Destination: Australia
Seats on First A380 Flight Up For Bid on eBay
by Michael Yessis | 08.28.07 | 11:31 AM ET
The eBay auction for tickets on the Airbus A380’s first commercial flight—from Singapore to Sydney, on Singapore Air—is only a day old, and already prices are skyrocketing. That’s bad news for airline geeks, who will have to spend a lot to gain a coveted spot on the Oct. 25 flight. It’s good news, though, for the four charities that will get the proceeds.
Email to friend
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Mixx
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Yahoo! BuzzI Have $6,000 For a Trip to Asia and the South Pacific. Any Tips?
by Rolf Potts | 08.21.07 | 11:16 AM ET
Vagabonding traveler Rolf Potts answers your questions about travel
Virginia Tourism’s ‘Symbol of Love’ Actually Symbol of Chicago Gang
by Michael Yessis | 08.20.07 | 8:06 AM ET
Oops. An advertisement (pictured) developed by the BCF agency of Virginia Beach for the Virginia Tourism Corp. features two hands coming together to form the shape of a heart, a playful reference to the state’s long-time slogan, “Virginia is For Lovers.” The gesture, however, is also associated with the Gangster Disciples, “one of the most violent of four African-American gangs that hang out on the south side of Chicago,” according to an FBI report. The FBI also notes: “They are known for their violence and the distribution of crack cocaine.” Apparently Virginia does not want to associate itself with gun play and illegal drugs, and thus will be removing the image from its new “Live Passionately” campaign, according to the Virginian-Pilot.
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: From Cinque Terre to the Great Barrier Reef
by Michael Yessis | 08.03.07 | 2:05 PM ET
Iconic destinations in Italy, Australia, California and the Pacific Ocean are at the top of travelers’ minds this week, as well as a topic that’s more controversial than Hillary Clinton. Here’s the Zeitgeist.
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
36 Hours in the Cinque Terre, Italy
Most Read Feature
World Hum (posted this week)
The Lost World of Nigeria
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
Through the Roof: A Tour of the Country’s Priciest Hotel Suite
* The cost to stay in the Ty Warner Penthouse at the Four Seasons New York? $30,000 a night.
Most Viewed Travel Story
Telegraph UK (current)
Exploring the Great Barrier Reef
Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum (posted this week)
Voluntourism: ‘Overpriced Guilt Trips’ or a ‘Real Chance to Save the World’?
“Hot This Week” Destination
Yahoo! (this week)
Hawaii
Most Viewed Travel Post
BlogHer (current)
The W Hotel: Form over Function?
Australia Honors Late ‘Crocodile Hunter’ with ‘Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve’
by Michael Yessis | 07.30.07 | 1:02 PM ET
Australia Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull recently announced plans to create a wildlife reserve in Far North Queensland on Cape York Peninsula, fulfilling a dream of Steve Irwin, the late “Crocodile Hunter.” The Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve will contain 333,585 acres of wetlands and forests. Irwin’s family will manage the reserve. “Steve was in awe of the prolific wildlife of the Wenlock and Ducie rivers bordering the reserve,” Terri Irwin said of her late husband, “and he would have been proud to see the property protected as a wildlife reserve.” Irwin was killed almost a year ago by a poisonous stingray.
Related on World Hum:
* Uluru: Outback Icon or Aboriginal Bargaining Chip?
* Fire in the Night
UNESCO Adds Three Sites to Danger List, Names Next World Book Capital
by Michael Yessis | 07.10.07 | 11:14 AM ET
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has had a busy few weeks. Not only was it busy issuing a press release claiming no affiliation with the new seven wonders, during meetings in Christchurch, New Zealand, the group added the Galapagos and their surrounding marine reserve; Samarra, Iraq; and Senegal’s Niokolo-Koba National Park to its list of endangered World Heritage sites. Two more sites—the Royal Palaces of Abomey, Benin and Kathmandu Valley, Nepal—were removed from the Danger List.
Uluru: Outback Icon or Aboriginal Bargaining Chip?
by Jim Benning | 06.26.07 | 4:03 PM ET
At the moment, it seems to be both. The Australian government recently announced plans to crack down on child abuse in some Aboriginal communities by banning alcohol and pornography and sending in police and troops. In response, the angry leaders of one Aboriginal township near Uluru, also known as Ayers Rock, are threatening civil disobediance by banning tourists from hiking up the landmark, the AP reports. For Aborigines, the government crackdown evokes painful memories of children taken from their families as part of a government assimilation strategy—children referred to now as the Stolen Generation.
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: From the Great White North to the Land Down Under
by Michael Yessis | 06.08.07 | 12:49 PM ET
This week travelers trek the length of the globe, from Canada to California to Mexico to Costa Rica to Australia. There’s also the inevitable Paris Hilton vs. Hilton Paris match up. Here’s the Zeitgeist.
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
New York Times (current)
In Napa, Wilderness Above the Wineries
* That’s Napa, pictured above.
Most Viewed Travel Story
Los Angeles Times (current)
Paris Hilton accommodations vs. Hilton Paris
* Christopher Reynolds pits the two head-to-head.
Most Read Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
Mexico to (Miss) U.S.A.: Boooooo
* Readers have mixed feelings about the now-infamous boos.
Most E-Mailed Travel Story
USA Today (current)
JetBlue Tries to Bounce Back From Storm of Trouble
Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (recent)
Air Traffic Control System Command Center
Most Read Feature
World Hum (this week)
An Island in Costa Rica
Most Popular Travel Podcast
iTunes (current)
National Geographic’s Atmosphere
* Current podcast: Mount Everest Expedition
What Happened to the ‘Lovable Aussie’ Traveler?
by Michael Yessis | 05.14.07 | 9:30 AM ET
Ben Groundwater says being an Australian abroad used to be “awesome.” “You’d find yourself the token conversation piece at get-togethers, where you could persuade people that you wrestled kangaroos for a living,” he writes on The Backpacker, a Sydney Morning Herald blog. “Doors magically opened, hassles were incredibly smoothed over, with the help of an Australian accent. But it’s all gone wrong…” In short, Groundwater says, Australian travelers are now often greeted with disdain. Among the possible reasons: Overexposure, “blokes on buck’s weekends,” politics and jealousy. He concludes: “The bottom line, however, is that anyone who’s travelled knows there are a lot of Australians out there acting like dickheads, and it’s giving the rest of us a bad name.” As you might expect, the post has stimulated some heated—and interesting—conversation.
Australia’s ‘Bloody’ Success
by Michael Yessis | 03.16.07 | 7:56 AM ET
When Australia rolled out it’s “Where the bloody hell are you?” campaign last year, more than a few people claimed to be offended. Thirteen months later, “Australia has become a success story on how to capitalize in the competitive global tourism market,” according to a story by Lee Berthiaum in Embassy, the Canadian Foreign Policy newsweekly. The key, Berthiaum writes, was emphasizing Australia’s personality.
Rolf Potts in the Australian Outback
by Jim Benning | 03.05.07 | 3:14 PM ET
Slate began a Well-Traveled series today by Rolf Potts about his trip to Australia to explore aboriginal culture—and particularly the uneasy relationship between the continent’s indigenous people and curious tourists. That relationship, Potts notes, can easily be captured on film at the famous red monolith Uluru, by the sign near the trailhead.
“This sign, which was erected by the local Pitjantjatjara people, solemnly requests that you don’t climb up the face of a rock that they consider sacred,” Potts writes. “Aim your camera at a certain angle, however, and the top half of your viewfinder will capture the knots of tourists who’ve decided to climb the rock anyway (aided by a safety chain designated by the Australian National Park Service for that very purpose).”
The World Hum Travel Zeitgeist: Celebrations and the ‘Soccer People’
by Michael Yessis | 01.26.07 | 9:14 AM ET
Happy Australia Day! This week online travelers are going Down Under, up Mount Everest and around the world via Clarkston, Georgia. Here’s the Zeitgeist.
Most Viewed Weblog Post
World Hum (this week)
‘The Soccer People’: Heartbreak and Triumph in Clarkston, Georgia
Most Popular Travel Story
Netscape (current)
Melburnians Celebrate Australia Day
* Among the highlights of the day for Australians: Whipping England at cricket.
Best Travel Magazine
North American Travel Journalism Association Awards (2006)
Budget Travel
* The list of winners includes National Geographic Traveler (best online travel magazine) and St. Louis Post-Dispatch (best newspaper travel section).
Most Blogged Travel Story
New York Times (current)
Site Calculates Risk Factors for Travelers
* It’s a joint project by “researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, with support from the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.”
Most Popular Travel Podcast
iTunes (current)
Travel With Rick Steves
Most Popular Page Tagged Travel
Del.icio.us (recent)
Travel Like a Pro: 8 Tips To Make Your Journey Easier
Most Read Travel Story
USA Today (current)
Online Oracles Promise to Ease Your Airfare Angst
* An overview and comparison of Farecast, Farecompare, Kayak, Hotwire and Airfarewatchdog.
Christmas Island
by Ben Keene | 12.08.06 | 9:00 AM ET
Coordinates: 10 30 S 195 40 E
Area: 60 sq. mi. (155 sq. km)
Maybe if he’d given it more thought, Old Saint Nick would have opened his workshop in a slightly more salubrious location than the North Pole. Somewhere like, say, Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. Very nearly as remote but considerably warmer than Finnish Lapland where he can currently be reached, Christmas Island was so named when a ship owned by the East India Company anchored offshore on Dec. 25, 1643. Granted, the monsoon season might be a slight annoyance and the humidity would require some adjustments to his suit, plus Santa would probably have to trade in his reindeer for a team of red land crabs (roughly 120 million currently reside here), but squeezing in some scuba diving would certainly be easier. At present this small Australian dependency south of Java supports some tourism, limited tropical fruit farming and phosphate mining.
—.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) is the editor of the Oxford Atlas of the World.
No. 10: “In A Sunburned Country” by Bill Bryson
by Michael Yessis | 05.23.06 | 1:38 AM ET
To mark our five-year anniversary, we’re counting down the top 30 travel books of all time, adding a new title each day this month.
Published: 2000
Territory covered: Australia
Bill Bryson, like many of the best travel writers, fuels his books with a keen eye for detail and an historian’s ability to research. In In a Sunburned Country, for instance, he cites a whopping 66 books in his bibliography. But what sets Bryson apart is his ability to process everything he’s learned and experienced with the voice of a seasoned comedian. “Sunburned” is laugh-out-loud funny. “This is a country that…is so vast and empty that a band of amateur enthusiasts could conceivably set off the world’s first non-governmental atomic bomb on its mainland and almost four years would pass before anyone noticed,” he writes. “Clearly this is a place worth getting to know.” Bryson travels from Sydney to Perth and throughout the continent’s Martian-like desert middle, and his affection for Australia’s people and its varied landscapes is obvious. In fact, it’s infectious. If an armchair trip through Australia in the company of Bryson doesn’t make you want to go there, it’s doubtful any book will.
No. 12: “The Songlines” by Bruce Chatwin
by Jim Benning | 05.21.06 | 2:19 AM ET
To mark our five-year anniversary, we’re counting down the top 30 travel books of all time, adding a new title each day this month.
Published: 1987
Territory covered: Australia
Early on in The Songlines, British-born Bruce Chatwin recalls his childhood as one of “fantastic homelessness.” His most treasured possession was a conch shell his father brought back from the West Indies that he called Mona, which he held to his ear to listen for crashing waves. Perhaps this accounts for the peripatetic life Chatwin would go on to lead, and his journey to explore the traditionally semi-nomadic Australian Aborigines and their “Songlines”—creation myths that “tell of the legendary totemic beings who had wandered over the continent in the Dreamtime, singing out the name of everything that crossed their path…and so singing the world into existence.” With its sharp dialogue and philosophical digressions, Chatwin’s evocative account reads almost like a novel—some people he included in the book, in fact, accused him of playing fast and loose with the facts, writing more fiction than fact. Chatwin is among the most enigmatic of modern travel writers, and one of the few to be recalled in a biography. He died of AIDS-related causes in 1989 at the age of 48. “The Songlines” endures as a travel-lit classic from a writer whose life ended all too soon.