rider tale—I was at the scene of the crime, Watego’s Beach, flipping through an ancient copy of Pacific Longboarder magazine—a svelte surfie couple dropped their boards outside the lone restaurant, where they chowed down on Thai prawn salad and Tasmanian champagne.

Yes, there are the occasional whiffs of a Hamptons Down Under, but Byron Bay has in fact blossomed in a uniquely Australian, democratic way, balancing its competing interests to keep a low-rise beach paradise intact. To get the lay of the land, newcomers should nurse a schooner of beer at the area’s most famous pub, the Beach Hotel. You can play at being a celebrity in hiding—Keith Richards had left just before I arrived in March—or join the international backpacker set on the beach at night, spinning fire sticks as if practicing for Cirque du Soleil. You can eat from sushi bars or vegan buffets, catch an art-house movie, or browse for local indie-rock CDs. And the Aquarian spirit is alive and well: Yoga classes are held at dawn on the beach, crystals are revered in souvenir shops, and radicals are given full voice. (I opened the official tourist guide and enjoyed a lurid essay on the Iraqi war.) Somehow it all seems right in the eclectic Byron Bay soup.

The good news for outdoor fans is that Byron Bay has branched out from surfing—reinventing itself as the Boulder of the South, Telluride on a warm beach. The wonder is that it has taken so long, given the setting: The offshore waters host some of the most fertile marine grounds in Australia, while the mountain hinterland of the Great Dividing Range is thick with subtropical rainforest. Right now, Byron Bay’s outfitters are making up for lost time. I strolled through the compact village one afternoon—the adventure companies are clustered together in rabid competition, with names like Wicked Travel and Cape Fear—and within an hour I had signed on for a decathlon of Aussie outdoor escapades, covering land and sea. Admittedly, I skipped the naked bushwalking for beginners, but I was up for everything else, on day trips led by itinerant Aussie guides, many of whom seemed to be on sabbatical from snowboarding in the Canadian Rockies.

For starters, Nightcap National Park, 25 miles inland, has miles of mountain-bike trails, from easy to hardcore. On a wet morning, a sunburned surfer named Lindsay led ten of us through the mist-filled rainforest, where eucalyptuses soared like Grecian columns. The 13 miles I covered felt more like 50, feathering down or grinding up, skidding over sinuous roots, taking in grandiose vistas and secret swimming holes.

With just as much zeal, the Zodiacs slip like sea iguanas off Clarks Beach every dawn. In November 2002, a stretch of the Coral Sea, along Byron Bay’s beaches from Brunswick Head to Lennox Head, was declared the Cape Byron Marine Park; a mile and a half offshore, an outcrop called Julian Rocks is rated one of Australia’s top ten diving spots, thanks to the thriving piscine community lured by the confluence of warm and cool currents. A dive master named Evan—crew-cut, tongue-pierced, tattooed like a Polynesian sailor—led the underwater trail past squadrons of butterfly fish and angels to the scene-stealers of the dive: moray eels, loggerhead turtles, eagle rays flapping batlike overhead, and ten-foot leopard sharks that drifted so close my fingers brushed their flanks, strangely rough as sandpaper. (In winter, gray nurse sharks pass through—keep your distance.)

Why stop there? I thought. The next morning came a ride on a microlite—Byron Bay’s latest craze, a motorized hang glider that soars above the activity—and, of course, I signed up for a surfing lesson. This is still the number-one breadwinner for Byron Bay’s outdoor operators, thanks to water temperatures that fluctuate between 65 and 81 degrees and strong year-round swells producing waves between three and six feet tall. Here, a surf scene materializes wherever there is a stretch of sand. The most coveted spots include Cosy Corner and Tallow’s, on the south side of Cape Byron, where bushland and the cornflower-blue sea collide. And picturesque Watego’s, the most easterly beach in Australia, still tops the charts for where to see and be seen.

Back home in New York, color-coded terrorist alerts were going from yellow to orange. Here in Byron, they also employ color coding. Like schools of fish, surfing students are grouped by the color of their wetsuits. As I proceeded to learn the difference between riding goofy and natural—hopping on my padded board, falling off, hopping on again—the rest of the world seemed very, very remote.

DETAILS:
Lodging: Experienced Byron hands stay at a beach called Belongil Spit—it’s away from the center of town, has great cafés, and you can walk along the sand for 15 minutes to reach the action. Belongil by the Sea has four cottages that sleep two to nine, with kitchens, on two acres of botanical gardens, starting at $63 a night (011-61-2-6685-8111, ). Film stars prefer Rae’s On Watego’s (rooms start at $145; 011-61-2-6685-5695, ).
Sports: There is good beginner surfing year-round in Byron Bay. For lessons, try Black Dog Surfing, a school that runs beginner classes several times a day ($30 per three-hour group lesson; 011-61-2-6680-9828, ). The more experienced can take private lessons from former U.S. surf champion, longtime Byron Bay resident, and local celeb Rusty Miller (a two-hour private lesson costs $56 for one person, $99 for two; 011-61-2-6684-7390, rustym@mullum.com.au). Besides surfing, the whole gamut of outdoor sports is on offer in Byron Bay—operators line Jonson Street and the competition keeps prices down. Rockhoppers (011-61-2-6680-8569, ) runs mountain-biking trips ($52 for a solid day), hikes to watch the sunrise from 3,800-foot Mount Warning ($39), and caving/rappelling trips ($79). Byron Bay Dive Centre (011-61-2-6685-8333, ) takes divers out every morning to Julian Rocks ($50 per single-tank dive). Hang-glide or microlite with Skylimit ($92 for a tandem flight; 011-61-2-6684-3711, ).

The Dish on Soup Bowl

In Barbados, Surf Kings Happily Serve Up Lessons for Plebes

Barbados sports a tight-knit surfing community and a refreshing lack of attitude

In stuffy Barbados, where islanders worship cricket and neckties flourish, the unlikely badass surf scene is a splash of hot pepper sauce on the otherwise bland national dish: flying fish with okra-and-cornmeal mash. The Caribbean’s most consistent waves roll in from the east, pounding the pear-shaped, 166-square-mile island, the easternmost outpost of the West Indies. And Bathsheba, an east coast village where a tumble of bright houses clings to a palm-studded hillside, is the nexus. Thirty yards off the beach lies the world-famous Soup Bowl, where a north and a south swell collide to create waves from 3 to 25 feet tall.

Soup Bowl attracts Kelly Slater and other elite surfers for the Independence Pro competition every November and provides locals—and visitors—with the perfect aquaturf for honing their moves. Mark Holder, 35, and Alan Burke, 33, reign as the surf kings of Barbados, competing in international tournaments and regularly carving the Soup Bowl waves. Both are natives; Holder, a laid-back rasta “soul-surfer,” and Burke, a sixth-generation descendant of water-loving Irish immigrants, have had a friendly rivalry for two decades, and there’s an ongoing debate among the island’s tight-knit surfing community over which of the two is supreme.

Best of all, each gives private lessons. Imagine showing up in Maui and calling Laird Hamilton for a few hours of one-on-one. In Barbados, you can do the equivalent, getting personal instruction from Holder and Burke on tamer waves, on the south end of the island, with the hope of working up to the Soup Bowl’s powerful right break. The lack of attitude here is reassuring for wobbly neophytes, who won’t find chiseled surf studs staring them down while they’re learning to stand on a board, as well as for seasoned old-timers, who return year after year.

The windsurfing and kiteboarding are also superb, especially along the southern coast near the resorts at Silver Sands and Silver Rock. It’s not unusual to see pro windsurfer and official island character Brian “Irie Man” Talma working his moves off Silver Rock Beach; he owns a rental shop there, and you can take lessons from him.

Or just find a comfortable spot in the sand and watch local youngsters rip it up. “There are little kids who will ride anything they can get their hands on,” says Holder, a surfer since age six. “There are guys riding plywood boards.” Holder describes the Barbados riding posture: “Local style is the most radical—flinging your hands, hanging down low to the board, and getting into the groove.”

My lesson, with Burke, takes place among perfect two-footers at Freights Bay, a mile from Long Beach on the south coast, where he runs a surf school. After learning to turn turtle (flip the board over myself in a wave) and other basic moves, we paddle out. I manage to catch a wave… for a few seconds. My moves, however, are an amusing parody of local style—flailing my arms, tripping off the board, and falling overboard.

DETAILS:
Lodging: Check out the Bajan Surf Bungalows (doubles from $54; 246-433-9920, ), owned by Melanie Pitcher, one of the country’s top surfers.
Sports: July to September is the best season to catch beginner waves. Contact the Barbados Surfing Association (246-429-6647, ) for details. For lessons, call Mark Holder (246-420-3611) or Alan Burke (246-228-5117). Holder charges $50 per hour for one-on-one lessons; Burke charges $40 for a two-hour lesson. For surfing, kitesurfing, and windsurfing gear, as well as rentals and lessons, head over to Brian Talma’s Irieman Action (246-428-2866, ), in the Silver Rock Hotel.

Surfing Lite

A Perfect Set in Costa Rica is One Part Mellow Paddling and Two Parts Extreme Leisure

So you want to learn to surf. You want to experience the good-vibrations, enlightened-oneness-with-Mother-Ocean thing, but you’ve outgrown the sleep-under-the-pier, suffer-for-your-wisdom technique. Besides, more than simply learning to hang ten, you’d like someone else to make breakfast, fold the towels, and dial you in to the local scene. For this you’ll need a guide—and the man to see in Costa Rica is Alvaro Solano.

HQ is Vista Guapa Surf Camp, which 28-year-old Solano opened in September 2002 above the Pacific coast town of Jacó. Three sunny duplex casitas cascade down a narrow ridge, pointed right at what may be Costa Rica’s most reliable surf break. Each air-conditioned surf shack is aligned to ensure unimpeded valley views and discreet distance from fellow guests. There are no more than a dozen surfers during each weeklong session, and though you’re only a ten-minute walk from Jacó’s main drag, it’s easy to forget there’s anyone else in the valley when you’re on your deck. From the beach below the lodge, Solano took his first rides on a broken plank as a kid and polished the moves that have made him Costa Rica’s four-time-consecutive national surf champion. He picked this spot for his camp because it offers a beginner-worthy break with waves that average three to four feet—yet advanced-rider hot spots like Boca Barranca, the world’s third-longest left, are nearby.

Though it’s not quite sink or surf, the Vista Guapa doctrine emphasizes learning by doing. Classes are taught by Solano or Lisbeth Vindas, a three-time national champion; I had just one fellow pupil for my first attempt at the sport. Solano showed us how to count wave sets and mark reference points for the likeliest takeoff spots—and then let the waves do the instructing. At first, I waited, watching the ocean and letting my mind wander before turning, taking a few strokes, and dropping in. Solano’s approach worked: I caught the first wave I pursued.

Soon I’d found my own rhythm, on and off the board. I slept in each morning, missing the 6:30 sunrise and the dawn asana session on the outdoor yoga deck but rising in time to shuffle over to the main lodge for the monstrous breakfast of beans and rice, omelets, and fruit, during which Solano ticked off tide times and entertainment options. Each day passed in a blur of watching and paddling, and soon enough we’d start debating the big question of the day—where to have dinner—wrestling between the pan-seared tuna at Playa Hermosa’s Jungle Surf Cafe and Juanita’s seafood platter over in Playa Herradura.

Surf’s up a maximum of four hours daily, which leaves ample time for the multisport cornucopia within an hour of town—Class III-IV whitewater rafting on the Naranjo River and zip-line tours of the forest canopy, for starters. Learning that extreme leisure is the necessary counterpoint to surfing, I started easy, hopping in Solano’s minivan for the tranquillo cruise south to Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio. There I met the surfer’s spirit animal: a three-toed sloth, slung like a sack of mangoes from a branch. But most afternoons were spent in my hammock, where I found myself able to spend hours meditating about which flip-flops to buy.

My big breakthrough came on the fourth morning. Straddling my board, watching the sets roll in, I experienced a moment of the transcendent clarity I’d always imagined would come from being one with the ocean. Suddenly it was all very clear: I could have the shrimp and the lobster for dinner.

DETAILS:
Lodging: The Vista Guapa Surf Camp (011-506-643-2830, ) charges $675 per person per week, $1,200 for two people, including twice-a-day surfing at one of 22 surf breaks, lodging, breakfast and dinner, rentals, and field trips to attractions.
Sports: The surfing around Jacó is consistent year-round. Green Tours (011-506-643-2773) offers a gamut of nearby outfitted adventures.

Liquid Samba

Surf to the Rhythm of Bahia, the Soul of Brazil

“Did you hear the big news?” my surf instructor, Adriano dos Santos Sarmento, asked when I arrived in the sleepy Brazilian fishing village of Itacaré. “The fishermen caught three massive tiger sharks—right where we’re taking you to surf tomorrow.” Then he added, “The price of shark meat went down 200 percent today.” This Peter Benchley info-moment got my attention, but because shark attacks are unheard of here, I was undeterred from my plan to enlist in surf boot camp.

I ventured to Itacaré, in the eastern coastal state of Bahia, 186 miles south of Salvador, because Brazilian friends told me it possesses the “soul” of Brazil and a legacy of African-influenced music, cuisine, dance, and religion. The Afro-Brazilian culture, they said, imbues Bahia with a mysticism that affects the spirit and the senses—and, I figured, maybe the surf.

The road to town was paved five years ago, not long enough to have made Itacaré a jaded tourist area. And having noted the dreamy look in the eyes of graduates lounging around EasyDrop, a six-year-old surf camp, I set my own goal as nothing short of spiritual deliverance. For the next two weeks, seven multilingual instructors—led by the owner, German ex-fencer and musician Hans-Benjamin Kromayer—would take me and five other recruits (two Brazilians, two Canadians, and a fellow American) to half a dozen of the best surf spots in a 20-mile radius.

I quickly fell into the routine. Classes began with jumping jacks on the white sand. “Choose your wave carefully and always pay attention. Abaixa mais,” Sarmento said, seamlessly mixing English and Portuguese. His suggestion to stay low came right before my surfboard jettisoned me, making me wish that I hadn’t skipped so many balance-building yoga sessions back home.

When I needed a break, I paddled out on my longboard and meditated on the warm, poochy swells that trundled in. May through July, the waves would be eight feet high, not the three feet they were in January, and ten times as intimidating. The mile-long beach, cupped by lush Atlantic rainforest, was deserted except for a little girl decapitating coconuts and selling them to surfers.

Every morning as I strapped on my leash, I swore that I would take the afternoon to raft the nearby Río de Contas or explore the mangrove swamps. But after four hours of surfing, I invariably collapsed into a lactic-acid-induced nap. Only when the heat lost its chokehold on the day did I rouse for the evening video screening—a ritual replete with a professional critique from Kromayer. Then we fueled up on moqueca (a whitefish drenched in a thick coconut and palm-oil broth and served over rice) at Tia Deth, a family-run restaurant with homemade oil paintings tacked to the walls.

“God, this is perfect,” a fellow surfie said at dinner, setting down his caipirinha, a Brazilian cocktail. I didn’t know if he meant the exquisite blend of sugarcane booze and lemon, the tropical breeze that tumbled over the bows of small wooden boats and onto our rickety table, or the delicious soreness of well-used muscles. It was all perfection.

DETAILS:
Lodging: EasyDrop (011-55-73-251-3065, ) offers a two-week package of instruction, lodging at a pousada, and breakfast for $817-$859, depending on the season.
Sports: Mid-September through December and March through April are the best times for beginning surfers to visit. Get surf gear at Pousada Hanalei (daily surfboard rentals, $7-$11; 011-55-73-251-2311). For rafting the Class III-IV Río de Contas, try AtivaRafting (011-55-73-251-2224, ). A 17-mile trip from the put-in at Taboquinhas, in the Itacaré district, costs $14 per person.

Hawaii 911

Who Better Than Firefighter Surf Gods to Initiate Novice Riders?

Neophyte surfers cowed by the Pacific’s powerful crush will find comfort in the collective résumé of the 25 teachers at Oahu’s Hawaiian Fire Surf School: They’re Honolulu firefighters certified in every conceivable lifesaving skill—from emergency medical treatment to open-water rescue. More important, they’re born-on-boards guys. They surf almost as frequently as they eat—catching waves before and after work and spending their days off teaching hodads like me. That the trio who coached me last fall were short on attitude, long on skills, and just happened to be built like surf-mag cover gods was a bonus, one certainly not lost on the female contingent of our six-member student body.

Firefighter John Pregil, 40, started Hawaiian Fire Surf School in 2000 with Garrett Vallez and Kevin Miller and two goals: to teach surfing with “aloha spirit” and to do it in an environment of safety. Today, their burgeoning practice has a full lineup of men and women instructors and draws clients from Waikiki hotels; the school runs a free van service out to the near-secret beach where they teach.

That would be Barbers Point, a two-mile strand of southwest-facing sugary-white sand about 25 miles west of Waikiki in Kalaeloa, on the site of the recently decommissioned Barbers Point Naval Air Station. Locals know it, but most surfers prefer bigger quarry than these undaunting one- to two-footers (albeit with nice shape and just enough power to drive a long ride in shallow, 80-degree water). The same conditions make it a great choice for bodysurfers and surf kayakers, and its length and seclusion mean it’s always uncrowded. As a bonus, the point is flanked by Kalaeloa Beach Park, a 13-site campground with picnic tables, showers, and barbecue pits shaded by ironwood trees. Though camping is allowed only on weekends, the area is open for day use during the week.

“The only way you can screw up is by not having fun,” Ken Waters said as he wrapped up our ground-school session. Waters and cohorts Glenn Parker and Mike Jones had given us a thorough briefing on how and when to spring to our feet on superbuoyant foam-padded boards. But to their credit, the teachers didn’t want us bogging down with too much technique. They wanted us to surf.

I had plenty of opportunities for long, smooth rides to shore. I emphasize: plenty of opportunities. I mainly specialized in “pearling” (diving off the surfboard for nonexistent underwater treasures when the nose gets caught in a wave). But, heck, I did get a few rides in and earned the nickname “Big Wave Bob” for my fussiness in wave selection. I also had time to watch the others founder and to surf-gab with my teachers: “You guys are all great surfers. Don’t you get bored with this?”

“Are you kidding?” Parker answered me. “You’re our daily entertainment! And if you get good, we get to surf. Really, we just love to get people stoked. If we’ve accomplished that, then we’ve had a great day.”

DETAILS:
Lodging: The Department of Parks and Recreation (808-523-4525, ) requires a free permit to camp at Kalaeloa Beach Park (Friday, Saturday, or Sunday only).
Sports: Catch the best beginner surf between April and October. Hawaiian Fire Surf School (888-955-7873, ) charges $79 for a half-day group lesson, $97 for a full day, including equipment, lunch (full day only), and transportation from Waikiki. To rent a board ($20 a day), try Blue Planet (808-922-5444, ). The island’s best surf-kayak shop is Go Bananas Kayaks ($30 per day for a single, $43 for a tandem; 808-737-9514, ).

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Hazardous coastline: Wineglass Bay in Freycinet National Park

Tasmanian devil, mid-hiss

On the rocks of the Freycinet Peninsula

ON ONE OF TASMANIA’S remotest beaches, I was awakened by the screams of devils in the night—a sound that was, in the sinister words of Tassie novelist Richard Flanagan, “like that of a woman being strangled.” Personally, I thought they sounded more like hissing vampires. Perhaps I’d been reading too much about Tassie’s 19th-century colonial days, when the island was settled as a British penal colony and the convicts thought these marsupials were tormented souls in the bush. To calm my imagination, I fumbled for a flashlight and staggered out of my canvas tent into the night: There was nothing to see but the empty, ominous scrub, rustling in the damp sea wind.

The next morning, as I continued on my 18-mile hike along the island’s northeastern coast, my nightmares evaporated in the warm South Pacific sun. Beach after beach stretched into the distance. The sand was paper white; giant round boulders, covered in a scaly orange lichen called xanthoria, glistened like salmon roe all along the virgin shore; the horizon sparkled an indigo blue.

Tasmania’s past is so outrageously gothic that it was hard to reconcile with the candy-bright pageant before me. Tortured convicts would escape their chain gangs and plan to walk to China, I hazily recalled; many got lost in the wilderness and turned into cannibals. Most of Tasmania’s landscape suits its history: wild, wet, fungal, and mountainous, battered by gales and shrouded in bone-chilling mist. At night, you can sense the ghosts just outside the tent flaps. But come dawn, the haunted shore looks suspiciously like paradise—Tahiti with eucalyptus trees, suffused with piercing light. This helps explain why the recently inaugurated Bay of Fires Walk—named after the most spectacular of the many coves on this forgotten coastline—has become the hot ticket for nature lovers from mainland Australia. I was hiking with nine urban Aussies, guided by a pair of feisty Tasmanian country girls in their twenties. On the four-day excursion, we would follow the surf line for almost 20 miles through 34,345-acre Mount William National Park, the least visited refuge in the least visited Australian state, spending the first night in a canvas-covered beach tent and the last two in the luxurious Bay of Fires Lodge.

Remoteness has long been Tasmania’s trademark, and these days obscurity is quite a PR boon. Tassie is one of the few places on earth to report an increase in travelers after 9/11. “We’re safe, we’re clean, we’re a hell of a long way from anywhere else,” one local shrugged. (Statistics are charmingly vague, but foreign arrivals appear to increase by about 25 percent every year.)

Tasmania’s mystique has been ingrained since birth in wandering Aussies like myself. Years ago, I took a month to hitch around the apple-shaped island, hiking into remote national parks with a sleeping bag under one arm and a bag of white rice under the other. This time, flying from New York to Launceston, I eased myself into Tassie in a slightly less haphazard way: Interlopers from the outside world are now offered rustic luxury within their bush jaunts, and even the most far-flung pockets of Tasmania have their lonely wilderness lodges, where visitors can enjoy a little haute cuisine.

These civilized oases were almost impossible to imagine when our group first set off on the Bay of Fires trail, beginning at Stumpys Bay, where a dirt road from Launceston had petered out a stone’s throw from the surf. As we hiked into the void, the fall temperatures were in the mid-sixties, warm enough for shorts and a T-shirt. The pace along wet sand provided a decent workout, and with the sweat beginning to pour, I already had the feeling that I’d stumbled into the wrong latitude. But when I threw off my pack and plunged into the waves, there was no doubt this was the deep antipodes. It was like jumping into iced sake.

“There are currents coming from both the north and the south,” explained Natalya, a wiry Argentine-Tasmanian fresh from the dairy farm, who had just taken up guiding at age 22. “This one’s out of Antarctica, I reckon.”

We stared out at the waves, tasting a sudden rawness in the wind. The purity of this coastline was almost lacerating; I felt like I was being stone-washed clean. Then, before dusk, we stumbled into the first wilderness refuge, the Forester Beach Camp—a semi-permanent, steel-framed canvas tent with a few humble luxuries, like foam mattresses for the sleeping bags and certain exotic camping foods, 100 yards off the beach. Tassie tucker, once a grisly menu of English boarding-school sludge, would now satisfy any French provincial gourmand: organic double-cream brie, chèvre, salmon. Not to mention a constant supply of Tassie “plonk”—red wine.

“The pinot noir is a particularly good drop,” Amy, the other guide, said proudly.

The sense of privilege grew even deeper the next morning as we continued along what naturalists sometimes refer to as “the spray zone,” a stretch of unique shoreline vegetation in contact with the saltwater spray. Biologically alien items had washed ashore—purple “sea eggs,” seaweed bulbs as delicate as Faberge eggs; and the long strands of bleached white sponge known as “dead men’s fingers.” I took off my shoes to follow the tightly packed sand along the surf line. A string of islands stretched along the horizon, last relics of a land bridge crossing Bass Strait, an isthmus that once linked Tasmania to the mainland. It flooded after the Great Ice Age, 8,000 to 12,000 years ago, sending every plant and animal on a unique evolutionary trajectory.

In the late afternoon, we descended a rocky headland called Eddystone Point onto the Bay of Fires itself—the most perfect of the beaches, three miles of exquisitely unblemished sand. The bay was named in 1773, when the British sea captain Tobias Furneaux, passing by in a ship, saw campfires blazing in the bush. They had been lit by the Tasmanian Aboriginal people, whose ancestors are believed to have crossed over from the mainland about 30,000 years ago and gotten isolated when the land bridge was flooded. They were hunted by British settlers like foxes in a calculated campaign of extermination, and by 1878 the last full-blooded Aboriginal was dead. Now, their pyramid-shaped middens, or mussel-shell dumps, stand along the coastline like memorial cairns.

“Behold the promised land!” crowed Angus, a former surfie from Melbourne, as we ascended Bayley Hummock and spotted a man-made structure almost entirely lost in the forest. We slipped into a sleek structure composed of Tasmanian hardwood and glass, perched above the beach, whose simple architectural lines and expansive walls of glass revealed the riotous bush and blue horizon at every turn. The Bay of Fires Lodge was designed with the purest of eco-intentions: The power is solar, the toilets are dry-compost, and rainwater is collected for the showers. But there’s no stinting in the alcoholic beverage department: Young Angus had already poured his first glass of Tassie sauvignon blanc as we surveyed the 270-degree sweep of the ocean from the lodge’s deck—and spotted the spout of a southern right whale rising in the distance.

After two days at the lodge, I’d kayaked a sinuous bush river and skimmed across the placid bay racing eagle rays. I’d relished blue-eyed cod in chile-lime sauce, prepared by the guides. I’d even managed to bodysurf those glassy rollers. (Surfing, however, was out of the question, as it would have required hauling a board on my back for 20 miles. Plus, the best waves in Tasmania are south of the Bay of Fires near the town of Bicheno.)

Thawing out on the sun-filled terrace with a final eggs Benedict, I had to admit: The Bay of Fires Walk had been brilliant, but I missed that rush of Tasmanian freedom I used to feel when I was out in the bush alone, with no coherent plan. So back in Launceston, I dashed into a camping store, picked up a tent and sleeping bag, jumped in a rental car, and started driving.

It was time to set up my own private eco-lodge.

As I drove due south, then swung back to the east coast, the Irish-green farmland began to unravel and finally dry to a salty brown. I took the turnoff to Freycinet Peninsula, a dinosaur spine of granite above a string of secret coves about 80 miles south of the Bay of Fires, and climbed a crest to view Wineglass Bay. At the far end of the beach, I found the best campsite in Tasmania. There were three Norwegians in one tent, and a couple of Aussies in a recess, but the natural seclusion was palpable. In fact, we all gathered to watch the sun setting over the peaks—called the Hazards—then admired the stars, joined by a Tasmanian yachtsman who’d weighed anchor in the bay for the night.

Admittedly, my camping grub wasn’t exactly gourmet—I’d brought a pastrami sandwich with me from a Launceston deli. The possums devoured my breakfast, which I’d strung up between two trees. And then it started to pour down rain, so I trudged back to my car like some wild-eyed prophet, taunted by the laughing kookaburras as I passed them. But I’d proven one thing: No matter how much pinot noir or double-cream brie it produces, Tasmania hasn’t been tamed quite yet.

ACCESS AND RESOURCES

FOR MOST OF ITS HISTORY, Tasmania has been dismissed as a Faulkner-meets-the-antipodes backwater, the lost domain of hillbillies and sheep molesters, and the sort of place mapmakers forgot to include on their charts. Until the 1980s, that is, when a string of conservation campaigns publicized Tassie as Australia’s ultimate natural escape—an Eden for “greenies.” Now everyone wants a piece of the isolation. Thanks in part to the centuries of neglect, the island is still empty and raw. Imagine the Scottish moors with temperate rainforests and sinuous rivers, and you have Tasmania. Mountain ranges furrow the land like ancient wrinkles. Hundred-foot trees create dark empires of rotting foliage. Rivers run with water the color of tea. Luscious ferns blot out the sky. And the underpopulation is extreme even by Australian standards: Only 470,000 Tasmanians occupy an area the size of West Virginia (195,000 of them in the capital, Hobart), with about a quarter of the island marked as protected land.

Getting There
Qantas Airways flies to Hobart, Devonport, and Launceston (800-227-4500; )—but nobody comes to Tasmania for the city life. Instead, rent a car and seek out the unpaved roads and some of the world’s last great wilderness areas.

The Best of the Backcountry
BAY OF FIRES WALK: This 20-mile trek runs along the beaches of Mount William National Park, at the island’s northeastern tip. Thanks to the weak Aussie dollar, the all-inclusive cost for four days of hiking is US$770 (Down Under Answers, 800-788-6685, ; for more information on the hike itself, check out ). To go solo, rent camping gear in Launceston from Paddy-Pallin ().
FREYCINET NATIONAL PARK: Eighty miles south is the stunning Freycinet National Park, where jagged peaks, known as the Hazards, rise over a string of brilliant white beaches. A steep unnamed trail leads over the granite saddle to a secluded campsite at Wineglass Bay, then continues on a 19-mile circuit around the peninsula. Camp on your own or go the cushy route, sleeping in low-impact bush huts (four-day guided trip by Freycinet Experience, $760; ). The protected western flank of the peninsula is also ideal for kayaking: Freycinet ���ϳԹ���s runs three-day kayak excursions ($390; ).
THE OVERLAND TRACK: Tasmania’s most famous bush walk, the 50-mile Overland Track winds through Cradle MountainÐLake St. Clair National Park, in the alpine heart of the island. For six demanding days, hikers wend their way over windswept highlands riddled with streams and dotted with swimming-pool-sized glacial lakes that glisten like black pearls. Public huts with gas heaters and bunk beds have been set up for hikers among the crags, but carry your own tent, since they are first-come, first-served. The easier option is to go with the outfitter Cradle Huts ($1,000, ), which maintains its own custom bush huts along the route, stocked with food. Beyond Cradle Mountain, the sprawling, inhospitable region referred to bluntly as the Southwest is Tasmania’s—and possibly the world’s—ultimate wilderness area, a mind-boggling expanse of 3.7 million acres covered with temperate rainforest, whose rarely trod depths support groves of thousand-year-old trees.
THE FRANKLIN RIVER: Carving its way through the Southwest’s pristine wilds, the Class IIIÐIV Franklin River remains a rite of passage for whitewater rafters. This ten-day trip passes beneath the red-lichen-covered quartzite cliffs of Blush Rock Falls. The dark waters are home to platypuses, snakes, and freshwater lobsters. It’s a notoriously tricky run, so go with a reputable operator (Rafting Tasmania, , offers trips for $1,095).
THE SOUTH COAST TRACK: The true end of the line—a nine-day odyssey along muddy trails that cling to the final extremity of Australia. The intrepid arrive by light aircraft in Melaleuca, then slog their way for 50 miles along cliffs, flooded rivers, and shifting beaches. The payoff is the sense of utter removal: It’s just you and the Pacific gulls. ($815, Tasmanian Expeditions, ).

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High summer kicks off in Australia in December. But when the Christmas picnic hampers are being rolled out under pearly skies on Sydney’s Bondi Beach, the Outback is shimmering in a blistering heat and the tropical north of the country is soaking in monsoonal rains. Try to climb Ayers Rock and you’ll collapse from heat exhaustion; sign up for a day trip on the northern reef and you may never see clear sky. The solution? Stick to the temperate southern portion of the continent, which is at its most welcoming during the dark American winter.

The Blue Mountains

Once you’ve gotten over your trans-Pacific jetlag at one of Sydney’s 40 urban beaches, cast an eye inland: Just 90 minutes west of the city lies one of Australia’s most famous landscapes. Strings of golden sandstone cliffs loom over some 540,930 acres of Blue Mountains National Park—the centerpiece of 2.5 million acres of classic Aussie bushland, all swathed in the eerie eucalyptus haze that gave the mountains their name. (Most Americans first saw this park as the backdrop for Elle Macpherson in the art-house flick Sirens.)


In the park are a string of sedate, 1920s-era hamlets geared toward romantic weekend getaways for Sydneysiders. Katoomba is the most popular, and Lilianfels its most genteel hotel (doubles, $200; 011-61-47-801-200). But for a more dramatic taste of “the Blueys,” pack a tent and hike into the campground at Acacia Flats. To get there, drive via the village of Blackheath to the trailhead at Victoria Falls Lookout, then follow the six-hour zigzag track past the maze of thin, ghostly eucalypts known as the Blue Gum Forest (no permit or reservations are required for camping). The next day, follow the 12-mile loop to Govetts Leap through more bird-filled, creek-riddled ravines. On the third day, hike back on the steep trail via Evans Lookout and catch a taxi back to your car. (For park information, call 47-87-8877.)
For the most intense burst of local color, take a guided day trip to Claustral Canyon near Mount Tomah, about ten miles farther north: You can rappel down the chasm’s three underground waterfalls, a cascade of icy water pounding you in the face all the while; later, you’ll have to swim through various pitch-dark tunnels to emerge at the canyon’s other end. For rock climbers there’s the sheer 600-foot middle finger of the famous local landmark, the Three Sisters; if you make it to the top, you can wave at the hundreds of tourists snapping your photo over at Echo Point. Blue Mountains ���ϳԹ��� Company (47-821-271) arranges these and other trips: One-day trips cost $67-$80; a five-day sampler of canyoning, rappelling, mountain biking, spelunking, and climbing will run you about $415.

Tasmania

Although the outside world has yet to catch on, any Aussie will tell you that for the most extreme wilderness fix, you should head down to Tasmania. This island’s mountainous expanse contains the finest bushwalking in the country, the fiercest rivers, the most dramatic alpine scenery. More than one-fifth of its territory has been listed as World Heritage areas.
The premier bushwalk is the Overland Track in the northwest of the central highlands. Running through Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park, this tough, muddy trail crosses 54 miles of exposed, windswept moorland, its mountain panoramas interspersed with lakes and gnarled, twisted forests—all inhabited by wallabies, wombats, and Tasmanian Devils (unlike the Bugs Bunny version, they’re like big-headed rodents, but the surprisingly loud roar is accurate). The track can be covered in five days, but most people prefer to take at least eight to explore the side trails. No permits are needed for camping, but all hikers must register on departure (for park information, call 04-92-1133). The Australian outfitter Peregrine (in the U.S.: 800-889-1464) runs guided seven-day camping treks for $780 per person, including all equipment and transfers from Hobart. Cradle Mountain Huts (03-312-006) offers a cushier six-day trek on the Overland Track, with overnight stays in comfortable, heated cabins ($1,138 per person). And there’s no shame in staying at the sprawling chalet-style Cradle Mountain Lodge (cabins with kitchenettes, $125; 800-225-9849) at the entrance to the national park. The place is almost the size of a small village, but it’s a good base for day hikes. Your best bet: Take the six-hour loop around Dove Lake via the Twisted Lakes.


For fly fishermen, the thousands of lakes and pristine streams riddling the central highlands are hopping with brown trout; stay at the eccentric Bronte Park Highland Village (doubles, $50-$63; 02-89-1126), a converted hydroelectric camp from the 1950s, each of its cottages named after a different foreign country. Meals are extra, served in a family-style dining room.
Beyond Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair, the whole southwest of Tasmania is a network of World Heritage-listed national parks, a barely mapped expanse of mountains and temperate rainforest where many are convinced the Tasmanian Tiger, or thylacine, still lurks. At the area’s northern fringe lies the Franklin-Gordon Wild Rivers National Park, which enjoys talismanic status among Aussie environmentalists: In the early 1980s, hundreds of Tasmanian “greenies” threw themselves in front of bulldozers to save the Franklin’s raging rapids from a dam. Whitewater rafters can only give thanks: As you weave through some of the world’s most inaccessible country, overhung by greenery and 170-million-year-old sheer quartzite gorge walls, the Franklin seems like a crevice in geological time. Class IV rapids follow in quick succession, with portages required in several sections. Peregrine runs rafting expeditions, from the more moderate five-day trip along the Upper Franklin ($860 per person) to a 13-day wilderness extravaganza along the entire river ($1,490 per person) climaxing with 600 yards of the Class IV Newland Cascades and including a day climbing Frenchmans Cap, the tallest peak in the park.
For coastal drama, head for the South Coast Track, a six-day journey along uninhabited beaches flanked by huge headlands; it’s like a larger-scale Big Sur (next stop south: Antarctica). To tackle this sodden, mist-shrouded, leech-filled trail alone, take a light plane from Strahan into the airstrip at Melaleuca—a camp almost lost in the middle of the wilderness—then hike about 45 miles out to Cockle Creek, where daily buses operate (no permits are needed, but hikers should be experienced; for park information, call 011-61-02-88-1283; flights cost $463 with Wilderness Air, 04-71-7280). Down Under Answers (in the U.S.: 800-788-6685) operates nine-day guided camping trips for $870 per person, including equipment and transfers from Hobart.
On the east coast of the island, the Freycinet Lodge (cabins, $110; 02-57-0101) is a new, minimally designed wilderness hotel at the gateway to the sand-fringed Freycinet Peninsula National Park. You can take day hikes over the pink granite mountains into clear, green Wineglass Bay. Peregrine offers a three-day sea-kayak trip for $390 per person (including gear, meals, and transfers from Hobart). You’ll paddle three and a half hours south of the lodge to a remote beach camp on the western shore of the peninsula where you can kayak, hike, snorkel, and fish.

Heron Island

In FNQ (Far North Queensland), the most popular jumping-off point for the Great Barrier Reef, the holiday season is hot, sticky, slow, and wracked with rains. Which is why you need to head to the reef’s southernmost reaches for more temperate climes—well, 90-degree days with the occasional tropical sprinkle for relief.
At the southern tip of the coral expanse lies Heron Island, regarded as one of the world’s top ten diving spots. Seen from the air, Heron is a green dot at the tip of an immense triangle of coral. Swim out a short way with your snorkel and you’ll be surrounded by a fluorescent parade of 800 species of fish, and more white-tip reef sharks than you can poke a fin at (luckily, they’re too well fed to bother with swimmers). For experienced divers, a dozen major sites are within 15 minutes, and as a Christmas bonus, December and January are hatching months for green turtles.


Heron is reached by helicopter or catamaran from Gladstone. Room rates start with the budget Turtle Cabins ($125 per person, including all meals) to $230 per person for a deluxe Beach House, but the best deal is the Heron Suites ($185 per person, all-inclusive), from which you stroll straight out onto the white sands and into the water. For all three, book through P&O Resort Holidays (in the U.S.: 800-255-9849).

The Whitsundays and Fraser Island

The Whitsundays

Only slightly farther north of Heron lies the Whitsunday Archipelago, a string of 74 islands in the Cumberland group encrusted with sand and coral. For an independent reef experience, hire a bareboat at a fraction of Caribbean prices. A skipper is free for the first day, and $100 a day thereafter until you’re confident enough to strike out alone. Of the islands, 66 are entirely national park (the only developed ones to avoid are Hamilton, Daydream, and Hayman). There are hundreds of protected anchorages to choose from, most with solitary beaches, fine snorkeling, and hiking. Fishing is permitted in designated areas.
A dozen or so boat-hire companies operate out of Airlie Beach and Shute Harbour, just beyond Proserpine, but a good start is Rent-A-Yacht (in the U.S.: 800-788-6685). Rates start at $200 a day, with a five-night minimum. Catamarans and motor cruisers are also available (the latter, an obvious choice for more lubberly skippers, start at $250 a day).


If that’s all too pricey, hop a ferry to one of the 20 or so campgrounds on the islands. For $40, take the regular service out to large, lush Whitsunday Island and camp at the southern end of blindingly pure Whitehaven beach, one of Australia’s finest; alternatively, the privately run campground on Hook Island has excellent hiking and snorkeling. (You can book all of these services via the travel agency Destination Whitsundays, 79-466-848.)
Fraser Island

Off the Queensland coast between Brisbane and Heron, Fraser may be the world’s largest sand island, but it’s far from barren desert. Every corner overflows with greenery—200-foot satinay trees, banksias, even tropical rainforest—all growing on nutrients gathered in the top three or so feet of sand. The weather is steamy at this time of year, but there’s water everywhere. At the ends of hiking trails you’ll find sand-bottomed lakes for swimming (in some, like Lake McKenzie, the water is Caribbean blue; others are the color of tea). You can float on your belly down clear Eli Creek through the rainforest, or climb the giant dunes that drift across the island like mini-Saharas—only to bolt back down and crash straight into another lake. And Fraser’s entire eastern coast is taken up by 75 Mile Beach, upon whose hard-packed shores four-wheel-drive vehicles race up and down at low tide.
On the west coast, the wilderness lodge Kingfisher Bay (doubles, $185; 71-203-333) is a study in eco-chic. Almost hidden by the surrounding bush, its glass-walled lobby is a postmodern cathedral. Kingfisher makes a fine base for the first few days, but to get the most out of Fraser, head “out bush” with your own tent and four-wheel-drive vehicle. It’s easiest to rent a car in Brisbane and drive the three and a half hours to meet the barge from River Heads, just south of Hervey Bay; the fare is about $50, and reservations must be made with Kingfisher Bay. A four-wheel-drive permit is also required: It costs about $12 from the general store at River Heads. Free-range camping is permitted up and down the east coast of Fraser, but Dundubara campsite, with showers and barbecue grills, is just back from the beach in the northeast; it’s the shadiest spot to pitch a tent. (Camping permits cost $6-$10 a night; obtain them on the island at the Eurong information center, 71-27-9128.) Pick up supplies and beer from the tiny island community at Happy Valley, fish straight off the beach, and presto—you’re an honorary local.

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Out in the scorched wilderness of the Kimberley, campside banter often revolves around crocodiles—among them “salties,” or saltwater crocs, the region’s omnivorous Alpha predator. Up to 23 feet long, salties have a distressing tendency to grab the unwary by the legs in a “death roll,” snapping their victims’ necks; the corpse is then stored under a log until it rots, making it easier for the monster to chew its meal.

By comparison, freshwater crocs are positively cuddly, usually less than five feet long, with skinny snouts and slothful temperaments. These harmless fish-eaters lounge along riverbanks, sunning themselves beneath spidery pandanus leaves, indifferent to the humans wondering whether to jump in waters only yards away.
Swimming with these freshwater crocs is, in fact, completely safe, and not just because the beasts will ignore you; the Kimberley’s rivers also are relatively free of pollutants and rogue bacteria. But a dip can still be unnerving, because in recent years some salties have begun floating inland from their coastal haunts. And to the untrained eye, a small man-eating croc can be indistinguishable from a large freshwater version.


So how can you gauge which waters are truly safe? Don’t rely on laconic Outback locals for advice. “No salties here,” they’ll usually tell you before pausing and considering. “Probably.”


Thus the fundamental dilemma remains: You can know when a river does have a saltie in it, but you can never be certain that it doesn’t.


The bottom line is that most of the rivers of the Kimberley are so inviting, and the roads to reach them so dusty, that sooner or later temptation takes over. Call it a leap of faith. If you avoid spots where crocodiles are actually swimming and not merely lying placidly in the mud, you should emerge with your toes intact. Probably.

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Nothing turns an Australian misty-eyed like talking about the Kimberley, the isolated northwestern plateau where the Outback intrudes into the tropics. This immense, deserted landscape has had mythical status since the 1880s, when the first white cattle ranchers arrived. What they found was a harsh paradise, its plains riven by giant river gorges, the sandstone cliffs blazing a hot, bloody scarlet at sunset, the coastline alive with the writhing outlines of monstrous, man-eating crocs. The Kimberley quickly became an Aussie byword for frontier, for all that’s at once beautiful and brutal. Violent skirmishes between settlers and the native, nomadic Bunuba Aborigines lasted for years, with newspaper readers in faraway Sydney devouring sensational penny-dreadful-style stories of a native gunman, known as Pigeon, who shot at ranchers and eluded posses for years. His skull was finally sent to England in a sack in 1897.

These days, the Kimberley is less Hearstian, but no less rugged and lonesome. The last gruesome campaign to clear out the Aborigines was 70 years ago (and fortunately unsuccessful). Battered cattle tracks today double as main roads, many of them marked on maps as “approximate location only.” Gas stations are few and far between. Grocery stores, fewer and farther between, offer such retro Aussie staples as meat pies and sausage rolls. On some of the emptiest, dustiest stretches of road, handpainted signs proclaim: “Welcome to the Last Frontier!”


But if the efforts of man can seem meager and makeshift in the Kimberley, nature operates on a gargantuan scale here. Canyons plunge vertiginously. Cliffs tower hundreds of feet. Strange, humpbacked rocks rise from the red dust. And then there’s the weather, biblical in its extremes. At the peak of “the Dry,” in October and November, the Kimberley becomes a merciless desert, with leafless boab trees clawing towards the sky and death adders slithering across the sand. Three months later, during the height of “the Wet,” 18 inches of rain can fall overnight. Lightning storms rake the horizon, tiny streams become rivers eight miles wide, and the Kimberley begins to resemble an inland sea. In such a landscape, men and women can grow twisted; Kimberleyites are famously eccentric. But you needn’t have odd tics to immerse yourself in this vast, empty wilderness. Just plenty of water, reliable transport, an air mattress (tent optional), and the distinct lack of a master plan. This is a land, after all, of nomads.

: Australia’s Kimberley

The Bungle Bungles

Australians have always felt that the Kimberley was capable of hiding just about anyone or anything. And in 1982, we got our proof when a documentary film crew flying south of Kununurra (pronounced languidly, Kah-nah-NAH-ruh) stumbled across a hallucinatory set of geologic formations. Appearing, from a distance, to be hundreds of beehive-shaped domes, these tiger-striped mounds rose from the surrounding desert like savage blisters. They soon became famous as the Bungle Bungles. (Bungle is a mispronunciation of the “bundle bundle” grass common here.) Needless to say, Aboriginal people had known about the place for millennia and called it Purnululu. But as far as the outside world was concerned, this bizarre rock massif was a revelation. The Bungles quickly became the symbol of the Kimberley, ubiquitous on brochures, T-shirts, and postcards.
Go anyway. The Bungles may be inevitable, but they’re also unforgettable, one of the most surreal sights in this already otherworldly landscape. To view them at their most memorable, fly. If you merely drive to them, they can appear to be big ruddy hillocks and nothing special. From above, however, they become an immense, nubby wonderland, empty of all visible life except for the occasional shy pretty-faced wallaby.


Flights from Kununurra to the Bungles are offered by Paul’s Creek and Bungle Bungle Tours. The two-day trips include one night at a tent camp ($470; 011-61-8-91-686-217). You can also, during the dry season, make the five-hour drive from Kununurra on the Great Northern Highway. Once you’ve reached the Bungles, arrange a helicopter flight over the outcropping. Slingair and Heliwork (011-61-8-91-681-811) fly every half hour, weather permitting, for $115 per person.
Then, if the rains aren’t relentless or the heat too suffocating, spend several more days hiking in Purnululu National Park, which encompasses the Bungles. You can only walk in designated areas; footsteps on parts of the area’s soft, cork-like crust can cause permanent damage. (For more information, call the Purnululu park office at 011-61-8-91-687-300.) Luckily the permissible hikes are spectacular, especially the Echidna Chasm and Cathedral Gorge routes, which penetrate deep into the glowing sandstone. These routes are short, however, only a few miles. Another permitted walk, to Picaninny Gorge, is a more challenging, two-day project. Leave early in the morning; the trail’s first four miles are in direct sun. Once you reach the gorge itself, the trail enters a blissfully cool, sand-floored crevice. Six miles farther on lies Byers Base. Throw a blanket on the sand to make camp, then spend the afternoon exploring the narrow slot canyons that shoot off from the main gorge. Later, curl up on your blanket beneath the sheer dark cliffs and watch the stars rise in some of the clearest air on earth.

: Australia’s Kimberley

El Questro

Running west of Kununurra, away from the Bungles, the 440-mile Gibb River Road is the dusty Fifth Avenue of the Kimberley, a former cattle-driving track around which all human life in the area revolves. Most of the land here is taken up by immense ranches, few of them measuring less than a million acres—not a profligate size when you realize that the barren soil only sustains one head per 100 acres. (Herding is usually done by helicopter.) The attractions of this region are much like those of the most remote areas of, say, Idaho: This is where cowboy culture survives, where cattle are both income and recreation, and where the landscape is a great, dusty, lonesome, poetic place.
The closest ranch to Kununurra, and one of the most idiosyncratic, is El Questro, only 90 minutes west of town. Larger than Monaco, El Questro sprawls across the leather-brown mesas of the Pentecost Ranges. In 1990 the entire spread was leased by Will Burrell, a 23-year-old English aristocrat who happily sank into the Outback way of life: He’s been known to waterski the Chamberlain River behind a helicopter and to keep a wicker chair on the knife point of a bluff reachable only by air, the better to read poetry and contemplate the silence.


Under Burrell, El Questro has opened itself to the public as a “wilderness camp.” It offers an entire social strata of accommodations, from a proletarian $7 campground to the Homestead, a luxurious, chaps-in-black-tie-quaffing-gin-style lodge where rooms are $460 a night. My preference is for the most atmospheric option of all, the private campsites ($7), individual swaths of riverside bushland far from the nearest tent. (Call 011-61-8-91-691-777 for reservations.)
For company, drive back up to El Questro’s open-air bar, the Swinging Arm, for a steak—s cattle country, after all, and vegetarians are viewed askance—chilled Emu Bitter beer. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to chat for a bit with Buddy Tyson, the Aboriginal jackaroo, or stockman. Ask him about the time he was arrested for rowdiness in Broome and brought his dog into court as a witness.
Next morning, rent a motorboat and chug slowly up the Chamberlain, casting a line for barramundi, Australia’s most succulent white-fleshed fish. The boat costs $95 for a half day. Canoes used to be available as well, until a crocodile tore one in two. In mid-afternoon, when the sun often glares penitentially over the earth, rock-hop down the river to the dribbling waterfall at the end of Emma Gorge. The vine-fringed sinkhole here, locals claim, is “the most beautiful swimming spot in all of Oz.”

: Australia’s Kimberley

The Gorges

If East Kimberley is cultivated ranchland, West Kimberley, which begins at approximately Mt. Elizabeth Station, is its less settled, lonely cousin. Here you can begin fully to appreciate the Aboriginal legend of the “serpent dreaming.” At the dawn of time, this story goes, the Kimberley’s orange dust plains were sliced open by a great slithering snake, leaving one sandstone-flanked gorge after another to fill up with life-giving water and protective trees. Today each of these gorges has its own character and attraction. So how to know which to visit? Consider following the old Outback rule of thumb: The harder a gorge is to visit, the more satisfying it will be. Skip, then, the famous, brooding Windjana Gorge, a favored ambush spot for Pigeon, the Aboriginal Robin Hood (although there’s something memorably chilling about wading through the icy waters of his underground hideout while the red eyes of freshwater crocs reflect your torchlight in the darkness).
Drive instead to Bell Gorge at the end of a 20-mile turnoff from Gibb River Road. Get there early; the ten riverside campsites fill quickly ($11, no reservations). From the campground, hike a mile to where the earth suddenly cracks open like a wound above a 300-foot waterfall. Just below you, the gorge stretches out in a series of ice-cold swimming pools, all connected by multi-level falls; swim the shallowest sections by pulling yourself amphibian-style along the slippery algae before doing a few laps in the final, Olympic-size pond.


To have a gorge completely to yourself, however, you will probably need to head deeper into the remote, wind-swept King Leopold Ranges. Raw brown bluffs loom here over dry expanses of ghost gums, the region’s eerie, white-barked eucalyptus. Rent a canoe ($14) at Mornington Camp, 100 miles southeast of Bell Gorge, then push off for the four-mile float down the river at the bottom of Diamond Gorge. (These waters are blessedly free of man-eating crocs, allowing worry-free swimming.) The silence will be broken only by the slap of your paddle echoing from the cliffs on either side. No wonder Pigeon chose to flee here at the end, when the white men were closing in. The first martyr of the Outback could not have found a lovelier, wilder, or more haunting place.

: Australia’s Kimberley

The Shipwreck Coast

Every explorer, given enough time in the Outback, begins to dream desperately of reaching the sea, with its promise of soothing breezes and sensual, lapping waves. But in the Kimberley, to stagger from the dry bush into the region’s coastal capital, Broome, is to fight a powerful sense of anticlimax. It’s hard to fault Broome itself for this, with all its Maugham-esque tropical bars on stilts, where bronzed young locals who look Asian or Polynesian but speak with broad Aussie accents watch blazing sunsets color the city’s 14-mile-long beach. But when you’re still shaking the Outback’s dust out of your pack, Broome and its iced cappuccino culture can seem a bit too … civilized.
So sate your water lust and end your Kimberley sojourn more appropriately at Cape Leveque, a little-known outpost on Aborigine-owned land about 135 miles north of Broome. When the English pirate William Dampier landed here in 1688, he dismissed the area as worthless, and its inhabitants as “the miserablest people on earth.” He might reassess today. Cape Leveque’s sands are creamy white, the Indian Ocean an extravagant blue, and the pandanus-leaf-covered shelters a kind of Platonic ideal of the beachfront cabana ($11; 011-61-8-91-924-970). Rent snorkeling gear so you can explore the circling reefs that protect this coast from crocodiles and sting rays.


For a touch of regional color, sign up with Vince, a local Aboriginal guide who leads mudcrabbing trips into the mangroves. You’ll dodge stingrays and a few small grey nurse sharks just offshore as you search for that night’s seafood supper ($40, including all the crabs you uncover). Later, raise a glass of Emu Bitter (bring your own; the community is dry) and watch the sun sink in the direction of Jakarta, Indonesia, the nearest city. The Outback is behind you, the carnivorous crocodiles somewhere off to the side, and your palm hut is cooling pleasantly in the evening’s breeze. I’d nominate this as the most beautiful swimming spot in all of Oz.

: Australia’s Kimberley

Outback and Forth: Navigating the Most Remote Region Down Under

Getting There
Qantas and Air New Zealand both fly to Sydney from Los Angeles (15 hours) for prices ranging from $1,100 to $3,700. The domestic carrier Ansett Australia (800-262-1234) will fly you to either Kununurra in the Kimberley’s interior or the coastal pearling outpost of Broome. Round-trip cost for either destination is about $400; tickets must be purchased in the U.S.
Getting Around

“It’s ‘arsh out there,” a woman in a roadhouse store told me while squinting out at the shimmering horizon and cracking another beer. “Farkin’ ‘arsh.” She was right. Distances between attractions in the Kimberley are huge, water is scarce, and anyone who thinks he can just hike or mountain bike off into the wilderness should make out a will before leaving. Instead, rent a four-wheel drive in Kununurra or Broome; Down Under Answers offers Land Cruisers for about $109 a day, unlimited mileage (800-788-6685). If you’d prefer not to lead your own expedition into the Outback, Down Under also offers organized Darwin-to-Broome camping tours in a breakneck seven days for $636.


When To Go
Everything in the Kimberley depends upon the climate. From February until April, the wet season turns the desert into a glorious garden—but it also makes many roads into muddy sinkholes. Transportation during “the Wet” is best accomplished in light planes. Charter flights are easily arranged between almost all of the Kimberley’s towns and attractions. For information, call the Broome Tourist Bureau (011-61-8-91-922-222).
The finest time to visit, however, may be in early May, when the land is still lush but the rains have tapered off. Days are warm and nights cool, making for perfect campfire weather. Beware of October and November, the height of “the Dry.” Humid and scorching, that’s when Outback characters go “troppo,” or dotty, a ‘arsh thing to see.

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