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At Dean & Nancy on 22, high above the city, one of the current favourite cocktails is the 2001 Space Odyssey, a cocktail inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film of the same name. This is the film, of course, in which HAL 9000 quietly demonstrates that artificial intelligence can become extremely troublesome if left unsupervised.
From 16–21 March 2027, around 200 of the Asia-Pacific region’s best surfers will descend on St Clair Beach for the World Surf League Dunedin Pro QS4000 and Junior Pro, bringing serious waves and given this is New Zealand’s South Island, some fairly serious wetsuits
There are hotel rooms where the big excitement is discovering a complimentary chocolate on the pillow. Then there is Reefworld, where you go to bed on the Great Barrier Reef and wake up surrounded by several thousand fish. This is considerably harder for the chocolate to compete with.
The Drover’s Wife, directed by Leah Purcell with a libretto by Purcell and composer George Palmer, is based on Purcell’s acclaimed reinterpretation of Henry Lawson’s iconic 1892 story. Purcell broadens Lawson’s tale of a pioneering woman battling isolation and a snake to confront Australia’s violent colonial history through the introduction of Yadaka, a First Nations man fleeing persecution.
Returning from Friday 16 to Sunday 25 October 2026, the Orange Wine Festival will spread more than 40 events across ten days in one of Australia’s most distinctive cool-climate wine regions. There will be everything from tastings to intimate encounters with winemakers.
As we have previously commented, the Park Hyatt does the best breakfast in the world along with the best view. This does create difficulties when someone asks how you would like your eggs, because you are too busy staring through the window and wondering whether it would be socially acceptable to move permanently into The Dining Room.
Wednesday night is an interesting choice for the opening night of an opera in Sydney, particularly when it collides with State of Origin. My husband mentioned this several times.
In 1884, a steamboat came to grief on the Albert River and washed up near the Beenleigh sugar property with a copper still on board. This was the sort of historical accident that makes modern branding departments sob into their mood boards. John Davy and Francis Gooding, who were growing sugarcane in that steamy corner of Queensland, looked at the stranded apparatus and appear to have reached the only sane conclusion: the universe wanted rum.
Handpicked Wines is a highly organised, beautifully hydrated, soil-conscious, Pinot-whispering operation in which even the worms probably have professional development plans.
Topper’s Mountain is well suited to such vinous eccentricity. Founded by vigneron Mark Kirkby, the vineyard sits in one of Australia’s youngest wine regions, where high altitude, cool climate and rich red volcanic ash soils create the sort of conditions that alternative varieties find extremely agreeable. If mainstream grapes are the people who arrive at dinner parties with a reliable bottle of Chardonnay and sensible shoes, Topper’s Mountain is where the more intriguing guests gather in the kitchen: Manseng, Nebbiolo, Gewürztraminer, Touriga, Tinta Cão, Tinta Roriz and now, the Spanish oddity with the almost biblical backstory.
There are certain inventions that make humanity look briefly magnificent. The wheel. The printing press. Antibiotics. The emergency Tim Tam. And now, with absolutely no regard for the dignity of civilisation, Real McCoy has launched a Cinnamon Doughnut Whiskey Liqueur, which sounds ridiculous until you taste it and begin making dangerous plans involving ice and a second bottle.
Kununurra sits in the far north of Western Australia, and it demands a different kind of attention to the postcards I’d grown up with. Uluru gets the fridge magnet. The Kimberley is like being in another stratosphere.
