Australia
The Place
Australia is the perfect place to recover from jetlag. Waking up to the bush dawn, as the kookaburras begin their maniacal laughs and the golden light pierces the gum trees, is one of the great outdoor experiences. Even in Sydney, a 6am stroll by the harbour as the fishermen bring in their catches and the first ferries roll past the Opera House will convince you that this may be the most gorgeous city on earth.
Today, Australians tend to be thankful for their distance from Europe and the United States, and embrace their (relative) proximity to Asia. The quirks of their homeland, the egg-laying mammals, the ghostly trees, the savage deserts, the spiders that can leap 2 metres (6.5 ft), even the menagerie of deadly snakes, have become a source of endless fascination.
Almost every international traveller arrives in Sydney: Australia's biggest city and, despite the protestations of rivals Melbourne (the old financial centre) and Canberra (the official seat of government), fast becoming its de-facto capital. Other destinations on any list of "greatest hits" are Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef: the world's largest living organism, sprawling along the Queensland coast; Uluru, or Ayers Rock, the world's largest monolith, looming mysteriously in the middle of the Outback plains; and Darwin in the wild, monsoonal "Top End" and the jumping-off point for Kakadu, with its Aboriginal carvings, tropical swamps and giant saltwater crocodiles.
