hotels | GlobalSalsa: travel writer Belinda Jackson

May

Twenty reasons to visit Fiji

From white-water rafting to spa treatments, these are the top 20 reasons to visit Fiji.

Castaway Island Resort in the Mamanuca Islands.

From white-water rafting to spa treatments, these are the top 20 reasons to visit Fiji.

1 Diving

The Great Astrolabe Reef is the world’s fourth-largest
barrier reef and curls around the sparsely populated southern island of
Kadavu. Snorkellers can cruise the reef’s coral gardens and divers can
swim with eagle and manta rays, turtles and wrasse and ogle the reef’s
drop-offs. Stay at the simple thatch bures of Matava dive resort (matava.com).
Astrolabe’s rival for the title of best diving, the Great Sea Reef, is
known locally as Cakaulevu. Off the northern island of Vanua Levu, the
reef was little explored before 2004 and is home to green turtles and
spinner dolphins. The closest resort is Nukubati. nukubati.com.

2 Sigatoka river and cave safaris

It’s a jet-boat safari, yet it’s also a great cultural
adventure. Take a 15-kilometre journey up the rich, green Sigatoka
Valley to visit one of 15 Fijian villages to learn of local customs and
legends on the Sigatoka River safari. There’s a kava ceremony at the
village chief’s bure, followed by lunch and traditional singing and
dancing. Costs from $140.80 adults, $69 children. The newest tour from
the same gang is the Off-Road Cave safari, which visits Fiji’s largest
cave system, Naihehe Cave, once the home of a cannibal tribe. Costs from
$131 for adults, $60 for children. Both tours depart from Sigatoka, 70
kilometres south of Nadi on the Coral Coast, and pick up from Nadi or
Coral Coast resorts, twice daily, Monday to Saturday. sigatokariver.com.

3 Mei-meis (Fijian nannies)

Cultural show … Fijian fire-walking.
Photo: Alamy

Fijians are renowned for their love of kids and every
hotel caters for them (save a handful of exclusive, adults-only
retreats) without busting your budget. Top kid-friendly hotels include
Outrigger on the Lagoon, which has 30 mei-meis (nannies), great for
families with babies, while Holidays with Kids magazine’s latest survey
found the top three family-friendly resorts are Shangri-La’s Fijian
Resort & Spa, Yanuca Island, the Naviti Resort, Coral Coast and
Plantation Island. shangri-la.com; warwicknaviti.com; plantationisland.com.

4 Fire-walking

Who knew that there are two types of fire-walking in
Fiji, not the commonly known one? There’s the indigenous Fijian
tradition of walking over hot stones and the Hindu purification ritual
of walking on ashes and charcoal. Fijian fire-walking can be seen during
cultural shows at many resorts across the country or at the Arts
Village in Suva, and Suva’s Mariamma Temple holds a South Indian ritual,
Trenial, featuring fire-walking, in July or August each year.

5 South sea pearls

At the top of your Fiji souvenir list should be South Sea
pearls, which come in a rainbow of colours from soft creams to
pearlescent greys. You’ll find earrings and necklaces at the big
souvenir shops such as Tappoo (tappoo.com.fj) or Jacks (jacksfiji.com)
but also from the lady sellers at most resorts. There’s also a daily
craft market in the centre of Nadi and Suva’s craft market runs every
day except Sundays. If you’re in Savusavu, be sure to visit the black
pearl farm J. Hunter Pearls for farm tours and shopping. pearlsfiji.com.

6 Tribal belonging

Maybe you never felt you belonged: maybe you belong in a
Fijian tribe in a cross-cultural social experiment. Spend a week or more
on Vorovoro island with the people of this remote community, helping
with sustainable community tourism projects that aim to bring positive
change. tribewanted.com.

7 Tropical spas

The award-winning Bebe Spa Sanctuary at the Outrigger on
the Lagoon is built high on a hilltop and looks over the main island’s
Coral Coast. The spa treatments use Pevonia and Pure Fiji spa products
and Bebe’s warm seashell massage is worth the journey south ($126/hour).
The founder of Pure Fiji, Daniel Anania, lists among his favourite spas
Spa Denarau at Denarau Marina, Harmony Spa at the Radisson Blu Hotel
and the InterContinental Fiji Golf Resort and Spa as well as Bebe Spa. bebespafiji.com; radissonblu.com/resort-fiji; intercontinental.com.

8 Pure Fiji

Fiji’s own spa brand, Pure Fiji, puts into a jar all the
reasons we love to visit Fiji – papaya, coconut milk, pineapple and
kaffir lime – the scents of a tropical paradise. Bestsellers are the
coconut hydrating lotion and coconut sugar rub: the orange
blossom-scented rub is a winner. Find the products at the Pure Fiji spa
in Suva or at the airport on the way home. If you happen to be in Suva
on a Saturday, you can buy the products discounted at their factory
outlet. purefiji.com.

9 Rugby

Rugby is Fiji’s third religion and the locals are
obsessed. Almost every village has a team. Teams from the outer islands
compete in the Island Zone Championship in Suva every August, while the
beloved Farebrother-Sullivan challenge pits provincial teams against
each other from September 1 to October 13. Fijians go crazy supporting
their own province.

10 Blue lagoon

Children of the ’80s, remember when Brooke Shields rose
out of the crystalline waters in the 1980 shipwreck movie Blue Lagoon?
It was filmed on Turtle Island, in the Yasawas, a string of islands
north of the Mamanucas in western Fiji. Widely regarded as having the
best beaches in Fiji, they’re connected by inter-island flights, fast
catamaran and multi-day, languid Blue Lagoon cruises. Yasawa and Turtle
islands are home to two of Fiji’s top resorts, with a high
beach-per-guest ratio. bluelagooncruises.com; yasawa.com; turtlefiji.com.

11 Tropical golf courses

There’s nothing more delightful than dropping a
hole-in-one on a beautifully landscaped, tropical green. Fiji offers a
few green gems, including the home of the Fiji Open, the Natadola golf
course, designed by famed Fijian golfer Vijay Singh, Denarau Golf and
Racquet Club, and Pacific Harbour’s tough Pearl Champion course,
designed by Robert Trent Jones jnr, which has held eighth ranking
worldwide in the past. natadolabay.com; denaraugolf.fiji-golf.net; thepearlsouthpacific.com.

12 Kokoda

Fiji has two main cuisines – indigenous Fijian and Fijian
Indian. Fijian Indian is heavy on the rice, spice and chilli, and
indigenous Fijian features plenty of seafood and is easy on the spice.
Kokoda is the Fijian take on cerviche, a divine dish of local fish
marinated in lemon juice and coconut milk. Time your visit to include
lovo night in the hotels, where food is cooked in an underground oven.
Otherwise, try Indigo, at Port Denarau, which serves Indian fusion as
well as indigenous Fijian, or Sky Top, on the rooftop of Ohana
restaurant (Queens Rd, Martintar). If you’re self-catering, get down to
the morning produce markets, held in all the main towns, including Nadi,
Suvasuva and Suva, or just stop along the roadside to buy freshly
caught prawns, mud crabs or fish. Also, pineapple, papaya and mangoes
are plentiful when in season.

13 The Mamanucas

Castaway, Treasure, Beachcomber and Bounty islands: the
Mamanuca Islands are total showponies (literally: the Tom Hanks movie
Cast Away was filmed on Modriki). This handful of islands is beloved of
day trippers with good reason: the diving, snorkelling and surfing are
world class and busy Beachcomber has the reputation of Fiji’s top party
island. Lying west of Nadi, the islands are easily reached by boat from
Denarau Marina; South Sea Cruises does most of the day trips. ssc.com.fj.

14 Kula Eco Park

Get up close and personal with Fiji’s rare and endangered
animals in this environmental haven near Sigatoka, on the Coral Coast.
It’s a great stop for kids, with fruit bats, iguanas, an array of
rainbow-coloured parrots including the flashy Kadavu red-breasted musk
parrot, and the fluffy orange dove. It’s
also a pram-friendly set-up. fijiwild.com.

15 Glamour digs

Make no mistake: while Fiji loves its reputation as a
family getaway, its 333 islands hide deeply glamorous resorts sought out
by the international jet set. Mel Gibson owns an island in the Lau
group, and TV bachelorettes hang out at Anthony Robbins’s luxury Namale
Island. Dolphin Island was the private island of the owner of New
Zealand’s top lodge, Huka Lodge, but has been opened to guests – it can
be home to just four couples or one lucky family – and the new,
adults-only Tadrai Island Resort, which is just a chopper ride from Nadi
in the Mamanucas, has just five villas with their own plunge pools and
butler service. namaleresort.com; dolphinislandfiji.com; tadrai.com.

16 Sigatoka Dunes

When the sun is shining, why stay inside? The prehistoric
sites excavated at Sigatoka Sand Dunes give a glimpse into Fijian
history without having to trek through a museum, and you get to stretch
your legs, too. Archaeological digs are still turning up stone tools and
the area is one of the largest burial sites in the Pacific. You may
even catch sight of Fiji’s national rugby team, which trains down here.

17 Real ecotourism

Jean-Michel Cousteau Resort, on the northern island of
Vanua Levu, is home to Johnny Singh, Fiji’s first marine biologist.
Cousteau, an explorer and oceanographer, set his small resort away from
the bustle of the main island and it has won several awards for its
ecotourism projects. The family-friendly five-star resort has set the
benchmark for other Fijian resorts to follow, featuring organic gardens,
rainwater harvesting and edible landscaping without compromising on
comfort. fijiresort.com.

18 Island-hopping

In Fiji, “day tripping” doesn’t mean hours in a car, it
means lying on the deck of a yacht, smelling the sea breeze, seafood
banquets and snorkelling stops. Charter a private yacht and choose your
course or join a cruise to, say, Tivua Island on the tall ship Ra Marama
and spend the day snorkelling, glass-bottom boating, kayaking or
chilling on the beach in Fiji style. fijisafari.com; captaincook.com.fj.

19 World-class surfing

Most surfers head for the Mamanuca islands to hit the
waves – the permanent six-metre wave Cloudbreak, off the coast of
Tavarua, is a Fijian legend, and reigning world champion Kelly Slater
describes nearby Restaurants as “one of the most perfect waves that I
have ever surfed”. Taravua will host the Volcom Fiji Pro, featuring the
top pro surfers, from June 3 to 15. Off the south coast of the main
island, you’ll find little Beqa Island is home to the challenging
left-handed reef break Frigates, and Sigatoka Beach’s Sand Dunes stand
out on the Coral Coast.

20 White-water rafting

Fiji’s lagoons are brilliant for sea kayaking and the
waterways through its mangroves let you explore these mysterious
ecosystems. The local guides of Rivers Fiji take groups river-rafting
through the forests and past highland villages on the main island and
sea kayaking out to Benq Island, renowned for its fire-walkers and
surfing. riversfiji.com.

Source: Sun Herald newspaper

Apr

Putting the Gold Coast in your face

Risque … chocolate three ways at Salt Grill Restaurant, the Hilton Hotel.

New food stars have come out to shine on the Gold Coast, leaving kebabs and burgers in the shade.

The
new Hilton hotel features another Gold Coast newbie, Sydney chef Luke
Mangan, who has made the trek north to open Salt Grill restaurant. Four
months after opening, it was awarded a Chef Hat at the 2012 Australian
Good Food Guide awards. As we toss over the difference between
striploin, fillet and tenderloin, Mangan works the room, smiling and
shaking hands like the best-trained celebrity chef.

In case you
forget who designed your dinner, his name is on every plate laid on the
table. And there are many, many plates on our table.

We
eat the kingfish sashimi, with the most divine crust of ginger,
eschallot and Persian feta. We eat chargrilled quail on shredded
zucchini studded with pine nuts and currants. We eat the tenderloin, we
eat the striploin. Heaven help us, we eat dessert: a strip of
sunshine-orange cheesecake and a risque-sounding chocolate three ways.

You
might be shocked but, finally, we are so full we forgo a post-prandial
cocktail in the hotel’s heaving bar, Fix, even if it is by international
barmeister Grant Collins, who lists Sydney’s Zeta bar among his
conquests.

You would think we wouldn’t eat again but you’d be
wrong. The next night is earmarked for Bazaar, an “interactive
marketplace” housed in the QT Gold Coast hotel (qtgoldcoast.com.au). Forget tired hotel restaurants: every table is packed, wine is flowing, and the chefs in the alfresco kitchens are running.

It’s
an eye-popping international array of hanging meats, sizzling
barbecues, woks on fire, an embarrassment of raw fish and, when the
dessert chef pops out, he’s mobbed by grateful women like a celebrity
turning up to an AA convention. “It’s a buffet but it’s a buffet on
steroids,” one of the many beautiful staff members says.

The
restaurant pumps not only to its own beat but the beat of the nightclub
Stingray, one floor below, where waitresses in tight ‘n’ t’riffic red
minidresses mingle between thirtysomething local partiers, who are all
happy to leave at midnight, while still beautiful.

More great eats

1 Hellenika, Nobby Beach An
effusive Greek restaurant famed for its luscious baked lamb, though the
white marinated anchovies and chargrilled Mooloolaba king prawns are
worthy of the journey. (07) 5572 8009, hellenika.com.au

2
Vie Restaurant, Palazzo Versace, Main Beach Now serving Sunday brunch.
The duck confit on polenta is creamy and rich with the scent of truffle
and the wagyu beef divine. Order Bloody Marys and pretend you own one of
the yachts in the marina. $49 for two courses and welcome drink. (07)
5509 8000, palazzoversace.com.au

3
The Food Store, Hilton Surfers Paradise Create the perfect picnic with
charcuterie and ask hotel staff to set up a picnic at Main Beach.
Must-eats include dried, tissue-thin wagyu beef, black truffle duck,
chicken liver pate and muscatels. (07) 5680 8000.

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/places-to-go-for-dinner-and-a-bit-of-a-showoff-20120405-1weww.html

Mar

BRISBANE: We’re going north on an urban safari

Neither
floods nor cyclones can dent the relentless reinvention of Brisbane, with celeb
chefs and real espresso all over town.

In a city where, traditionally, the word
‘hip’ is automatically aligned with ‘replacement’, it’s been a tough slog to
otherwise convince to southerners and the hordes who’ve fled the northern
capital every decade that Brisbane now is truly a cool city.

“Hip Brisbane?” said a friend
who’d grown up in Brissy in the 60s, fled and never gone back. “Visit
first, then try to convince me.”

And with its reputation and streets taking
a battering in the recent floods, Brisbane has used it as an excuse to give the
city a good scrubbing to emerge gleaming in the late-summer sunshine.

If my Brisbane escapee friend had spent just a couple of hours with me one
sunny morning, she may have started to relent. My hotel, the newly opened Spicer’s Balfour, is a renovated Queenslander in inner-city New Farm, with
just nine guest rooms, wide verandas for breakfasting, a rooftop bar and
open-air reception with views across to the Story Bridge and into the neighbours’
capacious back yards.

As a schoolgirl in rural Queensland, my memories of
Brissy are of brawling with the siblings while dad drove in endless circles
around the city streets, cursing the Big Smoke and inevitably ending up out the
front of the XXXX brewery. Now, locals cruise the city on bikes, ferries, along
riverside promenades: Brisbanites
are no slouches – you’ll find them running marathons before breakfast, pounding
through the city’s lush parklands, riding the riverside trails or sauntering
the city streets. No wonder they’re mainlining big
breakfasts at eight: they’ve been up before dawn, catching the sunshine.
Remember the old Flo Bjelke-Petersen joke? No daylight saving, thank you. It
fades the curtains.

But
it’s not just me who’s rethinking Brisbane: Matt Moran opened his Brisbane Aria last year, Spaniard Pablo
Tordesillas moved up north by way of Woolloomooloo’s Otto to open Ortiga,
named the country’s top restaurant in 2010 and the town’s still talking about
its coup in scoring fashion designer Akira
Igosawa’s latest boutique and Hermes’ arrival in December.

This
is not a one-way street of pale southerners heading north to woo the
white-pants brigade. November saw gong-winning Brisbane bar Byblos open in Melbourne, Nat-Sui shoes beloved by well-hoofed
celebs from Tara Moss to The Veronicas is coming to Woolloomooloo and Newtown’s
Campos Coffee opened a Brisbane outpost
long before coming to Melbourne late last year.
In fact, the Brisbane café was recently named Australia’s best by Lifestyle Channel viewers, and the waiters
are as effortlessly condescending as any Sydney NIDA graduate-cum-barista.

Bringing coffee to the south? It just smacks of selling ice to eskimos.
It’s long been held you can’t get a decent espresso in Brissy, so I do a
double-take in front of the drive-through café by Brissy-bunch-made-good, Merlo, which churns out its daily-roasted
private blend to loyal locals who zip past, arms stretched out from their shiny
black BMWs and Audis to receive a hit.

Brisbane’s coffee aficionados tell me the new barista at French café Cirque is totally amaaaaaaaazing, but,
this still being Queensland, I miss lunch twice in a row because the kitchen
closes up, quick-smart, at 2.30pm. Not so much the Land of the Long Lunch, but
the Land of the Early Lunch. But I guess if you’ve been up since the crack of
dawn, you’re not going to wait till 3pm to eat.

I only just scrape in for a late lunch (after some begging) at the Gun Shop Café, Delicious magazine’s
café of the year 2010 and named in Gourmet Traveller’s top 20 brekkys. The
little 65-seat café, which endured a sluicing during the floods, churns out up
to 350 breakfasts each Sunday morning from 7am till 12.30pm (there’s that early
closing bell again).

“It doesn’t matter if you’re Premier Anna Bligh or a homeless bloke
who’s scrounged enough for a coffee, everyone still has to queue,” says chef-owner
Jason Coolen, who is easing into dinners, starting with Friday and
Saturday nights and has just finished extending out the back, to the delight of
the mid-morning pram brigade. “I’ve got kids, (mate) Matt Moran’s got kids. Why
do we want to knock that market back?”

The service I get on the Brisbane food scene is, with the exception of
Campos, endearingly informal, with all the enthusiasm of a young Labrador who
just wants to be your friend and tell you their favourite dish on the menu,
with a large chunk of life story thrown in for good measure. They’re not
flirting, but it’s kinda cute, to wit the bouncy boy bringing out platters of
local snapper, Kimberley barramundi and Hervey Bay scallops at South Bank Surf Club, the new
restaurant by TV chef Ben O’Donoghue
of Surfing the Menu fame. Ben himself
delivers a starter rack of oysters to us three gleeful girls, who throw a
bottle of South Australian riesling into the mix and perch out on the veranda.

While we hoe in, the Brissy girls recall how they used to leap into
the nearby man-made South Bank beach
for a quick sobering-up swim, jeans and all after a night on the town. The
beach is currently closed while an army of trucks repair the flood damage, but
when it’s in the swing, sunny Sunday afternoons see this restaurant, which aims
to become carbon-neutral, pumps with hungry and thirsty swimmers.

If we weren’t eating at Ben’s new joint, we could have popped into Sardine Tin for late-night tapas (yes,
Brisbane, like Sydney and Melbourne is certainly not immune to the charms of
Spanish food served in minutiae) or any
of the tiny bars along South Brisbane’s casual strip, where well-behaved
drinkers lounge on tables along the pavements in the warm evening air.

It’s certainly more
lively than Brisbane’s Queen St Mall, which moves from Vuitton to Supré in just
two short blocks. Never have I seen so many bra straps and Brissy’s perpetual
fascination with mini-dresses means it’s well in style at the moment. It’s hard
to find the local gems unless you are tipped off. Totally this-minute menswear
is found in Dirtbox, relocated
beside its newly reopened sister shop Bessie
Head in the otherwise drab Broadway Mall, and little ‘Tokyo-centric’ Apartment, stocking Comme Des Garcons
and US coolster brand Carhartt, is hidden in a basement on neighbouring
Elizabeth St. Brisbane’s own Easton
Pearson lives in Fortitude Valley’s slick main drag, James St, near
fashion incubator The Tribune and local upcoming label Subfusco.

In fact,
the Valley is back on the hot list, thanks largely to the The
Emporium complex, home to
the second hotel I road-test here. The suburb
is giving its spicy rep as a hotbed of dirty drinking dens the heave-ho, thanks
to such establishments as Emporium, which took out Gourmet Traveller’s best
small luxury hotel in 2009 and again in 2010, but one local still slips up: “Why,
it’s just a vomit’s spit from the nightclub scene,” they say guilelessly. I spy
a few clubs with that boarded-up look all nightclubs have in daylight, but the
queen on the scene is luxe, opulent Cloudland,
with its crazily lush organic theme complete with waterfalls, garden walls and
a retractable roof.

The Emporium hotel hits a few sour notes, with windows I can’t seem to
open, additional charge for wi-fi and a chilly lap pool, but the rooms are
well-designed and spacious, and it sits beside the current hottest meal ticket
in town, Tartufo.

This Wednesday night, Tartufo
is turning back those without bookings, which we sail smugly past. Chef Tony Percuoco’s kitchen must run itself, as he’s out on
the floor between courses, laughing and chatting, a more carefree chef I’ve
never seen. Formerly of the Gold Coast’s
Ristorante Fellini and an
apprentice at Bennelong way back in the 70s, he’s always loved Brisbane. “It
just reminded me of Sydney when we arrived, back in 1972,” he says without a whiff
of condensation.

The catchphrase in Brisbane at the moment is ‘urban villages’, and Woolloongabba
is the hottest of the lot for antique and vintage shops as
well as some truly stellar eating houses, just down the road from that iconic
stadium, the Gabba.

A word about the
Wollongabba strip: it’s small. It’s really small. It’s, like, a block long. Yet
you could quite comfortably spend a day there, starting with coffee at Pearl, then a poke amongst the antique
centre and emporium for vintage Chanel and retro homewares, dinner at Bistrot Bistro or 1889
Enoteca (home of 2010’s best wine list in all Oz) and a cheeky little
post-dinner rendezvous at Crosstown Eating House’s new bar, or in sparkling
new Canvas, with tapas by Matt Moran (yeah, he’s loving Brisbane) and
rum-tastic cocktails. A hot tip: Tuesdays is tapas and tequila night, where $30
will get you two beautifully crafted marguerites and three tapas.

Canvas is typical of
the new edginess in Brissy – its walls are handpainted by local street artists
Jimmy Bligs and Teibo, and the street grunge theme continues at Edwina Corlette’s edgy gallery, a
pleasant find as I’m tottering around New Farm in an attempt to negate the
calorie binge by way of window shopping. That’s her window, splashed in vivid
red, yellow and black painted roadsigns by Aboriginal-Chinese artist Jason
Wing.

If you thought you
could see everything in Brisbane at home in Sydney, praps think again. We all
know Gallery of Modern Art’s (aka GOMA) coup with its recent Valentino Retrospective exhibition,
which saw more than 8000 visitors on one of the final Sundays, and the
afternoon I visit is packed with what appears to be the AGM of the Country
Women’s Association, dissecting sleeves insets and sable-trim armholes.

The riverside GOMA says
it was lucky to sustain only minimal damage, but the whole precinct, including
the Qld Art Gallery is currently closed, but expected to be open before the end
of the month. When it does open its doors, GOMA’s current exhibition, they
promise, will blow you away. The Tracey Moffatt photos and Minnie Pwerles are stacked
away and the whole space given over to 21st Century: Art in the First Decade. Opened 18 December until 25
April, it features 180 artworks by 110 artists from 40 countries, some on loan
from the world’s most prestigious galleries, others new acquisitions. We’re
talking balloons, swimming pools, live zebra finches, wormholes that snake
through the building…it’s even got its own blog, www.21cblog.com.

While I’ve spent most of my time in the
Valley, New Farm, West End and Woolloongabba, there are yet more booming areas to check out: Paddington
for its vintage strip, the post-flood scrubbed Eagle Street Pier for eating, the waterfront down at newly chi-chi
Teneriffe, the old jail that’s now The Barracks’ food and shopping haunt and
the café scene at Milton.

Does that mean a return visit? “Don’t
donate to flood appeals, come up and spend your money enjoying the Brisbane
sunshine!” the locals tell me. Dammit, it’d be un-Austrayian not to. So if
‘hip’ meant feeling angst, wearing black and not eating fresh mango for
breakfast, then give hip the heave. I’ll take New Farm, not New York.

ADDRESS BOOK

1889
Enoteca, 10-12 Logan Rd,
Wolloongabba

Bistrot
Bistro, 14 Logan Rd, Wolloongabba

Brisbane
Aria, No. 1 Eagle St,
Eagle St Pier, CBD

Byblos
Portside Wharf 39 Hercules Street, Hamilton

Campos
Coffee, 11 Wandoo
St, Fortitude Valley

Canvas, 16b Logan Rd,
Woolloongabba

Edwina
Corlette Gallery, 2/555 Brunswick St, New Farm

Gun
Shop Café, 53
Mollison St, West End

Merlo
drive-through café, 104 McLachlan St, Fortitude Valley

Ortiga, 446 Brunswick St, Fortitude Valley

Pearl
Café, 28 Logan Rd,
Wolloongabba

South Bank Surf Club, 30aa
Stanley Plaza Parklands, South Brisbane

Tartufo, Emporium
Brisbane, 1000 Ann St, Fortitude Valley

STAYING THERE Best of the boutiques: Spicer’s Balfours (37 Balfour St, New
Farm, 07 3358 8888, www.spicersgroup.com.au)
Chester’s (closed in February for
renovation, 26 Chester St, Fortitude Valley,07 3852 2218, www.chestershotel.com) Limes (142 Constance St, Fortitude
Valley, 07 3852 9000, www.limeshotel.com.au)
and Emporium (1000 Ann St, Fortitude
Valley, 07 3253 6918,www.emporiumhotel.com.au
)

FOR MORE INFORMATION Get your hands on the excellent (yet
free!) Good Guide, a new series of
fantastic little guides on four Brisbane pockets. Find in the smaller hotels,
real estate agents or online with interactive maps, www.goodguide.net.au Check Travel Queensland for packages www.queenslandholidays.com and
download Brisbane Marketing’s new
online guide, www.visitbrisbane.com.au/Travel/VisitorGuide/

Jan

Right wavelength: Heron Island

Turtles viewed from the island’s quasi-submarine

“INFANTS are just hand luggage,” a travel veteran told me before the
arrival of a Jackson jnr. “Take them to all the posh restaurants before
they can walk, and travel.”

“Families should stick to holidays in Queensland and stop
inflicting their kids on the rest of us during long-distance flights,”
sniped a chorus of online travellers. Snipers, we took your advice.

So,
wary of the many evil eyes cast by business travellers on a red-eye up
to Brisbane and onward to Gladstone, the first family holiday is to that
bastion of family holidays, north of the border.

Heron Island is a coral cay 72kilometres off the coast of
Gladstone. It’s a two-hour ferry journey or, if you’re flush, half an
hour in a chopper.

To read more, click here

Dec

Cheap and full of cheer

Rejoice, oh disorganised work slaves! Bargains still abound for those who don’t book their summer holidays a year ahead.

Everything about Malaysia screams “bargain” and it’s all
done so nicely. Getting to Kuala Lumpur is cheap, thanks to respectable
Malaysian budget airline AirAsia, and the shopping is fabulous, with
Chrissy sales making it even better (psst, and heaps cheaper than
Singapore). You can snap up a city five-star hotel for as little as $100
a night but for a cheap, authentic experience, try a home stay in a
kampong (village) house with a local family, eating home cooking and
experiencing the culture. The government-monitored initiative costs from
$27 a day. In January, the holiday islands of Penang and Langkawi are
starting to dry out from their November deluge but new hotels are
keeping the competition fierce – check out the new Four Points by
Sheraton on Langkawi and Penang’s new Hard Rock Hotel.
airasia.com, go2homestay.com, tourismmalaysia.com.au.

Others on the budget radar include Singapore, Tahiti, Hawai’i, Cambodia, New Zealand and our own Cairns is on sale, too.

Click here to read more.

Nov

Cairns pulls at the heartstrings

Cairns lagoon. Skin cancer central, but does have some shade!

On a busy corner of tropical Cairns, I could see OK Souvenirs, Koaland and Louis Vuitton. Then I got trampled by a Japanese tourist group. A woman outside my hotel window smoked rolled cigarettes and spat tobacco and invectives at passers-by, the hotel concierge went AWOL while I was trying to haul baby, pram and bags up the front stairs, and it was hot, humid and heavy. Cairns, I was quite prepared to hate you.

But the next morning, I’d softened. The concierge had materialised at the Cairns Hilton, which has just had a $6 million renovation. The streets were full of cute open-air cafes and restaurants and locals and travellers were splashing happily in the lagoon, a clear water pool in the middle of town. I liked the notices pinned telling you where to take baby flying foxes that have fallen out of the trees above, and the primal squeak of a hundred furry little bodies hanging from the branches like over-excited black fruit.

Flying foxes, just hanging out in Cairns.

Then, there was the discovery that the Hanuman restaurant in the Hilton is of the same family as the legendary Darwin Hanuman, and I was unnaturally thrilled to learn they even do bento, basically upmarket take-away, comprising two perfect curries, rice and some rather exciting pickles.

Pulling out of the harbour on a boat turned toward Fitzroy Island, I could smell the massaman curry and jasmine rice, and the prospect of enjoying it on a tropical island seemed pretty damned good. Cairns, welcome back into the heart.

Nov

Salalah, Oman

We love a ‘top 10’ and the Lonely Planet’s top 10 cities is always good for a spot of cultural biffo.

I’m going to be a snob and say up front that London is a rather ho-hum choice for the number one city to visit out of all the world, and Orlando in the US leaves us cold, but hey, Australia’s always got Darwin. Yes, Darwin. Land of jumping crocodiles and topless barmaids. Sorrrrryyyy, that’s SUCH an awful picture of Darwin. We like our most northern capital.

Happy to see the entire Middle East hasn’t been written off, and we’re big fans of Oman and Hong Kong is perpetually fabulous. Of course, the game is to see how many you’ve already ticked off before the Lonely Planet got there…

Here’s the list in its entirety:
1. London, UK
2. Muscat, Oman
3. Bengaluru (Bangalore), India
4. Cadiz, Spain
5. Stockholm, Sweden,
6. Guimaraes, Portugal
7. Santiago, Chile
8. Hong Kong
9. Orlando, USA
10. Darwin Australia.

In the top 10 countries, Uganda is the ‘too cool for school’ number 1, with Taiwan and gorgeous Jordan in there. Ukraine? Horses for courses, man, and Cuba’s still a goer while the Castros remain in power, with the ever-powerful tagline, ‘go before it changes irrevocably’.

The top 10 regions include coastal Wales, La Ruta Maya (central America), northern Kenya, Arunachal Pradesh (India), Hvar (Croatia), Sicily (Italy), Maritime Provinces (Canada), Queenstown and southern lakes (New Zealand), Borneo and Poitou-Charentes (France).

Oct

Here’s booking with you, kid

Yasmine and her meimei (nanny) Litiana.

FIJI’S air is humid and temperatures a good 20 degrees higher than the home I left five hours ago and I’m ferreting through a daypack for passports, five-month-old Yasmine on the arm. I plonk her on a nearby desk for a hands-free moment.

“Madam!” barks an official-sounding woman. “You need Special Attention!”

She claps her hands and, like a summoned genie, a young
man appears at my side, grabs our passports and runs past the queue of two planeloads of newly arrived Australian holidaymakers. Within minutes, we are bustled through customs, our luggage retrieved, the driver has collected us and we are bundled up in a cool van, turned towards the southern Coral Coast and our resort.

It is the ultimate queue-jump and a delicious taste of travelling in Fiji with a baby. The omens are good.

Click here to read more.

Oct

Luke, Luke, Luke. It’s all about you. Even before you waltzed up to my table last night in the new Hilton on the Gold Coast, in your chef’s whites advertising airlines and restaurants, it was all about you.

I thoroughly enjoyed (and how often can you say this of cheap airline food) the tortilla with roast beef, vintage cheese and mesclun leaves as we flew up from Melbourne to the Gold Coast. There was the branding: Food by Luke Mangan. It was a deliciously far cry from your beef pie I ate with the same airline enroute to Fiji recently. Luke, leave rustic alone, please. It was so rustic, it comprised three enormous chunks of cow, so big that the wibbly plastic airline knife had no impact on it, leaving a plane of diners chewing like the animal they were consuming.

Then, last night, as we tossed over the difference between striploin, fillet and tenderloin, you schmoozed the room, smiling and shaking hands like the best-trained celebrity chef. Your name was on every plate that was laid on our table (and let me admit, there were many plates laid on our table).

Oh, how we ate. We ate the kingfish sashimi, with the most divine crust of ginger, eschallot and Persian feta. We at chargrilled quail on shredded zuchinni studded with pine nuts and currants. We at the tenderloin, we at the striploin. God help us, we went back for desert: chocolate three ways (which does sound a bit pervy) and a strip of sunshine-orange cheesecake.

I need to lie down. I need to run a marathon, or whatever the people of the Gold Coast do each morning. I need restraint, I need to avoid you, Luke.

Oct

More icing on the cake: Daylesford

Australia’s premier spa town just keeps getting better – and tastier. Discovers what’s new in Daylesford.

“PLEASE, no mobile phones,” requests the Lake House’s restaurant
menu. And, “Please, no thongs.” Oh, only because you ask so nicely, I
won’t wear my thongs into your two-hatted restaurant for the first
showing of its spring table.

They like to keep themselves nice in Daylesford.

Click here to read more/

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