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

A DC3 was one of those incredibly resilient aircraft that flew for decades after they were built for the second world war. Over the years this one was owned by Qantas, TAA, Air Niugini and Bush Pilots Limited and flew millions of kilometres across Australia. Donated by John Williamson of Hobart, it has yet to be restored.

in Australia’s great

outdoors

Outback wings and stockmen’s things

Visit Longreach in central

Queensland to see two of

the most Australian of

Australian legends

I have always had a fascination for anything aeronautical. From the age of about 10, I built and flew numerous model aircraft then, at about the age of 17, I found I preferred low flying motorcars and girls.

In my 30s I discovered hang
gliding and ultra light aircraft. About this time I had the privilege
of flying some rare aircraft, such as the famous Tiger Moth, Leopard Moth and the easy-to-fly Auster but, as the focus of my life changed, I moved away from aircraft into other pursuits.

From the age of 14 I lived on the land and worked as a farm labourer then a shearer, usually working between shearing seasons as a station hand and stockman in Victoria and Queensland.

As a stockman I became familiar with the scent of wood smoke, quart-pot tea, dust and the acrid smell of a red-hot branding iron burning a brand into cow hide to the accompaniment bellow from the outraged beast.

As a young bloke I spent a great deal of money on R.M. Williams clothes and riding boots and delighted in the rough, and often tumble, of station polo-cross. So it was with great anticipation that we turned our Triton 4x4 and Jayco Finch toward that icon of central Queensland, Longreach, where we would find both the Qantas museum and the Stockman’s Hall Of Fame.

These wonderful tributes to two of the most Australian of Australian legends take at least three hours each but we found one legend a day was enough for us to digest. We began with Qantas.