Packed with honest reviews and inspiring travel stories, Australian Traveller is the most authoritative and trusted guide to travelling this great country. It's no wonder that it's Australia's best-selling travel magazine.
THE FIRST EDITION of Australian Traveller was published on 26 May 2005. The world looked a little different back then: Facebook was just one year old. Instagram still a twinkle in its creators’ eyes. And Sydney had five years earlier hosted the Olympic and Paralympic Games, which helped put a vision of modern Australia on the map internationally. The idea for Australian Traveller came to co-founder Quentin Long like an epiphany as he flew over Broome’s Roebuck Bay 20 years ago and looked down at the otherworldly melange of colours the Kimberley is famed for: its pindan red, pinks and greens bleeding into the most vivid of turquoise. As he recounts during a journey back to where it all began on p170, it took travelling the world to make him…
Coastal pubs of Australia What’s better than celebrating by the sea with a cold drink? We’ve collated a list of the ultimate coastal pubs and bars across the country, just in time for Australian Traveller’s 100th issue. Cheers! RELIVE YOUR CHILDHOOD SUMMER HOLIDAY There’s something in the summer air that makes us feel nostalgic for the sandy and sweltering holidays of our childhood. Let’s revisit those popular vacays to create new memories. AUSTRALIA’S BEST OUTBACK POOLS With the mercury rising and summer just around the corner, we’re all looking for a nice place to escape the heat – especially those who can’t get to the beach. Don’t sweat it, we’ve found the best outback swimming spots to cool off and chill out. A guide to Australia’s Big Things Is it…
QUENTIN LONG: SO, IN 2005 I WAS PANICKING ABOUT LAUNCHING A NEW DOMESTIC TRAVEL MEDIA BRAND. WHAT WERE YOU DOING? Phillipa Harrison: I was working for an Accor start-up in the youth hostel space called Base Backpackers. It was capitalising and corporatising the concept of ‘flashpackers’. That was so fun. I was the third employee onboard and we set up 11 hostels in 18 months. And backpacker bars, and a travel agency… QL: SO JÄGERBOMBS AT THE BAR WITH PIP? PH: Maybe [laughs]. QL: DO YOU THINK COVID HAS GIVEN DOMESTIC TRAVELLERS A GREATER APPRECIATION FOR THIS COUNTRY? I ALWAYS HOPED IT WOULD CREATE A NEW HABIT FOR AUSSIES. SO, FOR EXAMPLE, INSTEAD OF GOING OVERSEAS EVERY YEAR, YOU GO EVERY TWO YEARS. PH: I do think Australians worked out…
GREG BARTON Making milestones Too many moments stand out for me during my time as editor at Australian Traveller magazine. It was such a joyous, chaotic, exhausting and rewarding period of my life. I learned to write, learned to shoot, got married, had kids and felt as though I gained enough experience to fill five careers. In terms of covers, I was there for exactly a third of them, with stand-outs including the epic, inaugural ‘100 Things’ (Issue 08); the time when I was talked into wearing boardies and a Santa hat and chucking a ‘bombie’ into an ocean pool (Issue 05); and the time at Uluru (Issue 27) when the Hamish Blake asked me for a few handy hints on using his DSLR camera (he owned a Nikon, so…
THE YEAR 2005. AUSTRALIA WAS half a decade into the new millennium. John Howard was still prime minister and the country was basking in the afterglow of the Sydney 2000 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, which helped put it on the map as an international tourist hub like never before. The term ‘glamping’ was coined and Airbnb, three years off launching, was still seven years away from Australian shores. A 19-year-old Mark Zuckerberg had only just co-founded Facebook in his Harvard dorm room a year earlier and Instagram, which launched in 2010, was still a twinkle in its founders’ eyes. And Australian Traveller published its first issue on 26 May. In the same month, a small fishing camp opened on Bremer Island in North East Arnhem Land in partnership with…
YOU ARE A THOROUGHLY WELL-TRAVELLED bunch, and we wanted to know what all-time favourite experiences you’ve had in the 18 years since Australian Traveller launched, and what’s still to tick off your bucket list. We had an inspired response – more than we can fit in these pages – with some definite themes emerging: Uluru never fails to move us and leaves an indelible impression that stays with us long after we’ve washed the last of the red dirt away. “Sunrise at Uluru was a spectacular favourite moment of mine,” says Lis Petersen from NSW. “And here I sit, late at night, the memory as fresh as if it were this morning. Our heart of the country is now in my heart and for this I will be forever grateful.”…
