IT’S ALL ABOUT ME
Essential Australia for your twenties.
FESTIVAL HOPPING
It’s decided. Next year is going to be your ‘festival year’. If getting lost in the throng and singing along to some of the biggest local and international indie bands on the circuit is your thing, head to Falls Festival (in Lorne, Marion Bay, Byron Bay or Fremantle) over New Year’s Eve; or if you prefer a more intimate and eclectic experience then check out Tasmania’s A Festival Called PANAMA in March. And if you’re averse to camping already (at your tender age), then Laneway’s your festival: a one-day affair of the best alternative music around held in cities across Australia (plus Singapore and Auckland) in late summer.
GOING BAREBACK IN MARGARET RIVER
The best way to explore what’s fast becoming the food capital of Australia, WA’s Margaret River region, isn’t by hire car, 4WD or bus. As we’ve discovered (and as you will over the page) horseback is now la mode du jour, enabling you to take in the region’s best wineries and beautiful countryside from a steed and go wading bareback into the Indian Ocean from white-sand beaches. globetrotting.com.au
DOWNHILL IN AUSTRALIA
Yes there are more kilometres of piste to be had in the Land Of The Long White Cloud and the Land Of The Rising Sun, but a Land Down Under demands to be skied or boarded before you hit 30. There’s something unique about tearing down a slope after a fresh dump of snow at Victoria’s Mt Hotham or NSW’s Perisher or Thredbo, with gums lining the piste instead of pines, and wombats tottering around. Indeed, when you come across someone boasting to have skied every continent you can cut them down by saying “except Australia of course...” Tick this rarefied box off the ski-enthusiasts’ checklist for international bragging rights.
BUY A BOMB AND DRIVE FROM CAPE YORK TO MELBOURNE
People fly from all over the world in their twenties to this big, wide land of ours. They’re easy to spot – looking dishevelled, tanned and eminently happy hanging around our most beautiful east coast beaches. So, being here already, you’re in a privileged position to join them: pick up an umpteen-hand VW campervan and start at the tip, perhaps even Thursday Island, and take in the likes of Daintree, Noosa, Byron Bay (obligatory), before heading down to the beaches of New South Wales’ Central Coast and carrying on to locales such as Eden and Wilsons Promontory. Finish in Melbourne with a lifetime of tales to tell.
CANYONING IN KARIJINI
The dramatic series of fissures in the billion-year-old sandstone of Karijini National Park slip somewhat under the radar, perhaps because they’re about as isolated as it gets in Australia. But this being a bucket list, you have no excuse not to fly and drive all the way out to the remote north-west deserts of WA and see this famous series of canyons in the most exhilarating way possible. The chaps at West Oz Active Adventure Tours will take you deep into the heart of this remarkable place by abseiling down waterfalls, edging along ravines and cruising leisurely along deep gullies sat in inflatable tubes. westozactive.com.au
Drink your way around the Barossa
Book a trip to the Barossa Valley for some of the country’s, if not the world’s, finest wineries, and sample some of the best shiraz on the planet. Check out the gorgeous grounds of historic Seppeltsfield and the grand cellar door of Wolf Blass, before a tasting or two at a more quaint, rustic winery like that at Two Hands or Hentley Farm. But don’t drive; hire Barossa Valley Wine Tours to ferry you and your band of merry friends around. barossawinetour.com.au
Take a Byron Bay surfing safari
Well, this just had to be in this particular section of the bucket list, because if you’re not already a surf god by the age of 30, we hate to say it, but you probably never will be.You need to take up the art of balancing on a board, travelling at speed on the surface of water like an assisted Jesus, before your limbs start to stiffen like a geriatric sloth’s. And the best place to give it a go and become said, sun-kissed surf god? The south end of Byron Bay’s Main Beach, which has an easygoing swell to get started. Take a lesson with Mojo Surf and tackle this most Australian of sports. mojosurf.com
FACE OFF WITH GREAT WHITES
Ever wanted to swim in the same patch of water as the ocean’s most ferocious predator, the great white shark? No, neither have we. But set out from Port Lincoln, South Australia, with Calypso Star Charters to the remote Neptune Islands, and you can spend hours admiring the awesome power of great white sharks from the protection of a steel cage. It’s a genuine adrenaline rush to be just inches from such ferocious yet graceful animals, a real once-in-a-lifetime experience. sharkcagediving.com.au
DO THE KIMBERLEY
The north-west corner of Australia might seem like it’s been cordoned off for visiting oligarchs, such is the price of admission, but even for the most meagre budgeted among us there are great ways to explore the Kimberley. Travel here on a shoestring by camping at the national parks along the Gibb River Road, a 660-kilometre track right through the wild heart of the Kimberley. Make stops at campgrounds at spectacular Windjana Gorge, the dramatic stone buttresses of the Bungle Bungles, and that at Mt Elizabeth Station for the amazing Aboriginal rock art.