Luxury Lodges of Australia

You have your bush camps, you have your harbourside urban design hotels, you have your backpacker haunts in the likes of Sydney's King's Cross. Australia has all that when it comes to lodging. More than that, it has luxury digs, too, superb 5-star luxury resorts and lodges, growing in number, sprinkled around the country.

I discovered this first-hand in February, when I ventured Down Under to check-out three high-end, beautifully realized lodges there. I went first to Wolgan Valley Resort and Spa, just west of the Blue Mountains, in New South Wales; then, to the wine-growing region in the Barossa Valley, South Australia; and finally to the Saffire, on the east coast of Tasmania - "Tassie,'' as I'm learning to call the island. I could hardly have hoped for a better time.

At the Louise, I sat down with Penny Rafferty, executive officer of Luxury Lodges of Australia (www.luxurylodgesofaustralia.com.au). This is a joint marketing group of high-end places, all of them resorts or resort-like, formed in November 2009 to shift the perception among foreign travelers like me of just what is on offer at the high end of the market in Oz.

There are, at last count, 17 member properties, from Queensland, near the Great Barrier Reef, to the west coast near Perth, to the middle of the country, near Ayers Rock (Uluru).

"In the last decade, the luxury experience has changed dramatically,'' Rafferty told me over drinks in the Louise's snug, buzzy bar. "Australia has always been a welcoming and safe destination, but people haven't associated it with luxury.''

And yet, they should. International luxury hotel chains such as Four Seasons, Shangri-la and Ritz-Carlton have got city properties and resorts in Australia. Increasingly, home-grown operators are also going upmarket, both in-town and in-country.

Me, I ate freshly harvested salt-water oysters and drank sparkling wine while standing in a gently flowing tidal river near the Saffire, in Tasmania - er, Tassie; went to a lively farmers' market in the Borassa with Mark McNamara, the gifted chef at the Louise's fine-dining restaurant, Appellation; and accompanied the acutely knowledgeable food and beverage chief cum executive chef at Wolgan Valley as he visited artisan purveyors of food and wine near his resort. In every case, these excursions were fine ways to see the surroundings and learn about local culture, not to mention seeing the flora and fauna that Australia is rightly known for.

Luxury does cost more, to be sure. If you can meet the initial rates and fees, you typically get meals and special, customized spa treatments, walks, boating trips and other ventures included in the overall expense. Since many luxury lodges are located far from towns of any size, this can end up being a surprisingly good deal, as well as being convenient.

Like other elements of the travel industry, luxury took a hit over the past few recessionary years. However, "luxury is coming back sooner,'' Rafferty reports. Besides, she adds, properties like those in her non-for-profit group enable travelers to access "unique Australian experiences.'' As I can attest, she's right.

My Wolgan Valley Resort Review

If you are interested in high-end travel and interested in Australia, check out my fresh review of Wolgan Valley Resort & Spa posted at AirlinesAndDestinations.com's hotels section. It begins like this:

"Emirates is an airline known for posh service, state-of-the-art infrastructure and attention to detail. Those qualities are showcased splendidly in the Dubai carrier's owned-and-operated Australian luxury retreat, Wolgan Valley Resort & Spa.

"Wolgan Valley - the valley itself and the namesake resort on the valley floor - are reached by a three-hour drive through the Blue Mountains, in New South Wales, west of Sydney.''

AirlinesAndDestinations.com includes a number of pretty-to-look-at color photos with the piece. You can find information directly from the resort by going to www.wolganvalley.com.

Wolgan's White Wallabies

Three weeks ago I was luxuriating at Australia's Wolgan Valley Resort & Spa, a posh property surrounded by national parks just west of the Blue Mountains. It's about a three-hour drive from Sydney and is owned and operated by Emirates Airline (www.emirates.com).

Luxury can be defined in a lot of ways: cosmically comfortable bed, gourmet food, pampering spa and more. It can also be characterized by access to rare sights in the natural world. Wolgan, a 2-year-old property in a dramatic setting that reminds some travelers of the floor of America's Grand Canyon - except much lusher - has that, as well the the beds, the food, the spa, etc.

One of the coolest things that happened during my recent three-night stay at Wolgan (www.wolganvalley.com) happened when I strolled out on the big, wrap-around wooden verandah outside the main lodge, and had my attention called to a white wallaby by the guy who was showing me around. There, in the middle distance on a grassy hillside a little joey - snow-white, in contrast to the usual grey or brown - was hanging out out with Mum.

The animal was too far away for me to get a good photograph with my rather basic camera (and rather basic photography skills). But you can see images for yourself by doing a Google search under 'white wallaby.'

What's a wallaby? Glad you asked, mate. Wallabies, while not kangaroos, look to me a lot like small 'roos; they also have a touch of rabbit, with pink noses and more pink inside their long ears. Of course they have a powerful tail and hind legs, and, like kangaroos, they get around by hopping.

"There are three white wallabies on this property,'' I was told. "They're extremely rare, about one in 25,000 births.''

You can see them, usually at dawn or dusk, in Wolgan Valley's heavily wooded, sometimes rugged expanse.

Now, that's luxury.

News From Oz

My trip to Australia this week and last was my fifth or sixth time Down Under. I've always had a good time but none better than this.

Surroundings had something to do with it. I stayed in posh resorts in gorgeous locales - all members of Luxury Lodges of Australia (www.luxxurylodgesofaustralia.com.au) most of the time. When I wasn't doing that, I was in a chic city hotel: Blue Sydney, a Taj Hotels, Palaces and Resorts property right on the water (www.tajhotels.com/sydney). Everywhere I went, the hospitality was sterling, the food was toothsome, the wine was great. What's not to like?

I'll have detailed accounts and reviews on this blog in the weeks ahead, as well as links to my published articles on paper and on the Web. In the meantime, just a few observations about travel in Oz:

Australia is still very friendly and safe for international visitors, yet there are fewer of us right now than in recent years. There are several reasons for this, led by the lousy economies in Europe and the United States, which are causing people to stay home.

Another problem is the strong Australian dollar (AUD), which trades at $1.08 USD - way up from 64 U.S. cents just a few years ago. China is buying all the coal the Aussies can dig from under their mineral-rich land, and the booming mining export sector has driven up the value of the Aussie dollar. The takeaway for travelers: This once-affordable continental country is now pricey.

The inbound arrivals numbers tell the story. U.S. visitors were down 4 percent in 2011 from 2010, British travelers declined 11 percent, Japanese tourists dropped 16 percent and arrivals from the continental countries of the European Union plummeted by a jaw-dropping 40-plus percent. This, as reported in the national newspaper The Australian.

The weather isn't helping. This year's Southern Hemisphere summer has been a bust in some of the most tourist-friendly parts of the country. Friends and associates in Sydney - the main gateway from North America - told me it's been humid and rainy all summer. "Bucketing,'' as they say of heavy rain in Oz. Indeed, the city was muggy, foggy and showery when I arrived - though it was comfortably warm, dry and sunny the day I departed. That allowed Sydneysiders to go back to being their outdoor-loving selves, if only briefly.

Up the east coast, Queensland is still recovering from last year's typhoon and disastrous floods. The inevitable government inquest is looking into the failure of a dam and I got the feeling someone is bound to lose his job over that.

So far, so dismal. But Australia is never down for long. It remains an amazing destination, with its unique flora and fauna, dramatic landscapes, dynamic cities and the aforementioned friendlies, food and drink.

I'll be highlighting the pleasures of the places I visited: Wolgan Valley Resort & Spa (www.wolganvalley.com), a luxury retreat in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney owned and managed by Emirates Airline; The Louise, a charming countryside compound surrounded by vineyards in the wine-producing Barossa Valley (www.thelouise.com) northeast of Adelaide; The Saffire, a drop-dead gorgeous waterside getaway on the East Coast of Tasmania (www.saffire-freycinet.com.au); and the Blue Hotel Sydney.

Much more to come on all this, mate.

Wise Words

When I visit Hong Kong, I always steal at glance at Apple Daily, the brash, color-splashed tabloid newspaper published by the brash, colorful entrepreneur Jimmy Lai. I don't read Chinese, so it's strictly a visual experience for me, but still worth it, as enough vivid energy comes through to make the paper entertaining.

Traveling in Australia this week, I came across an interview with Jimmy Lai in The Australian, the national newspaper Down Under. As usual, Lai was interesting. Among other things, he had this to say - wise words I thought I'd pass along:

"Nothing is ideal. The world is destroyed by people who have ideals more than by pragmatists. The dreamers are mostly devils in disguise. People who want to be saviours want to play God. And we all get into trouble then, because God is jealous.''

Off to Oz

I'm heading back to Australia tonight, for travel-writing purposes. It will be my first return to Oz since last April. I'll be staying at - and writing about - a cluster of fine resorts, all of them members of Luxury Lodges of Australia. Watch this space, and Twitter and elsewhere, for details about my trip, and for leads you may find useful for one of your own.

Tastes of Australia

Absent an airplane, ship or train, one way of getting to a place is by bringing the senses into play even when you are stationary. The peaty, smoky smell of certain English and Irish inddustrial cities transports me there in a limited but sharply defined way. The smell of burning pinon (pine) takes me back to northern New Mexico on a crisp winter night. The taste of food and drink associated with a place does the same thing.

I recently returned from a travel-writing trip to Australia, a visit in part defined by taste: chunky slices of crocodile sausage, refreshing sips of Crown Lager and Victoria Bitter, nicely grilled barramundi filleted fish. Some of the most evocative tastes of Oz - and among the easiest to find in my American home town, so far from their points of origin - are snack foods. And chief among these are the intensely flavorful Violet Crumble candy bars and irresistible Tim Tam chocolate-covered biscuits.

Ah, Violet Crumble: chocolate-covered honeycomb with their crunchy sweetness. Made since 1913 by a company since absorbed by Nestle, they were named for the wife of the Aussie who first created them - her name was Violet, of course - and packaged in purple wrappers because that was her favorite color. They are still packaged in purple and they are still good.

Tim Tams aren't as venerable - they've been made in Australia only since 1964. But they, too, are melt-in-your mouth good. With a cuppa - tea or coffee - Tim Tams are the perfect snack. Named for the 1958 Kentucky Derby winner, a horse called Tim Tam whose name caught the Arnott Company founder's fancy - they consist of two biscuits separated by creamy filling that is flavored with vanilla, butter and chocolate; the biscuits and the cream filling are covered with high-quality milk chocolate. They're made in a variety of flavors, including dark chocolate or caramel, but as a classicist, I prefer the original milk chocolate. In the U.S., Tim Tams are distributed by Pepperidge Farm and sold online at Amazon.com and at some Target stores.

Health foods they are not. But one bite of Violet Crumble or Tim Tams and I'm back Down Under, if only for the moment.

Look, a Flying Saucer!

Imagine my surprise when, during the long flight from Los Angeles to Australia on VAustralia, I lifted my tea cup and saw a complete printed sentence on the saucer. As I squinted my weary eyes, surprise turned to amusement: "Look, a flying saucer!'' I read.

But then I should have expected the unexpected - even whimsy - on V Australia, a member of the far-flung Virgin-branded airlines. Like its airborne cousins -Virgin Atlantic Airways being the best -known - V Australia puts some of the fun back in flying. I say "some'' because airlines can do nothing about airports, and necessary but often-clumsy security rules. But while not neglecting to fly safely and efficiently, V Australia - the long-haul, international arm of Australia's number two carrier, Virgin Blue - reflects the UK's Virgin Group founder Richard Branson's roots in the entertainment industry: it never forgets to entertain.

A few words of explanation. Ten-year-old Virgin Blue and two-year-old V Australia are minority-owned by Branson, the media-savvy British billionaire and floppy-haired entrepreneur. Like Virgin America (www.virginamerica.com) in the United States, Virgin Blue and its affiliates - collectively known as the Virgin Blue Group of Airlines (www.virginblue.com.au) - license the Virgin brand from Branson, who forgoes operational control and harvests revenue from his stake. But while Branson doesn't run these airlines, clearly his corporate DNA is in them. And that's a good thing.

There is, for example, the stand-up, six-person bar in V Australia's business class. There are the stylish black, V-necked PJs, also in business class. There is the wide-ranging and easy to use in-flight entertainment system - important on those 13- and 14-hour trans-Pacific flights between Australia and North America. There is the cool mood lighting that makes you feel you've just strolled into a club. And there is a really charming touch when the interior cabin lights go down: small pinpricks of light appear in an indigo background, creating a starry night-time "sky''.

All this is, of course, by design. "We wanted to take a fresh look at long-haul,'' Virgin Blue's Liz Savage told me in a telephone interview on my recent visit to Sydney and Cairns. "What really makes a difference is the service quality,'' said Savage, the airline's group executive commercial. "We have a very different mindset. We're a bit more up-to-date, a bit more light-hearted, as well.''

As a later entrant into the market, Virgin Blue and V Australia strive to differentiate themselves from the 800-pound gorilla in that market, Qantas. Qantas is itself a high-quality airline and it has a decades-long head start. In Australia's continental domestic market, Qantas has two-thirds of the market, to Virgin Blue's one-third, said Savage, speaking from Brisbane, where Virgin Blue Group of Airlines has its headquarters. Still, that's good for a young company and is reflected in what Savage says are 90 percent domestic load factors.

Like all airlines, Virgin saves its pampering for high-yield, business-class fliers and long-haul intercontinental service. I flew Virgin Blue between Cairns and Sydney, where the product is more than respectable, though not posh. There is not much pitch - airline-speak for legroom - and food is offered for sale, as it is on virtually all U.S. domestic carriers in economy class.

This reflects Virgin Blue's roots as a domestic, low-cost carrrier targeting fare-conscious leisure travelers. It is now going after more free-spending business travelers - and this is especially true on international routes with fledgling V Australia.

"We are very successful in small- and-medium-sized markets,'' Savage says of the domestic operation. "Virgin Blue was an LCC; now, we're focusing on the corporate market.''

Like other Virgin-branded airlines around the world, Virgin Blue/V Australia is staying outside the three big global airline alliances and striking bilateral deals. Its major new initiative is with Abu Dhabi's Etihad Airways and the Aussie company is moving closer to Air New Zealand. V Australia last month launched service between Sydney and Abu Dhabi, where it is establishing an international hub, giving it greater access to the burgeoning Middle East aviation market and to Europe. Savage praises Etihad's high-end product as a good fit for V Australia. Having flown with both airlines, I agree.

Both have exceptional customer service, for one thing.

"We don't call our customers 'passengers,'' Savage says, "we call them 'guests.' '' Of course, so do some other airlines, and even government departments in some countries have taken to calling - sorry, 'rebranding' - members of the public "customers.'' More important than branding in this instance is employee training, and both V Australia and Etihad have tuned-in, attentive staffs that seem to know what you want before you realize you want it. That in itself helps both carriers stand out - although their young fleets don't hurt, either.

Meanwhile according to Savage, the company will seek more international bilateral deals even as it tightens its relationship with Etihad. Coordinated schedules, shared lounges and, eventually, shared frequent-flier miles will enable travelers "to earn and burn,'' Savage says.

Like other airlines, Virgin is being hurt by the cascading crises that have hit the Asia Pacific region this year: A cyclone in Queensland followed by flooding, the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand and the triple whammy of earthquake, tsunami and radiation leaks in Japan. That's not to mention the rising cost of oil, driven in part by the fighting in Libya. Like its competitors, Virgin Blue is hedging fuel prices, adding surcharges and raising fares.

Sensitive to the situation, Savage expresses tempered optimism. Of the rains that brought mud and floods to Virgin's hometown of Brisbane, Savage remarks "I don't want to underplay it,'' adding that, as fast as they can, people and companies are getting back to normal. "Queensland is 98 to 99 percent open for business,'' she says. "The message is "Come and enjoy.' ''

The Shangri-la Hotel, The Marina, Cairns

You know what they say about what you need to make it in retail: location, location, location. The same holds true for hotels. Of course, top customer service, impressive physical facilities and a wide range of options like restaurants and a professional business center don't hurt.

The Shangri-la Hotel, located at the water's edge by the Marlin Marina, in Cairns, Australia, has all those things going. Only a few minutes walk from the passenger terminal for boats to the Great Barrier Reef, and with views of Trinity Bay and the mountains beyond, this resort-like city hotel has what is probably the best hotel location in Cairns - the biggest city in the tropical north of Queensland (pop. 150,000). Unlike most resorts, the Shangri-la (http://www.shangri-la.com/) also has a sizable cluster of PCs for guest use on the ground floor, plus a serviced business center - er, centre - on the Horizon Club executive floor - up one from the ground floor on level one. Just across the hallway is the Horizon Club Lounge, where drinks and light meals are served at no extra charge.

Another handy aspect of the hotel's location is the shopping complex of which it is a part. You can enter the mall right off the lobby. Although I did notice how early the shops - not the pubs and restaurants - in the mall closed on a recent Friday evening when I was there. The locals were already out of the office, bypassing the shops, to start their weekend drinking, I was told. Australia, you know? Of course, many visitors were doing the same thing, so there you go.

The Shangri-la, Cairns and Queensland generally are anxious to get out the word that they are open for business. The January cyclone that was seen on TV around the world slammed the southern parts of the state hard, including Brisbane, the state capital. In the northwest coastal regions, where Cairns is, practically everything is operating normally. They'd love to see you.

A few more words about the hotel, a 5-star, luxury property with 255 guest rooms and suites: The staff is what I call anticipatory - that is, they don't wait to be asked for something; they see you and move pro-actively. Rooms are spacious and most have views of the water. My room facing the marina had a sizable roofed terrace, making the room seem bigger than it was; ditto, the window at the head of the bed that allowed light to seep into the expansive bathroom. The shower - strong, with plenty of hot water - came in handy after a long, hot day of touring.

The conceirge and other staff are helpful, with tips about what to do and where to go - though I should say that I had an extra benefit, being part of a small group that was shown around by the hotel's affable and knowledgable director of sales and marketing, Gavin Weightman. With Gavin guiding, I got to see a wide range of cool places on my short (three days) jam-packed visit.

Among them: the Tarzali Lakes Smokehouse, with Aussie specialities that include tasty crocodile sausage (http://www.tarzalilakes.com/), and Paranella Park, a long-abandoned upscale retreat built in 1930 and only recently dug out of the rainforest. Paranella Park is not luxurious anymore - there is a caravan camp, not guest rooms, on site, although it has a good, casual eatery. However, it has an abundance of nooks and crannies to explore on the hilly grounds, comes complete with a waterfall, and comes enveloped in a strangely romantic bare-ruined-choir meets-the-mosquito-coast ambiance. These days, it's mostly a museum.

Joost Bakker's Greenhouse: Recyclable Restaurant

SYDNEY - Practically in the shadow of the looming, modernist Overseas Passenger Terminal on this city's Campbell's Cove sits Greenhouse, a temporary, pop-up restaurant built with recyled materials that is destined to be recycled itself once it's dismantled.

And that won't be long. The building, built in three weeks for an undisclosed sum and made of corrugated steel, bales of hay, glass and plywood and covered on outside walls with potted strawberry plants, will stand only until March 31. Then it will come down, its construction materials recycled and reused. Its principal designer and operator, Dutch-born Aussie Joost Bakker, will decamp to Milan to do it all over again - again using local recylables and byproducts and again running the next Greenhouse for just a matter of weeks.

Following that, Bakker, a tall, blond, blue-eyed man who lives in Melbourne and proslytizes for sustainability, will see where else he wants to take the resto-cum-bar-cum demonstration model. London is another likely stop. "We have an offer to do one in Trafalgar Square,'' he told me and several fellow U.S. journalists early this week. "That's a very interesting offer.''

Over a long black coffee and whole-meal breakfast cake, Bakker - clad in jeans and a t-shirt adorned with the outlined image of a red kangaroo, his two young blond daughters smilingly scurrying about - explained the idea behind Greenhouse. It's a place to grow, grind, cook and serve healthful, locally sourced food, he explained, in surroundings made of cast-offs and in ways that won't harm the natural environment.

My short time at Greenhouse - there's a permanent Greenhouse, in Perth, and may be a second permanent Greenhouse in Sydney later on if things can be worked out - gave the impression that it is almost more an idea of a restaurant than a full-fledged eatery. But then I wasn't there at dinner, and I didn't sample Greenhouse's 24-year-old wunderkind chef Matt Stone's most heralded concoctions, such as his way with Pacific fish mullet - a name I've always associated with a bad haircut.

We sat on chairs that Bakker made from aluminium irrigation pipes and ate off tables topped with reused billboards. Bits of philosophy, thank-you's and the restaurant's menu and drinks list were written inside on the walls. Natural light from the magnificent Sydney Harbour streamed in. Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House fairly glowed in morning light right nearby.

Bakker - variously described in press clippings as a floral artist, florist, artist, and architect - took a small hand-grinder made from metal and wood, poured whole-grain oats into it and began to turn the handle. Fine-ground oats fluffed out.

"We grind our coffee, why don't we grind this?'' he said, meaning: Why don't people do this at home. Of Greenhouse, he said, "Wheat, oats, rice - we grind everything fresh and make it fresh.''

A waitress came to our table with coffee, water and orange juice, all served in glass jam jars. Another server took a specialty of the house to another group of eaters - that well-known health-food, doughnuts. At least it wasn't the American mania for cupcakes.

Bakker shrugged when asked what set him on the path to sustainability. "I've always sort of questioned everything,'' he grinned.

He led the way up interior stairs to the rooftop garden. A bar stood at one end - it is, after all, Australia - and boxed borders of living green herbs bent slightly in the breeze coming off the water. The mix of vintage and modern architecture that characterizes The Rocks district was close-by on the foreshore. It was in fact, the Sydney foreshore authority that invited Bakker to install Greenhouse there at the water's edge.

There are no trash bins on-site, Bakker said, because leftovers and fuels at Greenhouse are reused.

"This is exactly the size of the average Australian house,'' Bakker said. "This whole building can be recycled when it's taken apart - it's a no-brainer.'' Of the roof garden, which produces vegetables and herbs for the restaurant, he remarked "It just makes sense to grow your own food where you live.''

"I use a very basic set of skills,'' he went on. "What was done 200 to 300 years ago? How did they get crops without using pesticides?''

Lessons from the past. What of the future?

"I hope,'' Joost Bakker said, "that people will do this 10 times better than me.''

Five Cool Things About Sydney

There are, of course, more than five cool things about Australia's largest city and media center, but here is a short-list, taken from my visit to Sydney earlier this week:

1. Circular Quay and Sydney Ferries: An obvious but undeniable best-of choice. Sydney has one of the finest water transport systems on the planet, centered on this busy hub in the historic Rocks section of town. Sitting outside near the tip of a ferry bound for Manley Wharf, I got drenched by a rogue wave, but that's OK - the ride to dinner at the stylish Manly Pavilion restaurant was still fun. A fast ferry cuts this trip to 18 minutes, down from the standard 30.

2. Ginger beer. Actually, I think it's available Australia-wide. Provided it contains real ginger, this widely available soft drink has a beneficial effect on the stomach. So I was told when I developed a stomach bug. I swigged a trusty, tasty ginger beer, and, sure enough, soon felt better. G'day, indeed.

3. A schooner of Victoria Bitter at the Fortune of War, a welcoming George Street pub in The Rocks that claims to be Sydney's oldest, founded in 1828. If there's Australian-rules football (''footie'') on the telly, so much the better.

4. Altitude, the 36th-floor fine-dining restaurant at the Shangri-la Hotel, where I stayed while in town. True to its name, the resto provides sweeping highrise views of Sydney Harbor - er, harbour - and Altitude's Canadian-born chef Steven Krasicki dishes out outstanding fare. One highlight on the tasting menu I sampled: Rare roasted Hahndorf venison, with pine mushrooms, Mount Buffalo hazelnuts and burnt cinnamon jus, accompanied by a 2005 Castano Hecula Monastrell wine from Yecla, Spain. Yum.

5. The Writer's Walk, back at Circular Quay. Smartly sponsored by the New South Wales Ministry for the Arts, this creative twist on the Hollywood Walk of Fame features circular brass seals inlaid on the concrete sidewalk, each marker being devoted to a writer with connections to Sydney. Among them: art critic Robert Hughes, feminist author Germaine Greer and entertainer Barry Humphries (aka Dame Edna Everage). Each plaque includes a brief biography and excerpt from the writer's work. Here's one I like by Clive James, who left Australia for England in the early 1960s:

"In Sydney Harbour, the yachts will be sailing on the crushed-diamond water under a sky the texture of powdered sapphires. It would be churlish not to concede that the same abundance of natural blessings which gives us the energy to leave has every right to call us back.''

Five Cool Things About Cairns and Queensland

I'm in the city of Cairns, state of Queensland, my first time in this part of Australia. Here are five cool things about the region I've discovered over the past few days:

1. Crocodile sausage. This can be seriously good. I had some for lunch the other day, just after reading about a giant croc that bit off a fisherman's finger and grabbed his legs to try to pull him underwater. Happily, one of the angler's friends rescued him in the nick of time. So, I don't feel that bad about crocs transformed as finger food. Serves 'em right.

2. The Esplanade, a verdant walkway through parkland along the water's edge in downtown Cairns, a prime seaside jumping-off place for the Great Barrier Reef. It reminds me of the seaside parks in Hawaii, but tidier - a great place for a run, a stroll or a picnic.

3. The Shangri-la Hotel, the Marina, Cairns (www.shangri-la.com). Nearly 300 rooms, a good restaurant and bar, spacious guest rooms with individual terraces, a very good Horizon Club executive floor and a great location at the edge of the city marina.

4. The Great Barrier Reef. I was there today, my first visit. Sadly, chunks were broken off here and there during the January cyclone that devastated central Queenland (although things are undamaged from Cairns north). But it is still important, still beautiful, still a popular destination for cruises and touring ships like the one I took with Ocean Spirit. Lovely sand cays, brilliant tropical fish, water that ranges from green to aquamarine to deep blue.

5. Platypuses. They're hard to spot, but these incredibly strange, duck-billed, egg-laying mammals are a delight. I saw one yesterday, at a distance. It was zipping along the surface of a pond, a rare treat available in very few other places on Earth.