Insight Guides Australia

Insight Guides

• Publisher: Insight
• Print ISBN: 9781780057279
• eBook ISBN: 9781786715845
• Edition: 8
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Travel

Insight Guide Australia is a comprehensive full-colour guide to the culture, history and people of this ancient and spectacular land. Our inspirational Best Of Australia section illustrates the country's highlights, from the iconic Sydney Harbour and Melbourne's vibrant music scene to majestic Uluru and beautiful Kakadu National Park - making sure you don't miss anything.
Our unrivalled coverage of history, natural environment and culture provides an essential introduction to Australia's heritage and contemporary life, to complement the in-depth coverage of the arts, sporting activities and modern culture. The informative text, written by regional experts, is a pleasure to read and accompanied by stunning photography.
The lavish magazine-style features offer a unique insight into Aboriginal art, surf culture, the Great Barrier Reef, and Australia's amazing endemic flora and fauna.
All major sights are cross-referenced with the maps, and the travel tips section provides a wealth of practical information on how to plan your trip.
About Insight Guides: Insight Guides has over 40 years' experience of publishing high-quality, visual travel guides. We produce around 400 full-colour print guide books and maps as well as picture-packed eBooks to meet different travellers' needs. Insight Guides' unique combination of beautiful travel photography and focus on history and culture together create a unique visual reference and planning tool to inspire your next adventure.

'Insight Guides has spawned many imitators but is still the best of its type.' - Wanderlust Magazine

Queensland

This is Australia’s holiday state and the most visited destination after Sydney. Its major attractions include magnificent beaches, the Great Barrier Reef and unique rainforest.

Main Attractions

Brisbane

Sunshine Coast

Fraser Island

Carnarvon Gorge

Cairns

The Atherton Tableland

Cape York Peninsula

Lawn Hill Gorge

Mount Isa

Longreach

Queensland represents a sizeable chunk of Australia. At more than 2,000km (1,240 miles) from top to bottom and 1,450km (900 miles) at its widest point, its 1.73 million sq km (667,000 sq mile) area could happily contain an assortment of European countries or a few hefty American states. It is unsurprising then that within its confines can be found such a range of terrain: unsullied tropical rainforest, broad expanses of dusty cattle-grazing country – indistinguishable from desert at times – the ragged peaks of the Great Dividing Range, rolling hills and, to cap it all, some great beaches. Plus, tethered along the eastern shoreline, just beyond a scattering of achingly beautiful desert islands, is one of the world’s natural wonders, the Great Barrier Reef.

Mossman Gorge.

Peter Stuckings/Apa Publications

Inward migration

Queensland’s proud claim to be the Sunshine State has been readily accepted not just by overseas visitors but also by other Australians, who have been flocking to the state for their holidays for years. When winter arrives many dwellers in the cooler southern states hanker for a spot on one of the endless golden beaches on Queensland’s vast coastline. And once they’ve tasted paradise it’s a short step to opt for the sea change – the exchange of the perceived drab urban existence for the Technicolor joys of perpetual summer. Some move at once, others wait for retirement. Either way, a pattern of migration has long been established. However, it has accelerated to the point where more than 200 people a day are now resettling in the sun, although house prices may slow that down.

Incomers can be found all along the coast, but the clearest concrete (in every sense of the word) evidence is to be found in the developments to the north and south of Brisbane, on the Sunshine and Gold coasts. Queenslanders tend to take a laconic approach to the arrival of so many incomers from the southern states, seeing it as an affirmation of what they’ve always known about the superiority of life in the tropics.

Queensland is a gorgeous place, but sometimes great beauty comes with a price. Although the state was inundated with flood waters in the beginning of 2011, the tough Queenslander spirit has enabled people to bounce back. Recovery has been swift for the most part, but it would be wise to check the details of your trip before traveling.

Brisbane

The state capital, Brisbane 1 [map] (or Brissie as it’s known to the locals), is Australia’s third-largest city and has been transformed over the past few years. Close to half of the state’s 4.5 million people are to be found within its ambit, scattered over a series of low hills with the Brisbane River at its heart. Until quite recently there was much in the claim that it was “the world’s biggest country town”, but visitors today will find an urbane and cosmopolitan city, where café culture has colonised the once musty streets.

Like Sydney and Hobart, this easy-going city emerged from nightmarish beginnings. A convict settlement was established at nearby Moreton Bay in September 1824, when the first party of prisoners – the hardest cases, convicted of further crimes since arriving in Australia – arrived from Sydney. Many of the convicts died, victims of the tyrannies of the guards, hunger, tropical disease and an indifference towards prolonging their own miserable lives.

The first convict establishment was at Redcliffe, but due to a shortage of water the penal settlement moved up-river to the site of today’s city centre. It was named after Sir Thomas Brisbane (then Governor of New South Wales). The present government and shopping precincts overlie the original settlement.

Today’s central business district (CBD), in an area cupped by the river, is a mixture of stately colonial buildings and eye-catching modern architecture, with greenery provided by the City Botanic Gardens at one end and Roma Street Parkland at the other.

The visitor information centre (Queen Street Mall between Albert and Edward streets; tel: [phone]; www.visitbrisbane.com.au; Mon–Thu 9am–5.30pm, Fri 9am–7pm, Sat 9am–5pm, Sun 10am–5pm) can help with the usual brochures.

Fact

Pictures of a flooded Brisbane flashed around the world in January 2011, but within months the city was back to normal, the council having removed 400,000 tonnes of flood waste and 200,000 damaged vehicles. The replacement of the washed-away riverside walkways was the only major outstanding task.

One of the city’s more prominent landmarks, Brisbane City Hall A [map] makes a good starting point. It’s an overbearing structure on King George Square with layered stone and concrete, broken up by entranceways to the transport hub underneath, which has struggled to become the great civic space its architects intended. The Brisbane Museum (tel: [phone]; www.museumofbrisbane.com.au; daily 10am–5pm; free), hosts short-term, locally themed exhibitions and work by contemporary artists.

Brisbane City Hall.

Peter Stuckings/Apa Publications

The historic centre

Anzac Square B [map] further up Ann Street is a place for reflection. A perpetual flame commemorating the city’s war dead is aligned directly between the clock tower of the Central Railway Station and the General Post Office (GPO). The latter, with its Corinthian colonnades, can be accessed through tranquil Post Office Square. Follow the narrow lane flanking the building to Elizabeth Street and St Stephen’s Cathedral C [map]. Within this precinct you will find the gracefully weathered Pugin’s Chapel, also known as old St Stephen’s Church, completed in 1850 to a design by celebrated Victorian (the era, not the state) Gothic architect Augustus Welby Pugin. Beside it reposes the more substantial cathedral that replaced it as Brisbane’s seat of Catholicism in 1874.

The Eternal Flame of Remembrance burns for all fallen ANZAC soldiers.

Peter Stuckings/Apa Publications

Returning to the GPO and heading west, the shopping hub of Queen Street Mall stretches towards the river. The foyer of the former Regent Theatre is an unmissable paean to kitsch medievalism, which has survived virtually unchanged since 1929, although for now it is only visible through glass doors at the back of a café occupying the old ticket office. Another slice of history remains in the refined Edwardian-style Brisbane Arcade, built in 1924 and now the city’s oldest surviving shopping arcade.

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Table of contents

• How To Use This E-Book
• Australia’s Top 10 Attractions
• Editor’s Choice
• Introduction: Down Under
• An Ancient Landscape
• Decisive Dates
• Dreamtime and Discovery
• From Gold Rush to World War
• The Modern Era
• The Urban Aussie
• Life in the Bush
• A Multicultural Society
• Aborigines Today
• Insight: Aboriginal Art
• The Arts
• Modern Australian Cuisine
• Australian Wines
• Where Sport is Supreme
• Insight: Surf Culture
• One-of-a-Kind Wildlife
• Insight: Dangerous Wildlife
• Introduction: Introduction
• Sydney
• New South Wales
• Canberra
• Melbourne
• Victoria
• South Australia
• Queensland
• Insight: The Rainforest
• The Great Barrier Reef and the Islands
• Insight: Protecting the Great Barrier Reef
• Northern Territory
• Insight: Uluru and Kata Tjuta
• Western Australia
• Insight: The Wildflowers of Western Australia
• Tasmania
• Insight: Freycinet National Park
• Transport
• A-Z: A Handy Summary of Practical Information
• Further Reading