Tasmania | GlobalSalsa: travel writer Belinda Jackson

Nov

Walking, wine and wombats: Tasmania’s lake lodge you need to visit; Australia’s best cellar doors & save on Swiss rail passes

In Tasmania’s Central Highlands, in Australia’s deepest lake, that’s where we’re all going this week, for walking, wine and wombats at Pumphouse Point.

Stuck at the desk? You can still come along to Tasmania via our latest episode of The World Awaits travel podcast. Jump on the pod to hear this week’s chat, (which I recorded while sitting on the floor of the business centre at Niyama Private Islands in the Maldives, while my co-host Kirstie Bedford was packing for Athens. If you’re going to be in a business centre anywhere, I thoroughly recommend this one, because you can look at at a turquoise lagoon in the Dhaalu Atoll while you’re working)

Listen via Apple Podcasts
Spotify
or via our website https://theworldawaits.au

Set in the glacial Lake St Clair, the lake lodge has recently opened its new Retreats, beautiful cocoons amidst the remote wilderness. The central highlands also a hub for walkers, wine and wombats; https://lnkd.in/gpia2S9N

Also, leading wine reviewer the Halliday Wine Companion reveals Australia’s top cellar door to put on your travel list https://lnkd.in/gVXNehpf and we’re sharing some great tips to save when travelling around Switzerland on its Swiss Rail Pass, https://lnkd.in/gAwp-_9p

And a spot of trivia; what do you think is the most expensive thing left in Brisbane Airport’s Lost & Found? Lloyds Auctions recently put all the items under the hammer, including one pretty surprising, pretty pricey item that would be hard to forget…

Dec

Australia’s newest ‘Great Walk’ goes to Flinders Island, Tasmania

The warm turquoise waters are so clear that every ridge in the white sand floor is visible. Tea trees line the shore for a distinctively Australian look. Is this the Whitsundays? Maybe Rottnest Island? The dead giveaway is the orange lichen garnishing the granite boulders. Yep, it’s Tasmania. And that’s me, swimming in Bass Strait – the strip of treacherous water between mainland Australia and Tasmania. Flinders Island is not so cold, not so barren.

An hour into my week-long walking holiday, Flinders Island has kicked the stereotype of the Bass Strait islands being cold and barren.

“It’s the jewel of Tasmania,” the pilot shouts as our eight-seater Airvan chugs noisily away from Bridport, on the state’s north-eastern coastline. Below us stretch the low islands of the Furneaux Group, remnants of the mostly submerged plain that once linked Tasmania and Victoria.

On the west coast of Flinders Island, my guide Matt describes the land as “the Bay of Fires on steroids”. On this trip, we climb Mt Killiecrankie (fun to say, almost as much fun to climb) and I swim every day bar one, in spectacularly turquoise seas, making this a walk-swim-walk expedition.

https://www.smh.com.au/traveller/inspiration/australia-s-newest-great-walk-truly-lives-up-to-the-name-20241129-p5kunw.html

Jun

Our new podcast has dropped: listen to Episode 1!

Welcome to the very first podcast for Travel Writers Radio, which I’m co-hosting with fellow travel journalist and editor Kirstie Bedford. This week, we take you to Rome, Tasmania and Champagne.

You can listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and wherever you get your podcasts.

This episode, actress Alicia Gardiner talks about the filming locations you can visit in Tasmania where her newest series, Deadloch, was filmed. To see more, visit instagram.com/aliciagardiner__

Author Maria Pasquale tells us how to eat like a Roman (and the author of The Eternal City shares her tip for where to find Rome’s best gelato, see smithstreetbooks.com/catalogue/the-eternal-city/

And wine expert Tyson Stelzer talks about touring France’s Champagne region, and closer to home, shares a tip of one of his favourite, best-value wines. Connect with Tyson at champagne.guide and tysonstelzer.com

Connect with us on travelwritersradio.com

Sep

State of the nation: Jimmy Rees’s Australia

What saved you during Australia’s lockdowns? Was it cake? Boxes of wine or chocolates? Netflix, or perhaps it was Jimmy Rees.

The Melbourne-based comedian found himself unemployed at the beginning of the pandemic, and in his own words, just started mucking around with videos that he posted on social media – see media www.jimmyrees.com.au And he went viral.

In parodying states and territories’ stances on such issues as border closures, mask-wearing and the convoluted rules around daily exercise and social interaction (“yes, you can book a restaurant for 20 people. No, you can’t have 20 people over to your home for a dinner party”) he revealed much about Australia and Australians.

I’m a fan – I’ve been a fan since I watched him as a children’s TV presenter (yes, I may have potty-trained my daughter while watching him play Jimmy Giggle to a stuffed owl). So I leapt at the opportunity to interview him for this travel feature in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers’ Traveller section, where we asked him to cast his laser eye over the states and territories.

You can click here to read this cover story, where I play straight woman to Jimmy’s wild wanderings, as he covers bogans, wild animals, closed rooftop bars and the Flannelette Curtain (it’s in Tassie, if you’re interested…)

Ah, the Gold Coast. The weather, the beaches, the cruisy lifestyle. Everyone’s got a sports car, and there’s lots of bling. It’s flashy and it’s full of cashed-up bogans. (Actually, I don’t think you really need to say there are bogans in Queensland. It’s like a silent “k”). But Queenslanders are like, ‘yeah, we know, and it’s fine. But we have the best weather, so where would you rather be?’ Well, perhaps not Brisbane. You fly into it and then realise it really doesn’t have a beach and you ask yourself ‘Why did I come to Brisbane? I should have just gone to the Goldie or the Sunshine Coast to be with all of the cashed-up bogans’.

Enjoy our wander through the Lucky Country!

Nov

The hidden isles: Six of Australia’s lesser-known island adventures

The island theme continues here at GlobalSalsa – which makes sense for us Melburnians, who have just come out of 181 days (give or take) lockdown. Some of us are leaping around on the city beaches, happy to be rubbing oiled shoulders with our neighbours. Others of us are looking for anywhere but here, preferably without the threat of a pandemic. Enter the island holiday.

My latest story for Traveller suggests some lesser-known islands around Australia for holidays. So I pushed the boat out, and went to the Cocos Keeling Islands. Closer to Indonesia than Australia, the Cocos are four-hour flight west of Perth, a few wee scraps of land in the Indian Ocean. Continue left and you’ll eventually hit Mauritius (you’d hit the Maldives if you veered north)

Also in the round-up is a lighthouse stay off the NSW south coast, a tiny triangle of land off Tasmania’s Freycinet coast and the Northern Territory’s contribution, and island in the Windex-blue Arafura Sea.

If you fancy a little escapism, click here to read my low-key island stays.

Sep

Healthy hiking holidays: from Patagonia to Tasmania and Spain’s classic Camino

Last month, I found myself hiking along a section of Chilean Patagonia’s most famous walking route, the W.

The route curls around the Paine Massif, a majestic family of jagged peaks, whose tops were shrouded in cloud and cloaked in snow. Condors hunted between their teeth, and the air jolted to the sound of avalanches, hundreds of meters above me.

It all taps into the recent story I wrote for Prevention magazine, a women’s health publication, about five great hiking holidays. In it, I included the W, but also Tasmania’s new Three Capes Walk and the Larapinta Trail in Australia’s Northern Territory, as well as the Kumano Kodo in Japan and the Spanish classic ultra-long walk, the Camino de Santiago.

Why do we walk? To get fit? To slow down? To go on pilgrimage?

The benefits include better health and spending time in nature, while some walks, like the Kumano Kodo and the Camino, were very deliberately designed to create time to clear your head and sift and sort through the bigger problems in life, says Di Westaway, founder of Wild Women On Top.

“Finishing a trek that takes you outside your comfort zone is a confidence-building exercise. It might be really arduous at high altitude, with plenty of “OMG, what was I thinking?” moments, but that exhilaration and achievement afterwards is a huge personal lift,” Diane adds.

You can read the story online, or you can just pull your hiking boots on now…

Mar

Chasing auroras in Tasmania

A couple of years ago, I found myself standing on the top deck of a Norwegian coastal liner, the Hurtigruten. The night was pitch black, it was way below zero degrees, and we stared at the sky, our necks cricked in the cold as we attempted to capture the Northern Lights.

Then, another Australian reemerged from the warm cabins below to show us a magnificent photo of the aurora phenomenon. Where’s this? we all asked. It’s in Tasmania, he said. The Australians in the group noted it was a good 15 degrees warmer and 23 hours closer to home. So on my list for this year is to see our own Aurora Australis, the Southern Lights.

I got in touch with one of Tassie’s best-known aurora chasers, Margaret Sonnemann, founder of the Aurora Australis Tasmania Facebook group and author of The Aurora Chaser’s Handbook for her tips.

Happily, she says, you can see the Aurora Australis all year round in Tasmania, one of the landmasses closest to the South Magnetic Pole, which is where aurorae originate from. She shares camera tips as well as her favourite viewing points.

Click here to read the full story, which was published in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age‘s Traveller website.

Aug

Of myth, graves and art: Tasmania, Australia

Photo courtesy of Henry Jones Art Hotel

Back in the mists of time, nobody used to admit they were from Tassie, the heart-shaped island state of Australia. If you escaped from Tasmania, you rebranded and moved on.

Now, it’s deeply fashionable to be from somewhere other than Melbourne or Sydney, and Tassie is as hot as it gets, with a bumper food scene, fabulous scenery and its Henry Jones Art Hotel, which claims is position as Australia’s first art hotel.

I popped down just as winter was kicking in – a little too early to catch snow on kunanyi / Mount Wellington – but with a wind imported directly from Antarctica, which howled down the wharves, sending shutters shuddering and reminding me, in the dead of the night, of the myth and graves on which this island is founded.

You can read my review of the recently renovated Henry Jones, which was published in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers here .

Apr

The five places that made me: Ray Martin

I love the fact that top Australian current affairs journalist Ray Martin was scared, lost and happy in Istanbul – after all, isn’t that true culture shock? He name the Turkish capital in a list of his top five places that made me, for Traveller.

“I was culturally and physically out of my comfort zone and I loved it,
from the incessant bargaining and arm-twisting of the Grand Bazaar to
the Muslim mystique of the Blue Mosque, down the grimy side alleyways
and into smokey coffee shops,” he says.

To read more about his top five places, which range from Launceston, Tasmania to New York City, click here for the article, which appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers’ Traveller section.

Sep

Architecture tourism: The world’s inspiring new architecture

Castles, towers, skyscrapers: all rich pickings for the travelling architecture lover. Why not add a hill of garbage, a modern mosque or the site of the world’s oldest drawings to your travels in 2017?

There’s some crazy, dreamy, ambitious and unexpected architecture projects opening in 2017, from Denmark to Doha. Take a look at my round-up of a handful of the best, published in the Sydney Morning Herald/ The Age newspapers.

The Abu Dhabi Louvre. Photo: Ateliers Jean Nouvel

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