10 essays filed from Oceania.
Hobart, Australia
Tasmania is Australia's island state, the size of Ireland, with one of the largest temperate-wilderness reserves on earth and a small population concentrated on the eastern coast. The walking, the food, and the genuine emptiness are the reasons to come.
April 15, 2024
Melbourne, Australia
Melbourne is the second-largest Australian city and, by most metrics that matter to a traveller, the more rewarding one. The laneway coffee culture, the food, the small-bar scene, and the Australian Open in January make for a city that punches well above its harbour-less weight.
November 12, 2023
Sydney, Australia
Sydney is one of the most photogenically sited cities on earth — the harbour, the opera house, the bridge, the beaches at Manly and Bondi. The city becomes legible through its coastal walks, which connect the urban grid to the Pacific in a way few capitals can match.
November 4, 2023
Cairns, Australia
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on earth. It is also one of the most visibly distressed marine ecosystems on the planet, with successive bleaching events over the past decade. The visit is worth making, more carefully than the brochures suggest.
September 20, 2023
Rotorua, New Zealand
Rotorua smells of sulphur. The geothermal vents are throughout the town. The Māori cultural centres are the most significant in the country. The combination — natural strangeness and indigenous depth — is the reason to come.
December 12, 2022
Queenstown, New Zealand
Queenstown sits on the shore of Lake Wakatipu under the jagged Remarkables peaks. It is the most adventure-sport-marketed town in the world — bungy, jet boats, paragliding, skydiving. The mountains and the lakes, however, are the actual reason to come.
December 4, 2022
Yulara, Australia
Uluru — the great red sandstone monolith in the centre of Australia — is one of the most photographed natural features on earth and a deeply sacred site for the Anangu people who have managed this land for tens of thousands of years. Walking around its base, especially at dawn, is one of the most quietly extraordinary experiences in Australian travel.
September 24, 2022
Hanga Roa, Chile
Easter Island — Rapa Nui in the local Polynesian — is the most isolated inhabited island on earth, 3,500 km from the nearest continental coast. The 900 moai are the iconic image; the contemporary Rapanui community living among them is the deeper experience.
September 8, 2021
Papeete, French Polynesia
French Polynesia is at the more expensive and more remote end of South Pacific travel. The Society Islands — Tahiti, Moorea, Huahine, Raiatea, Bora Bora — are the famous core. The Tuamotu and Marquesas groups are the genuine off-grid experience.
June 15, 2021
Nadi, Fiji
Fiji is, in the brochures, a series of identical-looking resort beaches. Fiji as actually visited is 330 islands with significant cultural, ecological, and geological variation; the Yasawas and the highlands of Viti Levu are where the country reveals itself.
May 29, 2021