Top
City Destinations
Sydney / Brisbane / Melbourne / Canberra / Adelaide
/ Perth / Darwin / Hobart
Best
known cities
Arguably
the best known cities are Sydney in New South Wales
and Melbourne in Victoria. Add to this the national
capital, Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory,
midway between Sydney and Melbourne.
Australia’s
cities, each one with its own individually distinctive
character, are very much cosmopolitan centres, where
people of diverse ethnic backgrounds, although still
of largely United Kingdom and European backgrounds,
have come to call home.
Beach,
Bush, Barbecues
With
most of the large cities situated along the coast,
and with the beach and the bush within easy reach,
Australia boasts an outdoorsy lifestyle, and barbecues
at many open-air venues are very much part of the
culture, despite the diversity of ethnic backgrounds,
as are surfing, swimming or just lazing around on
its white sand beaches.
Iconic
structures
What
you may find instead when visiting Australia, especially
if flying in to Sydney, are the iconic Opera House,
the Harbour Bridge, miles of white sand beaches,
a melting pot of many peoples, and a live, vibrant
culture that stems from its multicultural identity.
Still,
Australia is pretty much unknown in some parts of
the world.
Awesome
natural features
Inland
lie the great Australian deserts, and perhaps the
one inland city of note would be Alice Springs in
the Northern Territory, right in the Red Centre
of Australia and close to such awesome natural features
as Uluru (Ayres Rock), the world’s largest
rock, and the Valley of the Winds.
Wine
making regions
There
are two major wine-making regions, the Barossa Valley
in South Australia and the Hunter Valley in New
South Wales, and some of their cabernet sauvignons,
rieslings and chardonnays are of exceedingly high
quality.
Grandeur
and tragedy
Across
the continent in Western Australia are the Kimberley
Ranges, home of the world’s largest diamond
producer. Along the coast is Broome, source of some
of the finest South Sea pearls.
Off
the north Queensland coast is the Great Barrier
Reef, a coral wonderland, reached from such coastal
cities as Cairns and Townsville.
In
the southeast is Australia’s only island state,
Tasmania, site of the Port Arthur convict settlement
which has had a large share of tragedy and bloodshed.
