Editor’s letter
WHEN WE SAT DOWN to nut out the details of our annual outback issue, we couldn’t avoid once again viewing the decisions we were making through the filter of the pandemic. Of course we wanted to concentrate on all the outback regions that have been doing it tough as a result of lockdowns, border closures and the sudden and devastating lack of international visitors, but what about our gleaming, cosmopolitan, world-class cities that are going through exactly the same thing? Figures compiled by Wotif comparing where Australians were intending to travel for the Christmas holidays in 2019 and 2020 saw Melbourne drop from the No. 1 spot to ninth on the list, while the international visitor spend was down a staggering $22.9 billion for the year ending September last year compared with 2019.
Pondering the polar opposites of these two subjects, we decided that they are such a contrast in tone, feel and aesthetic that it actually made perfect sense to combine them in the one issue. No two landscapes better illustrate the incredible diversity of this country. And, in spite of their wildly divergent appeals, the new normal that we are all living through has provided them with a new commonality of purpose: reinvigorating Aussie travellers’ interest in them and providing world-class experiences that (luckily) can’t be had anywhere else.
So, the City to Outback issue was born. In addition to telling evocative stories of people and places scattered across our rugged red heartland – from the colour and hope of the Garma Festival (page 78) to the ‘secret gem’ appeal of Queensland’s Balonne Shire (page 108) and the ancient songlines that lace through the Pilbara (90) – we have filled the pages that follow with practical ‘go there, see that, eat this’ guides on all of our capital cities (page 33). And, in the spaces in between, we have trained our eye on the thriving art scene in regional centres from the Gold Coast to Gippsland (page 62), spent time searching for dolphins and camping with koalas on the coast (page 70), and checked out the delights of cute country towns near and far (pages 58 and 120).
So, maybe it is more correct to call this the City to Outback (and everywhere in between) issue. Because another commonality right now is our collective desire to see every part of our homeland recover and prosper into the future. Now, isn’t that an issue we can all get behind?