The Magazine for Australian Travellers

October 2005

GREAT PLACES TO GO

Cutta Cutta Caves

The Northern Territory town of Katherine has a secret treasure deep underground.

Great walking on Fraser Island

Melanie Ball heads away from Fraser’s coast to focus on the middle of the world’s largest sand island.

Campsite reports

Our campsite reporters find the best places to camp, this month in Queensland, New South Wales and South Australia.

CARAVANS & MOTORHOMES

Waltzing with Matilda

New owner, new factory and new model motorhomes.

GOOD GEAR & GADGETS

Walkabout

Go on the greatest bushwalk, live the Snowy River legend and travel with a greener outlook – find out how in Walkabout this month.

How to photograph Australia

A new book by Steve Parish can help us to make our holiday pictures much better.

CAMPERS’ TALES

Cruising Australia

Aussies are planning for a life of leisure in their retirement – and, apparently, we’re very good at it.

The good life at McLaren Vale

This area in South Australia is truly gorgeous.

Hit the Spot

A seafood feast awaits at Airlie Beach.

The hazards of helping out

Adrian Ryan has some tales of woe to tell – he’s helping out a friend.

Dismal Swamp

This place in Tasmania is anything but dismal.

Outback wings and
stockmen’s things

Jim Foster takes us for a tour around two Australian icons.

Campfire cooking

Derek “The Camp Oven Cook” Bullock doesn’t need a campfire to make a camp oven feast.

JUST FOR READERS

My Favorite Place

The tantilising glitter of garnets has won for a reader a pair of great daypacks from Snowgum.

GETAWAY VEHICLE

Facelifted Forester

Subaru’s popular soft-roader Forester has increased its appeal.

CATCH A FEED

Snapping happy

This month, Paul B. Kidd offers some tips on getting better fishy photos.

REGULAR FEATURES

Readers’ Letters

Advice on locating a doctor wherever you travel is discussed this issue.

Aussie Cross Quiz

Footprints on the beach.

in Australia’s great

outdoors

Fraser’s Great Walk

Forget the stunning coast of

Queensland’s Fraser Island. For a few

days at least. Focus instead on the

other side, or rather the middle, of

the world’s largest sand island.

FRaser’s icons – perched lakes, ancient ferns, a creek so clear you can’t see the water – attract thousands of visitors every year. Most visitors come only on brief side trips from the beach highway that runs up the east coast.

It takes more time than most tours allow to get a real sense of the place: to identify the LBB (little brown bird) flitting about the branches; to find your equilibrium in a lake the color and temperature of tea; to appreciate the symphonic changes that nightfall and dawn bring to a forest; to experience the backache reserved for people spending their first night in ages on a sleeping mat.

All that awaits you on the 90 kilometre walking trail that links Dilli Village and Happy Valley.

One of six long-distance walking tracks that the Queensland government is establishing, Great Walk Fraser Island links many of the most popular central inland sites before continuing north into less chartered territory, following old logging roads and abandoned tramlines reclaimed from the forest.

With a pack on my back and companion, Michelle, by my side, I head north from Lake McKenzie to hike the upper section of the track.