Australia Attractions

Canberra

Canberra is often described by Australians who haven't been there as a boring town, full of politicians, bureaucrats - and not much else. But those who go there find beautiful galleries and museums clustered around a lake and cupped in bushland.

One of only two capital cities in the world that have been built to a premeditated design, Canberra is rather eerily symmetrical. Placed about its nice, planned combinations of straight and curving streets are the old and new Parliament Houses, the National Gallery, and the National Museum.

Northern Territory

Tasmania

This island state is nature's verdant holiday house. Its enormously diverse inland and coastal wilderness areas range from impenetrable rainforest and rugged mountain ranges to soaring sea cliffs and serenely fragile alpine moorlands. Almost a quarter of this outlandishly beautiful island is a World Heritage Area.

Western Australia

At a whopping 2,532,400 sq km (977,765 sq mi), WA is twice the size of Western Europe and comes with all the geographical variety that such an expanse entails. Forests, gorges, caves, ancient aboriginal rock art, beaches and pristine reef could keep a traveller enthralled for years.

New South Wales

New South Wales is vast and varied, with alpine areas that blossom with summery wildflowers and desolate outback extremes haunted by colonial architecture and aeons-old Aboriginal history. Then there are beaches blessed with year-round sun, vast tracts of secluded bush and fascinating wildlife. And, of course, Sydney.