welcome

Iwas watching football on Sky TV one Sunday late last month when, during an advertising break, a promo on the Australian state of Tasmania caught my eye. The gist of the ad, from what I could gather, was that although the island state sits at the foot of Australia what it has to offer tourists, in terms of its beaches, winelands, scenery, wildlife, waterfalls, hiking trails and more, could just as well be another world away from the mainland.

Tasmania is billing itself - imaginatively I thought – as "the island at the bottom of an island, a land under down under not like any Australia you have ever seen”.

Running until March 4 and with Flight Centre the operator partner, the ad urges visitors to "uncover the hidden gem of Australia and discover the nation’s best-kept secret".

Coincidentally, in Tasmania itself a TV advertising campaign that was produced in a long-lost but revived Aboriginal tongue - an Australian first – is also running until the first week of March. Tasmanians are hearing palawa kani spoken (and seeing it subtitled) on breakfast TV and during prime-time during the build-up to the state election on March 3.

Like all of Australia’s states, Tasmania is rich in Aboriginal heritage: across the 'Apple Isle' there are several areas that have been set aside for protection and careful management. For example, as Debbie Ward writes in our feature on Aboriginal Australian experiences (starting on page 8), visitors can take to the Wukalina Walk, on a three-night, four-day Aboriginal owned and operated guided walk based around a magnificent natural landscape that is the traditional cultural homeland of the Palawa. They will also sleep in domed huts, as once used by the Palawa people.

Enjoy our Aboriginal Australian feature and the rest of an issue that covers destinations as diverse as Serbia, St.

Kitts and Seychelles.