EMBRACE THE REAL AUSTRALIA
Wake up to the wealth of culture and heritage Down Under and you could win The Ultimate Aussie Adventure, thanks to Qantas and Tourism Australia
It doesn’t take long nosying around the WA Shipwrecks Museum in Fremantle, just outside Perth, learning the stories of 17th-century Dutch shipwrecks on the wild west coast, to realise Australia’s history goes back further than most people think. Delving into Australia’s heritage is one of the most unexpectedly fascinating parts of a visit to the country – largely because the stories are often extraordinary. This is something that can be explored in museums – the National Museum of Australia in Canberra and Immigration Museum in Melbourne are excellent – or at sites dating back to the convict era. These include Tasmania’s surprisingly photogenic prison at Port Arthur, the 19th-century buildings in the Rocks district of Sydney, and the old Telegraph Station in Alice Springs. But this, of course, is just the European history of Australia. Before the Europeans arrived, Oz was a patchwork of Aboriginal nations, inhabited by the oldest living culture on Earth. Indigenous people are thought to have
lived in Australia for at least 50,000 years, passing down Dreaming stories – which instil moral codes and help make sense of the natural environment – from generation to generation. Encounters with Aboriginal
Australia can include looking at ancient rock art in the Kakadu National Park, catching mud- crabs from an indigenous- run wilderness camp in the northwest, or strolling around Melbourne’s Botanic Gardens learning traditional uses for plants and trees. The Indigenous Tourism Champions initiative – part of the Aussie Specialist Program – picks out high-quality indigenous experiences that are suitable for sale to overseas markets. Both the colonial era and Aboriginal culture have had a strong
impact on what Australia is today, but the country has soaked in influences from all over the world.
Australian culture covers Balkan winemakers in the Swan Valley outside Perth, the German village of Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills, the Asian pearl divers who left their mark on Indian Ocean resort town Broome, and the Jewish community
of Sydney’s Bondi beach. It also includes home-grown traditions:
huge crowds at Aussie rules football games, free-to-use barbecues in public parks, surfing lessons available up and down the coast, and big pubs with sprawling beer gardens. Importantly, Australian culture is easily accessible to visitors. Operators offer tours focusing on aspects such as Melbourne’s street art scene, the globe-trotting stallholders of
Adelaide Central Market, Sydney’s architectural highlights and Darwin’s Asian and Aboriginal- influenced public art. Whether it’s stories of heroic outback exploration, the meanings behind Aboriginal dot paintings,
Vietnamese food hotspots or risqué contemporary art in Hobart’s Mona, visitors are bound to be fascinated by Australia’s culture and heritage.
Watch Aussie
R&B singer Jessica Mauboy talk culture in an exclusive video, via the digital
edition at travel
weekly.co.uk
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