Most international visitors to Australia follow a well-worn path: Sydney and its harbor, the Great Barrier Reef, perhaps a few days at Uluru as the light turns the rock from ochre to deep burgundy at sunset. These are extraordinary. I'd send any traveler to each of them without hesitation, and none of them has diminished for me over four decades of repeated visits. But Australia is a continent, not a country, and what that means in practice is that the places most visitors never reach are not marginal additions to a standard itinerary. In some cases, they're more extraordinary than the places most visitors do go. Here are the destinations I find myself describing most passionately.
The Kimberley: Australia's Last Great Wilderness
The Kimberley, in Western Australia's far north, is one of the most ancient and dramatic landscapes on earth. Sandstone gorges carved by Devonian-era rivers expose 375 million years of geological history in the canyon walls. Tidal phenomena defy easy explanation: Horizontal Falls, where water pours through narrow gorges as the tide reverses direction, must be witnessed to be understood. Photographs cannot capture the violence and beauty of the water's movement. Aboriginal rock art galleries at Murujuga and throughout the Kimberley interior predate the Egyptian pyramids by tens of thousands of years, making them some of the oldest evidence of human artistic expression anywhere in the world.
The Kimberley is accessible by small expedition ship along the coast, a journey that is itself an extraordinary experience, combining wildlife viewing from the water with landings at gorges and rock art sites. You can also reach it by private air charter from Broome, the pearling town that serves as the gateway to the region. The season matters: June through September, the dry season, is the window for comfortable travel in the Kimberley's extreme climate.
"I've traveled to Australia many times over 40 years, and the Kimberley remains the experience I describe most often to clients who want something genuinely unlike anything else. There is nowhere else in the world quite like it."
Margaret River: Western Australia's Wine Frontier
Australia's premium wine region produces Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon that competes confidently with Burgundy and Napa Valley at a fraction of the international recognition. Margaret River's proximity to the Indian Ocean moderates the climate in ways that allow the grapes to develop the kind of slow, complex ripening that produces wines of genuine finesse rather than sun-drenched heaviness. Vasse Felix, the region's founding estate, makes Chardonnay that would be mistaken for premier cru Burgundy in a blind tasting. Leeuwin Estate's Art Series Chardonnay has been among Australia's finest whites for decades. Cullen Wines produces biodynamic Cabernet blends of extraordinary depth.
The Margaret River region is not just wine, though. The coastline offers legitimate surf on Indian Ocean swells at Margaret River Main Break and Surfers Point. Karri forest, with towering eucalyptus trees of extraordinary height and elegance, covers the inland areas between the coast and the wine estates. The cellar door culture is genuinely welcoming and unpretentious. The region also sits two hours from Perth, making it an extraordinary extension to a Western Australia itinerary that begins in the city.
The Daintree and Cape York
In Queensland's far north, the Daintree Rainforest, recognized as the world's oldest surviving tropical rainforest at 180 million years old, meets the Great Barrier Reef at a point where two UNESCO World Heritage sites share a single shoreline. The visual effect of ancient rainforest descending to coral reef is unlike anything else in Australia, or anywhere else I've traveled. The wildlife is prehistoric in character: southern cassowaries, the large flightless birds of the rainforest understory whose lineage predates the dinosaurs; tree kangaroos; Boyd's forest dragons; insects and flora of extraordinary strangeness and beauty.
Stay at Silky Oaks Lodge, a treetop retreat above the Mossman River recently renovated to extraordinary standard, and take a guided night walk through a landscape that has barely changed since the Cretaceous period. The darkness under the rainforest canopy at night, broken only by bioluminescent fungi and the sounds of nocturnal animals, is among the most otherworldly experiences available to a traveler anywhere in the world.
Structuring an Extended Australia Itinerary
Three weeks is the minimum for doing the country any justice at all. Australia's distances are genuinely continental, and underestimating travel time between regions is the most common planning error I see. A framework I often use with clients who have three to four weeks: Sydney (four nights, including the Blue Mountains as a day trip), then the Great Barrier Reef and Daintree (four nights, based at Port Douglas), then Uluru and Alice Springs (three nights, with a helicopter flight over the rock at sunrise), then Perth and Margaret River (four nights), and finally the Kimberley by expedition ship (seven nights). This circuit covers the iconic, the hidden, and the extraordinary, and still leaves Tasmania, the Flinders Ranges, the Whitsundays, and Victoria's Great Ocean Road for a return visit. There is always a reason to come back.
