Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Hardie Grant Explore, $50.00.
A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. Essentially that’s the excellent value of this revised and restructured Australia’s Essential Travel Guide.
Beautifully illustrated, Explore Australia 2023 overflows with information. It’s so true: Australia is breathtaking in beauty, daunting in size and rich in diversity!
There’s so much to explore as you travel the length and breadth of this extraordinarily Lucky Country. Australia is an astonishing 7,692,024sqkm, so you have a lot of land to cover, as well as many waterways, islands and beaches.
There are also 20 listings on UNESCO’s World Heritage register. Australia is home to more than 18,000 flowering plant species, as well as grasses and innumerable fungi and lichens. The country’s animal life influences the largest diversity of marsupials on earth, as well as more than 860 bird species (about half of which are only found here), a similar number of reptile species and more than 200 species of frog. In the water you can also find more than 4,600 fish species and 600 coral species on the Great Barrier Reef alone!
The 39th edition, in flexibound format, has 500 pages of information on 53 key travel regions and more than 700 towns, from well-known regional cities to hidden gems. Each region features a ‘cheat sheet’ overview, detail about top attractions to visit, a list of local festivals, contact details of visitor information centres and key towns.
Each capital city has been covered with key attractions and bonus sections including best beaches, travel through history, natural wonders, wildlife encounters, adventure holidays, gourmet touring regions, kid-friendly travel and First Nations cultural experiences across Australia.
The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and having new travel experiences are the best way to learn.
