MAKE A DATE FOR YOUR DIARY
Embrace Australia’s packed calendar of sports and events, and you could win The Ultimate Aussie Adventure, thanks to Qantas and Tourism Australia
Australians are generally a sporty bunch. Give them a beach, and they’ll start playing cricket. If the waves get up, they reach for their surfboards. And anyone who usually swims in the fast lane at home will soon find themselves in the slow lane at one of Australia’s majestic open-air pools. But it’s a magnificent
country to watch sport being played in too. International cricket matches are hosted in some of the world’s most iconic stadiums, including the Adelaide Oval and the MCG in Melbourne. The first of the year’s tennis grand slams, the Australian Open, takes over Melbourne in
January. Then there are the domestic sports, which are always a grand spectacle – try catching Australian rules football in Melbourne, Adelaide or Perth, or a rugby league clash in Sydney or Brisbane. The Australian events
calendar extends well beyond sport, though. The firework displays in the big cities on New Year’s Eve and Australia Day (January 26) are huge extravaganzas but Australians really don’t need much of an excuse to throw a party. The Adelaide Fringe, held in February and March, has become the second-largest annual arts festival on the planet with more than
1,000 shows taking place in dozens of venues across the city. The Perth Fringe, meanwhile, has ballooned in size in recent years and is now the third-biggest in the world, after Edinburgh and Adelaide.
Ambitious additions to
the calendar, such as Vivid Sydney in May and June, which turns the city into a giant light show, have been a great success. And old favourites have expanded: Sculpture By The Sea, which transforms the Bondi-to- Coogee walk in Sydney into an outdoor art trail in October and November, now heads to Cottesloe Beach in Perth during March as well.
The cultural celebrations
are by no means restricted to the big cities – most regions have a food or music festival of their own. And some of these events are more than a little quirky – January’s Tunarama on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula includes tuna-tossing contests, while the Henley- on-Todd Regatta in Alice Springs has boat races along a dry river bed in August. The key thing is that, while
several big festivals and sporting events act as a lure to visit Australia, there’s a good chance that whenever you arrive and wherever you go, there will be some event to sink yourself into nearby.
Watch Chris
Hemsworth line up his favourite Aussie sports in an exclusive video, available via our digital edition at travelweekly.
co.uk
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