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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.
I grew up devoted to Get Smart. For me, Maxwell Smart was the perfect secret agent. He blundered magnificently through danger with the cheerful confidence of a man who had never once allowed competence to ruin a good adventure. Which is why The Porter House Hotel Sydney struck me as exactly the sort of place where Agent 86 might stay, provided CONTROL had suddenly acquired excellent taste and a heritage architecture budget.
The first stay was in Allawah’s two-bedroom apartment at Picture Point – 35 Picture Point Crescent, nestled in one of Noosa’s most prestigious pockets. It’s close enough to Hastings Street and Noosa Main Beach to make wandering down feel effortless, yet far enough away to avoid the full holiday parade of families negotiating ice-cream diplomacy in public.
There are some cultural events that require careful intellectual preparation and a willingness to discuss postmodern symbolism over a lukewarm chardonnay. Then there is Harry Potter: The Exhibition, which requires only that you choose a Hogwarts house, and accept that at some point you may find yourself queuing cheerfully to be photographed in a cupboard.
It’s easy to label time away at a health retreat ‘for yourself’ as indulgent, or a luxury even.
But the older I get, the more I see it differently. Taking deliberate time out isn’t about escape. It’s about maintenance. A reset. A considered pause that allows me to return sharper, calmer and frankly, a little bit better company for everyone else.
On tour at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival, the Miles Franklin-winning author of Ghost Cities and his literary agent embark on the bromantic sequel to Eat, Pray, Bruv.
The first thing to know about The Ritz-Carlton Bali is that it is not Mandapa. Let us clear that up before anyone starts packing linen trousers for Ubud and preparing to commune with a rice field. This is the Ritz-Carlton in Nusa Dua, perched in that gloriously polished corner of Bali where the ocean sparkles like it has been briefed by management, and even the golf carts seem to glide about with a quiet sense of purpose.
There are two things Anastasia has in common with Taylor Swift and I feel both are worth celebrating. First, glitter. And when has glitter ever made anything worse? Second, American accents. Which, in a musical about Russia and France performed in Sydney by Australians, did initially make my brain do a tiny, confused pirouette.
Grand Hyatt Bali sweeps you up in a kind of tropical operetta involving parasols, palms, polished stone, and the sudden conviction that your normal life has been an administrative error.
Handa Opera on Sydney Harbour is always an event. But this feels like something else. A story that has slipped its usual confines and found a new way to breathe. Go for the spectacle. Stay for the feeling. Leave with the distinct and slightly inconvenient sense that some stories do not end when the curtain falls. And possibly give you a sudden, inexplicable desire for a cape.
And yet the Sydney Opera House was packed. The forecourt swarmed with tourists, opera regulars, elegant women in excellent coats and the occasional bewildered husband with the expression of a man who had been promised “a nice night out” and was now confronting Russian tragedy. Even under an overcast sky, Eugene Onegin had drawn a crowd, which says something for Tchaikovsky, Pushkin and the enduring public appetite for emotional catastrophe in formalwear.
At Hyatt Hotel Canberra – A Park Hyatt Hotel, however, the latest arrival has four legs, excellent manners and an employment history that would make most LinkedIn profiles quietly wilt.
