Recently in _Australia, New Zealand, Oceania Category

If you've always wondered what it would be like to deliver mail in the Outback, you can tag along with a rural postman for a day in New South Wales and experience it yourself. That's what Australian travel journalist David Whitley did, and he wrote about his adventure for Australian Traveller magazine.  I found the story on his blog, Grumpy Traveller, and he graciously gave us permission to excerpt a bit from it:

Steve Green knows these treacherous stretches of red earth better than any man alive. He is the Australia Post contractor responsible for servicing some of NSW's most remote properties twice a week.

Every Wednesday and Saturday, he embarks upon his epic 550km-plus mail run across two time zones. In a day's work, he'll drop off letters, parcels, vital medicines and spare machinery parts to just twenty outback stations. It works out at slightly over two mailboxes an hour - and many of them are designed with the sort of eccentricity that comes from being isolated in total whoop-whoop for a very long time. He delivers to rusting oil drums, converted fridges and - in one instance - a model of Ned Kelly that has its guns pointing out at the Silver City Highway.

For today only, I am Steve's gate man. In practice, this means that I have to get out far more often than he does, opening and closing the gates designed to keep the sheep in. They may seem a little pointless in areas so big, but it's easier to search one giant paddock than to go over the entire property, inch-by-inch, in order to find a stray.

The average property size in these parts, sandwiched between the South Australian border and the Darling River to the south of Broken Hill, is around 80,000 acres. Sounds enormous, but the land is so stark, dry and barren that it's hard to make a living off it. No crops are grown, and in some areas there's only one sheep for every 50 acres.

Contributing editor Andrew Evans is down under this month, and he sends us a dispatch from a tiny corner of the world he'd always wanted to see.

I wanted to go to New Zealand's Campbell Island ever since I saw it on a map. That's all it takes sometimes--to see a tiny squiggle on an ocean of blue paper, to read the tiny printed name attached to that place, to become suddenly intrigued and to never stop wondering and hoping that maybe, someday...

These are places beyond our everyday means of travel; so personal to us and sacred to our own sense of curiosity that it becomes impossible to ever let such places leave our minds. Humans can become fixated on a speck of map forever.                                       

Exactly ten years ago, the world was waiting for the sun to rise on the new millennium. Which country would be the first to greet the new dawn? So many declared themselves the winner and invited hoards of tourists to be the first to see the year 2000. A few Pacific island nations even tried shifting the international dateline to be certain that they would be the first to see the daylight.  

However, one New Zealand geographer got technical and did the math himself. In figuring out the first sunrise of the new millennium, it was not how far east that mattered, but how far south. Given the austral summer and the tilt of the Earth--and not counting Antarctica (where the sun would neither set nor rise for the New Year)--the first land to see the new sun would be Campbell Island--the southernmost point of New Zealand, situated at 52° S and 169° E. The millennial dawn would break just after three in the morning, much earlier than sunrise in the rest of the South Pacific.

I wrote a paper about all of this in college and a little seed was planted. What of this little-known place called Campbell Island? It lies over 400 miles away from New Zealand's South Island, uninhabited, cool, windy and wet (rain falls 325 days of the year). Traveling in New Zealand, I was told that getting to Campbell Island was impossible. A heavily-protected conservation land, the island was accessible to scientists and government officials only.  

That irked me. Telling me I can't go somewhere makes me want to go there even more. Plus, why are so many of the most interesting parts of the globe only open to bureaucrats and scientists? Can they really appreciate the place more than the curious kid who dreams of visiting?  I never forgot about Campbell Island--I kept it tucked in the back of my head, alongside dreams of getting to Cuba, the North Pole and Mars.

Traveler contributing editor Andrew Evans is just back from a jaunt to Tahiti, where he followed the longest outrigger race in the world.
 
Tahiti's Hawaiki Nui Va'a is the largest and longest outrigger canoe race in the world. This year, I was lucky enough to watch it in person.  

Celebrating the Polynesian tradition of canoe travel, the three-day canoe race connects four islands of French
Polynesia--Huahine, Raiatea, Taha'a, and Bora Bora--for a total distance of 125 km (78 miles). Some 86 teams competed this year, each boat powered by six men who push through the waves using the same triangle-shaped paddles their Polynesian ancestors used thousands of years ago.

Some teams come from small, remote islands. Others benefit from big corporate sponsorship, like Team Shell, who not only are the favorite in Tahiti, but also took first in this year's Molokai Hoe race in Hawaii.

The real test of Hawaiki Nui Va'a is one of stamina, endurance, and know-how. Over three days, paddlers must deal with total exhaustion, constant sun, dangerous reefs, and the gigantic swells of the open ocean. Just watching these guys paddle for hours across the open water made me exhausted. It was all very exciting, too, given the neck-and-neck race and final upset by Team OPT (sponsored by the French Polynesia Postal Service) who took first place with an all-time record third leg finish time of 4 hours, 7 minutes and one second.

I was rooting for Team Hawaii--because I'm patriotic and because they were really fast. Win or lose, the great traverse from island to island ended with an all-day party on a white sand beach in Bora Bora and that wasn't so bad either. Hawaiki Nui Va'a takes place in Tahiti every year during the first week of November.

Video: Andrew Evans

Warning signs in Australia don't really do much in the way of nuance. Travel writer Mike Barish offers a collection of cautionary signs from Down Under.

Caution! ¡Cuidado! Achtung! No matter the language, you'll know a warning sign when you see one. Traveling the world, we've all encountered signs telling us to stay behind safety railings, use caution on slippery rocks or refrain from diving at the risk of paralysis. If that last one seems a tad harsh, don't be surprised. Here in the States, warning signs are pretty low-key. But our friends down in Australia have taken a different tone with their signage. Calling it blunt is an understatement.

Australia is home to some of the deadliest snakes and spiders in the world. Their population is spread out over incredibly harsh terrain, and often hours from medical care. As such, they don't mess around when it comes to trying to keep people safe.

Thinking of swimming in that billabong? Don't. Don't believe that crocs will stalk your boat? They will. Human-sized jellyfish waiting to give you a deadly hug? Oh, you betcha. The signage may seem outlandish, but the repercussions of ignoring them are significantly more extreme.

Unexpected discoveries can often lead to photographs that inspire, like this view of Easter Island moai from an unusual angle. Through the end of October, National Geographic wants your photos for its 2009 International Photography Contest. Submit photos in the People, Places or Nature categories and you could win a digital camera kit and get your photograph published in the pages of National Geographic magazine.

It costs $12 to enter each photo; you can submit up to six by October 31, 2009. Editors will judge for creativity and quality. Winners will be announced in early December.

In the meantime, you could download some of the editors' picks here for your computer wallpaper, rate images on a scale from one to ten, or put together a jigsaw puzzle of a photograph as you race the clock.

Photo: Easter Island by Jerry Zelko, National Geographic International Photo Contest, Sept. Week 3, Places

Check out our new Photo of the Week of Lord Howe Island, a Jurassic Park-esqe spot off the coast of Australia. Download it as your wallpaper for some travel inspiration. This is one of the sites featured in the special issue of National Geographic Traveler, "50 Places of a Lifetime: The World's Greatest Destinations, Part II," October 2009.

Check back for a the Photo of the Week each Thursday.

Photo: Tom Till/Getty Images

So it's come to this. Our friends over at Gadling just posted a video from an unfortunate American tourist traveling through Australia by train. Nineteen-year-old Chad Vance stepped off the platform during a crew change, and the train began to leave without him. Instead of waiting for the next train, he jumped on, clinging to a tiny stairway platform for over two hours in sub-zero temperatures. He obviously got bored while there, so he had time to take a video of his escapade (one can only imagine his status update: "Stuck on train platform. Cold. Bored. Please Help!").

Eventually, one of the train's staff noticed him and pulled the emergency brake. He was brought inside and given a cabin upgrade (hot showers!) and continued on his travels through the outback. Fortunately for Chad they found him when they did, as the train had another 3.5 hours to travel before it reached its destination.

[Gadling]

Lost Girl blogger Amanda Pressner is in Australia for a few weeks and is sharing her finds with us here on IT.

Australia may be the poster country for the Endless Summer, but it might surprise you to know that the sun does actually set in the land down under--and the colder months eventually arrive. So how does Oz's largest and most iconic city manage to cope when the mercury plummets (below 60 degrees!), the sky gets dark at 5 pm and winter gloom threatens to set in?

Well, we're talking about Aussies: They throw a party, of course.

This year marks the kick-off of Vivid Sydney, a cultural extravaganza that's designed to turn the city into a living canvas of light and sound during the winter season. The organizers are already calling it the biggest festival of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. Running from May 26th through June 14th, Vivid will feature four major cornerstone events that will take place in and around the city's harborfront.  

The three-week program was originally conceived to give the locals reason to celebrate during a previously sluggish interlude on the Aussie event calendar. Vivid Artistic Director Mary-Anne Kyriakou, who's both a musical composer and a lighting designer, had seen similar festivals in Europe and knew of the uplifting impact that light could have on the mood of an entire city--particularly during the darkest time of the year.

What do you do when you live in a country home to nine of the world's 16 species of penguins? Host a Penguathalon, of course!

At Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic Encounter (looks something like our SeaWorld) in Orakei, New Zealand, some 80 penguins partook in the world's first Penguathalon, an event that allowed king and gentoo penguins to go head-to-head (or rather, flipper to flipper) in soccer, surfing, waddle races, Frisbee, and swing ball.

According to the Telegraph, the event "is about more than just delighting visitors. It showcases a variety of the enrichment activities developed by the curatorial team to ensure the physical, mental and emotional well-being of the birds in its 80-strong colony."

The Penguathalon was very popular, and Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic Encounter hopes to host the event next year.

Video: courtesy of the Telegraph.co.uk

Grant Martin raises a glass to the charming class of cocktail mixers who don't phone it in on a Monday night.

There isn't much to do on a Monday night in Wellington, New Zealand.

As many travelers know, socializing is an important part of any cross-country trip - meeting new locals, absorbing culture and evolving your itinerary as you learn. Monday is just not a day for merrymaking; bars tend to close early, clubs don't open at all and everyone takes a collective breath from a good long weekend.

And so, at 9 p.m. on a Monday night, the traveler who is all caught up on email, postcards, journal entries and ramen noodles finds himself alone at one of the only open bars in town. In Wellington, you find yourself at Matterhorn.

Here you meet Claire, the Scottish bartender with dark flowing hair tied in a ponytail, wearing an olive drab, short sleeve, button-down shirt and tattoos from her shoulders to her elbows. Only Claire isn't busy like she is on Fridays, bouncing from snifter to dishwasher to customer, pouring Woodford or 42 Below. It's a slow night, and as you watch her patiently clean barware and meticulously line up bottles you know she's got time to talk.

Sidecar. Vodka tonic. Gin and tonic. With careful measure she pours each drink into a mixer, properly chills the concoction and deposits it into a prepared glass. "Where are you headed?" she'll ask you, in a light Scottish accent that's starting to fade into Kiwi.

No plans.

"It's poker night at Havana," she suggests. "Up Cuba Street, down a dark alley. You could walk right by it." She smiles. And so you go.

IT Contributor Andrew Evans offers an all-inclusive guide to all things penguin.

Penguins are never passé. Be they marching or tapping their happy feet toward another sequel, the little black and white birds are still very much in everybody's minds and hearts. I also imagine that kids who play with plastic penguins in their Happy Meals grow up to be bigger kids who want to see the birds in real life, in the wild.

Admittedly, live penguins are so astonishingly cool--the way they tilt their heads from side to side to get a good look at you, the strange braying chorus they sing, and that distinctive penguin smell that's part fishy dishwasher detergent and part dusty, old attic. Travelers often bemoan the fact that penguin Grand Central is in almost-inaccessible Antarctica, a destination better suited for scientists, explorers, and millionaires. Still, that doesn't mean you have to cross wild penguins off your wish list. The southern hemisphere is filled with alternatives for seeing wild penguins in their natural habitats.

The following locations offer options for safe and sustainable human interaction with wild penguins:

1.    Isla Magdalena, Chile: This lone clump of rocks in the Strait of Magellan is home to over 50,000 breeding pairs of adorable Magellanic penguins. After a one-hour ferry ride from the city of Punta Arenas, the boat drops you off for a good 90-minute visit with the birds. A marked path guides you safely through the penguin nests and up to the island's lighthouse for a remarkable view. (Insider's tip: in case you're tempted to use your hands to climb up those giant mountains of yellow 'dirt' for a better view, don't. That isn't dirt.)

2.    Galápagos Islands, Ecuador: The Galápagos penguin is the world's northernmost penguin species. They live right on the equator, but look and act a lot like the penguins from colder climes. The best viewing spots are on Isabela island (the largest in the archipelago) and the west coast of Fernandina island.

3.    Boulders Beach, Simon's Town, South Africa: Gigantic granite boulders and tropical-looking turquoise inlets are the exotic home for the African or jackass penguin. A system of raised wooden walkways leads you right into the heart of penguin territory, including the penguins' own sandy beach. Afterwards, enjoy a swim at the people's beach next door.

Although the bushfires that have struck southeastern Australia in the past month are thousands of miles away, that doesn't lessen the concern I have for my many friends living in in the state of Victoria. But last week a glimmer of hope came to all Australians in the fuzzy form of a now very famous koala.

David Tree and his fellow firefighters--who shot the video, above--spotted the female koala, who they named Sam, while driving through Mirboo North. The Herald Sun reports:

"I could see she had sore feet and was in trouble, so I pulled over the fire truck. She just plonked herself down, as if to say 'I'm beat'," [said Tree]. "I offered her a drink and she drank three bottles. The most amazing part was when she grabbed my hand. I will never forget that."

Sam happily drank three bottles of water before wildlife rescuers came to get her. The koala is now in the care of Coleen Woods, who says Sam has become rather friendly with male koala Bob. A happy ending for everyone.

Did you know that in every issue of the magazine, we publish a playlist of tunes tied to a different destination? This month, we take you to New Zealand. Our own music critic Tom Pryor comes up with a list of must-downloads. "If all you know about New Zealand's music scene is opera star Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, then it's time to take another look," he says, choosing a mix that includes fierce Maori hakas and traditional choral music to fertile indie rockers Flight of the Conchords, which we featured last week. We'd like to hear what tunes you'd add (or subtract).

You can download our March playlist for New Zealand on iTunes here. See the complete list of songs after the jump.

The diverse New Zealand landscape is among the most beautiful in the world: pristine beaches, rolling green fields, awesome mountains. But residents in Tekapo aren't so much concerned with what surrounds them on the ground, they're much more interested in preserving what shines down from above.

The small South Island town of about 800 people is on a mission to receive UNESCO's approval to become the first starlight reserve, an idea first generated four years ago. Locals have been darkening their Canterbury town since 1965, and have since restricted lighting use within a 19-mile radius of the town. Today residents use low-energy sodium streetlamps and household lamps that face down. Even the local skating rink installed special lighting that prevents ultraviolet rays from reflecting into the night sky, according to the Associated Press. The AP also reports that more than two-thirds of people in the U.S. and about one-fifth of the world's population cannot see the Milky Way from their homes, a statistic that the folks of Tekapo hope to change.

For more places to see the night sky, check out other Dark Sky Destinations.

Photo: Neil Gardner

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

The Jenss family holiday season extends a week or two beyond the traditional parameters of Thanksgiving and New Year's because our children's birthdays fall just before and after those two days. To celebrate Tyler's 12th birthday, we did what many locals do to escape the big city of Sydney during the first week in January--we headed for the nearby Blue Mountains. In many ways, this excursion reminded us a lot of our drives to 'the country' outside the New York metropolitan area, albeit without the dramatic scenery of Wollemi National Park as a backdrop. In our pursuit of avoiding hotels as much as possible on this trip, we found the perfect retreat in Bilpin Springs Lodge: a spacious, self-contained B&B neatly tucked amongst an expanse of gum trees and apple orchards.    

Upon our arrival, we were immediately greeted by the caretaker Tony, who showed us around the homestead where we'd spend the next three days, and the boys made a bee-line to the trampoline parked right on the front lawn. As he ran down the list of all the possible activities to consider around the area, I told him how we just wanted to take a break from the hectic pace we've been on for the last six months and just hang out. He smiled and said, "That's terrific. Not too many of our foreign guests come here and do that. They're usually in and out of here pretty quickly." I figured this was a good sign that we might have the place all to ourselves, and we pretty much did.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

As a New Yorker, I've never gone down to Times Square to ring in New Years Eve, nor have I really had any desire to do so. Call me what you will, but enduring the frigid cold to watch a ball drop is not how I wish to celebrate the turning of the calendar. I'm sure people who make the effort have a great time and it's one of those events you've gotta experience at least once, but for me, it's ultimately the thought of being jammed together with a mass of humanity that's the biggest deterrent. So why would I choose to be in Sydney on this particular New Years, especially with two kids in tow?

This year is quite different for our family, and so is Sydney. December 31, 2008 not only marked the end of one of the most memorable years of our lives, it represented the halfway point of a yearlong-round-the-world journey that began six months ago. As we were putting together the itinerary before we took off, we projected ourselves in Australia during this time frame and figured there was only one place we could possibly be to celebrate the occasion. Sure, we might have to contend with a substantial crowd down by the harbor, but at least there'd be no freezing temperatures (it's the middle of summer down under). This would definitely make the whole thing more tolerable, and besides, we'd get to watch one of the most magnificent fireworks displays found anywhere.

Rainer Jenss and his family are currently on an around-the-world journey, and they're blogging about their experiences for us at Intelligent Travel. Keep up with the Jensses by bookmarking their posts, and follow the boys' Global Bros blog at National Geographic Kids.

I do concede that I am not a travel writer, so fluently articulating the essence of a place is not something that comes easily to me. This is a particular challenge when it comes to Tasmania, which seems to have almost too much to describe. I can say with great assurance, however, that it feels very little like the mainland of Australia we'd experienced so far. Sure, there's the rugged coastline with crashing seas and desolate overland wilderness that you would expect from an island seemingly not far from Antarctica, but in reality, closer to the equator. But we also saw stunning beaches and jaw-dropping ancient forests that we never would have anticipated. The capital city of Hobart has a thriving cultural scene, but with a real laid-back feeling of ease and contentment I haven't found in too many big cities. No 'uppity', self-righteous attitude here. So as our ten-day visit starts to wind down, I've actually forgotten that we're still in Australia.

When we eventually made it to Hobart a couple of days after Christmas, we were warned that the Australian holiday (as in vacationing) season would be kicking into high gear and to expect big crowds to be joining us as we toured around. We were certainly greeted to a festive atmosphere as the nation's attention turned to the inner harbor and Constitution Dock for the conclusion of the annual Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race, considered to be the most demanding open-water racing competition in the world.  Much to our good fortune, this coincided perfectly with our arrival.

One of the benefits of traveling with children is that you can use them as decoys for conversation starters with the locals. We were having dinner at Mures Seafood Restaurant right in the harbor, when a large group, consisting of mostly husky guys with matching windbreakers, sat down at a table next to ours. I suggested the kids ask one of them if they had participated in the race and if so, how they finished. Reluctantly, the boys did as they were told and as it turned out, were now talking to Mark Richards, the skipper of the winning boat Wild Oats. Seated beside him was the boat's owner, Bob Oatly, who happens to also own Hamilton Island, the first stop in our month long stint in Australia. They were obviously impressed with the fact that we were traveling around the world for a year because the next morning as we were walking along the pier checking out all the yachts, the skipper waved us over and suggested we come on board Wild Oats for a look around, much to the envy of the large crowd gathered around to get a glimpse of the winning boat. The boys were later further impressed when they saw Mark, Bob and Wild Oats splattered all over the front pages of every major newspaper that day!