Bruce Elder - Globetrotter Guide Australia

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Tenth edition published in 2013
by New Holland Publishers (UK) Ltd
London Cape Town Sydney Auckland
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
website: www.newhollandpublishers.com

Garfield House, 86 Edgware Road
London W2 2EA, United Kingdom

Wembley Square, First Floor, Solan Road
Gardens, Cape Town 8001, South Africa

Unit 1, 66 Gibbes Street, Chatswood
NSW 2067, Australia

218 Lake Road, Northcote,
Auckland, New Zealand

Distributed in the USA by
The Globe Pequot Press, Connecticut

Copyright 2013 in text: Bruce Elder
Copyright 2013 in maps: Globetrotter Travel Maps
Copyright 2013 in photographs: Individual photographers as credited ()
Copyright 2013 New Holland Publishers (UK) Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders. Globetrotter and the Globetrotter device are trademarked to New Holland Publishers (UK) Ltd.

Print ISBN 978 1 78009 376 5
ePDF ISBN 978 1 78009 486 1
ePub ISBN 978 1 78009 485 4

This guidebook has been written by independent authors and updaters. The information therein represents their impartial opinion, and neither they nor the publishers accept payment in return for including in the book or writing more favourable reviews of any of the establishments. Whilst every effort has been made to ensure that this guidebook is as accurate and up to date as possible, please be aware that the facts quoted are subject to change, particularly the price of food, transport and accommodation. The Publisher accepts no responsibility or liability for any loss, injury or inconvenience incurred by readers or travellers using this guide.

Publishing Manager: Thea Grobbelaar
DTP Cartographic Manager: Genen Hart
Editors: Thea Grobbelaar, Carla Redelinghuys, Nicky Steenkamp, Alicha van Reenen, Melany Porter
Design and DTP: Nicole Bannister, Elose Moss
Cartographers: Genen Hart, Rene Spocter, Carryck Wise, Carl Germishuys

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Photographic Credits:
Nordic Photos/.

NHIL = New Holland Image Library

Front Cover:Sydneys distinctive skyline with Harbour Bridge and yachts anchored in Lavender Bay.

Title Page:The Pinnacles, Nambung National Park, Western Australia.

Signs warn travellers to watch out for camels, wombats and kangaroos as they travel through the outback.

A ustralia is a country of remarkable diversity. It ranges across more than 30 of latitude from the tropics of north Queensland, the Northern Territory and northern Western Australia through to the temperate rainforests of southern Tasmania. The great appeal of Australia, with the exception of cool, moist Tasmania which defies every generalisation about the country, is the vastness of the landscape, the extent of the desert areas (it has the second-largest dry desert area in the world after the Sahara), the incredibly blue skies and its richly multicultural society.

Australia enjoys long periods of sunny, dry weather and consequently is essentially an outdoor society characterised by informality, egalitarianism, friendliness and a genuine dislike of protocol and pretentiousness.

The strengths of modern Australia lie in the acceptance that this is a country where life is easy, where the narrow social stratification that is so much a part of European society has been abandoned.

Look at Australia on the weekend and you will find sport ovals full and beaches crowded. Watch the main arteries out of any major city on a Friday afternoon and you will find them choked with cars full of bushwalkers, people travelling to their holiday homes, surfers, fishermen and people fleeing the cities. However, it should always be remembered that, although Australians still love the idea of the rural bronzed Aussie, less than 12% of the population actually live in rural areas, or the bush as it is called.

Far removed from the pains and sufferings of the rest of the world, Australia is fast becoming the middle-class paradise that the people of Europe have dreamt about for centuries.

Visitors to Australia will be confronted by a continent of bewildering diversity. They can experience the tropical magic of the Great Barrier Reef with its fantastic coral formations and the vastness of the Great Artesian Basin which runs down the centre of the country an area where steaming bores bring water to the parched land from hundreds of metres below the earths surface.

They can marvel at the beauty and elegance of the modern cities and wonder at how they can travel for hundreds of kilometres without ever seeing another human being.

In Tasmania they can be seduced by wild beaches where waves, uninterrupted by land since they left South America, crash onto lonely shores, and they can marvel at the dramatic glaciation of the islands cold and forbidding Cradle Mountain area, which stands in sharp contrast to the red deserts of the mainland.

Beyond these features there is the gently undulating cattle country between the Great Dividing Range and the Pacific Ocean, the beauty of the Snowy Mountains in winter, the vast plains where sheep and wheat sustain small rural communities, the dramatic red soils and beaches of the Kimberley and the huge jarrah and karri trees on the southwestern tip of Western Australia.

But no journey around Australia, and no one wanting to understand this mysterious continent, should miss the dead heart. Alice Springs with its dry Todd River and the MacDonnell Range stretching east and west of the town; Uluru, the greatest stone on Earth, always marvellous at dusk and dawn; the huge outcrops that are Kata Tjuta; and the jagged canyons Standley Chasm, Simpsons Gap, Kings Canyon are all places seemingly designed by nature simply for the purpose of taking the visitors breath away.