Australia

• New Here? No Worries Mate - Beginners Guide
• Daydreamer Believer - Daydream Island, Great Barrier Reef
• Wonders of Wilderness Island - Fraser Island, Great Barrier Reef
• The Lizard of Oz - Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef
• 700-mile hop on Kangeroo Highway - Melbourne to Sydney
• Bush Tucker... without the trial - Outback
• Primeval Pamering - Queensland
• Sydney is Supreme - Sydney
• It's simply the best, Mate! - Sydney
• Continent Please Carol - Top End
• Whirlybird Wine Tours - Victoria
• Home from home for me Down Under - Sydney
• I can’t get enough of Melbourne! - Melbourne
• Blazing a nature trail - Great Barrier Reef
• Follow our new Aussie rules - Australia
• A pas de deux in paradise - East Coast Australia

CAPTAIN COOK christened the Whitsunday Islands while sailing past them in 1770 on what he mistakenly believed was Whitsunday.

His calendar was askew, but the name stuck. As his ship, the Endeavour, navigated the cluster of 74 islands, he spied Aborigines on the shore watching.

This is believed to be the first encounter between white men and the Ngora tribe, who had their own language and culture.

These islands were notoriously difficult to colonise. European settlers tried and failed with several attempts to graze livestock and it was not until the late 19th century that sheep farms were successfully established.

Eight of the islands were leased for livestock, timberlogging and habitation while 66 remained unexploited. These were later designated as national parks, a status that remains today – leaving the Whitsundays as a natural wonderland of reefs, lagoons, rainforests and eucalyptus woods.

The Whitsundays are a sailor’s paradise and, sitting at the southern limit of the Great Barrier Reef, they are also a diver’s dream. Two of the eight inhabited islands, Hamilton and Dent, are owned by a wealthy agricultural family, the Oakleys.

It's difficult to find a more idyllic location

On Dent, they have opened a world-class golf course while Hamilton boasts an airport, bank, post office, shops and a wide range of accommodation. Qualia, on Hamilton, is marketed as Australia’s leading beach resort.

Here, the Oakleys have sought to create a luxury enclave that celebrates the essence and personality of Australia as well as the products and natural resources of this remarkable continent. Qualia consists of 60 private pavilions nestling within 12 hilly acres of exotic vegetation, nudging the Barrier Reef.

It would be difficult to find a more idyllic location. During my five-day stay, members of the Australian Ballet flew up from Sydney and performed beneath the stars, at the water’s edge on a specially constructed stage.

It was a pas de deux in paradise, and the performance was followed by dinner served at tables on the beach. The resort’s name comes from a Latin word describing the quality of an experience – and mine was superb.

I went to early morning yoga in the spa, at the highest point on the resort, open to the elements and perfumed by the scent of frangipani; I stretched to the call of birds in the palms; I enjoyed excellent cuisine and, at twilight, I sipped fine Australian wines. But the most superb thing was the quietness.

It washed over me from the moment I arrived on the island.

All too soon I was leaving this paradise and heading for my ultimate destination, Tasmania. In between came Sydney, where 20 years ago I fell in love not only with this magnificent city but with a handsome Frenchman who took me to dinner down at Elizabeth Bay and, on that first date, asked me to marry him.

It is an enduring love story; Michel and I are still together and Sydney remains for me one of the most enticing cities.

I stayed, as always, at the stately Orient Express Observatory Hotel down by The Rocks, Sydney’s magnificent harbour area.

The hotel’s impeccable service never disappoints – I am particularly partial to the freshly squeezed watermelon juice offered at breakfast. Friends took me sailing round the harbour and we dropped anchor for a picnic aboard their yacht in Taylor’s Bay. They popped a couple of bottles of a fine Tasmanian bubbly, Arras 2001 Chardonnay Pinot Noir, produced by Bay of Fires Wines. ‘Bay of Fires,’ I exclaimed. ‘It’s my next stop.’

I’ve a things-to-dobefore- I-die list – and walking the Bay of Fires had long been on it. The adventure began outside Launceston in northern Tasmania at Quamby, an 1830s colonial homestead built by Irish convicts for an Irish political prisoner, Sir Richard Dry. Quamby, an Aboriginal word meaning a place to camp, is set in 64 acres of parkland with a nine-hole golf course.

It was planted up with hawthorn alleys and elms and was reminiscent of landscaped English gardens. Here I met other walkers who also had the Bay of Fires on their lists and, over a glass of fine local wine, we were given the drill.

Our walk was to take four days. We were to carry our own backpacks and allowed no more than 22lb each, to include wet-weather gear, thermals, swimming costume, sunscreen, hat, water bottle – the list was precise. There was to be no place for my

usual travelling companions – perfumes, skin creams, hefty reading material, computer, BlackBerry and chargers.

Naturally though, I hid a few bits and bobs in my rucksack. Before setting off, we were invited to empty out our sacks for inspection and I was caught red-handed. ‘Last Chanel No 5 stop until Saturday,’ I sighed, relinquishing my precious bottle of perfume.

Zane and Tara, our guides, assured me I would be grateful for their beady eyes. Were they right! I’m reasonably fit – and strolling along a national heritage beach, how tough could that be?

No one mentioned the immense granite boulders, like mini-mountains to me as I clambered over them. We were seven walkers and two guides and I always found myself bringing up the rear.

We were blessed with perfect weather

But I struck up some fascinating conversations with a handful of people I had never met before. We began as strangers and ended as friends, kayaking together, sleeping in (rather elegant) tents and having no washing facilities for two days – there were no showers until our last two nights at the Bay of Fires lodge.

The boulders were lovely to look at, dappled with lichen that gave them an orange hue. Set against the turquoise water and white sand, it was breathtaking.

And why hurry, I thought as I took in the unadulterated beauty of the beaches, bay after bay, each more than half-a-mile long, with no footprints save ours.

We were blessed with perfect Tasmania weather. Before breakfast, beyond the deck of the ecofriendly lodge where we spent our last couple of days, I watched wallabies feeding and birds called grey fantails in the shrubs.

The wilderness was within fingertip reach. In the evenings we gathered round the log fire, drinking delicious ‘Tassie’ Pinot Noir and reflecting upon the magnificence of this utterly unspoilt coastline. Why is it known as the Bay of Fires? As Captain Tobias Furneaux’s ship sailed these eastern waters in 1773, the beaches were ablaze.

The Aborigines had set up campsites and were performing their dances and rituals. This coastline was sacred to them and I can understand why.

Next, I headed south from the Bay of Fires and made an unscheduled stop in the heart of Tasmania in a small town called Oatlands.

There, I fell upon an alfresco gathering of the local Rotary club, who were cooking up a barbie and were in party mood.

It was a moment of pure elation

Then I discovered that it was Tasmania Day – hence the celebrations. Next stop was Melaleuca – the Aboriginal name for the rather magical shrub known as the tea tree. If off the beaten track and rugged is your thing, then Melaleuca, at the south-western tip of Tasmania, is the place for you.

You can walk there from Hobart – a hike that involves untrodden beaches, rugged mountain ranges and rainforest and offers the possibility of getting close to Tasmania’s unique flora and fauna including pademelons (similar to wallabies, but smaller), wombats and quolls (marsupial ‘cats’).

But it takes nine days. I took a light aircraft from Hobart, less than an hour. I was eager to see neophema chrysogaster, otherwise known as the orange-bellied parrot. At the last count, there were fewer than 100 in the wild and I saw four!

This region is also associated with the late Denny King, a conservationist believed to be the last man to sight the now extinct Tasmanian Tiger.

He drew maps of the almost impenetrable forests and caves where those elusive cats reared their cubs. My last stop was Bruny Island, off Tasmania’s south-east coast, where I went birdwatching and then took the Bruny Island Cruise.

Setting off from the aptly named Adventure Bay, we spotted several schools of humpback whales and pods and pods of dolphins.

There were also many Bruny Island seals, basking and bathing around The Friars, a spattering of rocky outcrops where the Tasman Sea meets the Southern Ocean. There, at the most southerly point of Bruny, our boat sounded its horn.

It was a moment of pure elation; a few dozen people at the edge of the world. And that is one of the reasons I love Tasmania.

You have the sense that you are out there in the wilderness with the bravest of folk, inhaling unpolluted air, experiencing the very essence of life.