Now absorbed by Kalgoorlie, the gold mining settlement of Boulder was a separate town until 1989. The prominent town hall and historic architecture on Burt Street speak to Boulder’s historic independence and the money created by gold. Boulder was born in a gold rush in the 1890s, and gold mining continues today at the immense …
Rewind to the second half of the 19th century, and the city of Maryborough was Queensland’s main port, handling anything from timber to wool, meat, alcohol, tobacco and even opium. More than 20,000 people from all over the world began new lives at this very place. The city takes a lot of pride in its …
On the Murray River, the inland Port of Echuca is one of Australia’s great heritage icons, capturing the spirit of the country’s 19th-century pioneers like few other places. The old timber wharf in Echuca is frozen in time in the late-1800s, and moored here is the largest fleet of paddlesteamers in the world. The Discovery …
South Australia’s second most populous city is built right on top of a volcanic crater. Breathtaking geomorphology is all part of the cityscape, at volcanic rims, crater lakes, cave systems and two sinkholes that were turned into gardens at the end of the 19th century. In summer, people flock to Mount Gambier for a sight …
Not many cities have made a transformation as dramatic as Burnie on the north-west coast of Tasmania. For all of the 20th century this was a gritty industrial hub, ruled by a paper mill and the fifth-largest container port in Australia. The Port of Burnie is still active, but a lot of the heavy industry …
The town of Wynyard is enclosed by verdant farmland and spellbinding coastline on Tasmania‘s North West Coast. The first thing to mention the awesome geology. Impossible to ignore to the north is the flat-topped volcanic plug of Table Cape, rising 180 metres over the sea. Rows of tulips grow in the fertile basalt soils on …
The seaside town of Victor Harbor is close to where two world-changing explorers, Matthew Flinders and Nicolas Baudin, bumped into each other in 1802. The UK and France were at war at the time, but Flinders and Baudin met up cordially and compared notes. Encounter Bay, as Flinders called it, is a nursery for another …
The first inland port in Australia took shape on the lower reaches of the Murray River in the 1850s. Goolwa’s wharf, still intact today, allowed goods to move along the Murray without ships having to navigate the treacherous waters at the river’s mouth. In the 1930s a system of barriers were constructed near the mouth …
Some of the world’s finest wool comes from this small city up in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales. And to celebrate that fact there’s a giant merino ram to meet you from the side of the Hume Highway. Goulburn was declared Australia’s first inland city by Queen Victoria in 1863, and a few …
This tourist-friendly town not far from Newcastle, New South Wales, is set on the south side of Port Stephens, a long natural harbour. Nelson Bay is among a string of dreamy bays and rocky headlands at the end of the Tomaree Peninsula. A lot of the coast and peninsula’s interior is protected by the Tomaree …