Niramaya - The Ultimate Tropical Retreat

When I flew from Melbourne to Cairns back on September 10, and then drove on up to Port Douglas, I was almost crippled with the pain of an injured back and dosed to the eyeballs with painkillers. But looking down on the vibrant blue of the tropical ocean and the coconut palms arching over pristine white beaches, I felt confident things were improving – and by the time my cousin drove me through the gates of Niramaya Villas & Spa, I knew I deserved the luxury haven that was unfolding before me.

Niramaya is a Sanskrit word I believe. I was told what it means but I’ve lost my important notebook, filled with just this sort of travel detail. I vaguely remember something like ‘peace’ and ‘calm’ - but as far as I was concerned at the time, when I opened the front gate to my villa, it meant ‘God, I’m glad to be here!’ I never wavered from that first impression throughout my five days at this divine retreat.

Set on 15 acres of beautifully landscaped grounds, Niramaya’s Asian-inspired architecture (think Balinese-style pavilions), sets you up for a tropical indulgence you’ll remember long after the event. Designed by Grounds Kent Architects ( http://www.gkaperth.com/ ) and opened back in 2006 as Bale Port Douglas, Niramaya is just a short stroll from Four Mile Beach. In my opinion, it reigns supreme as the classiest resort environment in Port Douglas – and believe me there are plenty to choose from. I visited several others while I was in Port Douglas and while each had their charm, none came close to the level of personal comfort provided by Niramaya.

Every villa – and there are four different styles – is like a home away from home, only better. They all have covered pavilions, outdoor barbecue and lounge areas and, best of all, your very own plunge pool. This in addition to the main swimming complex located at the centre of the resort. Doors slide open to beautiful views over water-lily-filled lakes; lush tropical plants and colourful exotic flowers droop lusciously over pergolas; and plush day beds lie in wait after a day exploring nearby Port Douglas village.

It’s hard not to sound like a cliché – or a travel brochure – when you write about a place like Niramaya but the truth is, it really *is* as good as the pictures – better even; because when you’re there, you meet fellow travellers and a staff determined to make your stay as blissful as possible. It’s close to the heart of busy Port Douglas village yet just far enough away, and surrounded by tropical forest, so that it remains a peaceful retreat. I know I was sorry to have to leave. It didn’t fix my back incidentally, but it sure as heck made the pain easier to deal with. I’d go back in a flash. www.niramaya.com.au            

A Day at the Sunday Market - Port Douglas, Queensland

When I arrived at the Port Douglas Sunday Markets in Queensland a week or so ago, I couldn't help thinking of the Christchurch Arts Centre Market - no longer at the earthquake-damaged Arts Centre of course and probably still reeling from a significant shift out to the Ferrymead Historic Village. As I wandered between a far greater number of stalls, all selling rather exotic tropical wares, I couldn't help my sigh of relief. It was, after all, a balmy 27-degrees, the coconut palms were swaying in a gentle breeze and the ground was solid - completely stable and unmoving. I noted then, that after just three weeks in Australia, I was not missing my home city and its constant after shocks one little bit.

And at Port Douglas Sunday Market, there is much to catch the eye. You can pick up a taxidermied crocodile - or part thereof - should the urge take you; and you can choose a coconut, have it husked and split open so you can drink the juice and eat the flesh....which I guess is pretty much what the crocodiles do on a good feeding day.

Local characters man a wide assortment of stalls - a crazy number of them selling the usual crystals, tie-dyed garments and tropical shirts that purveyors seem to think all tourists should invest in. Personally, I've never quite seen the link between tourism/tourists/travelling and the need for crystals; but I've seen it time and again in New Zealand tourist spots too. Visit Akaroa, the Bay of Islands - almost anywhere - and you're bound to find a shop filled with suspended crystals, Buddha figurines and incense.

Understandably, 'things from the sea' feature strongly in Port Douglas too. I could have come home with a suitcase full of beautiful shells. As it was, I never bought a single one. I photographed them instead - along with the hundreds of strings of freshwater pearls.

And I need not mention my love of tropical fruit!

The market is a dream place to pig-out on pineapples, bananas, mangoes, dragon fruit (top image) and much more. One tropical fruit stall owner offered a taste of an icecream bean - he raved about it. Obviously unashamed salesmanship, as I thought them tasteless - a bit like having a mouthful of wet cottonwool I suspect. But good for a laugh.

I'm always ready for a good laugh and the Aussies certainly know how to provide it.

Sightseeing in Australia - 8

I don't know why I spend so much time trying to photograph Australian gum trees - it's not as if we don't have plenty of the good old Eucalypts in New Zealand after all, but there's something special about them in their own Aussie environment; and they're so quintessentially Australian. Call it a challenge - and it is most definitely that. I have come home with hundreds of photos of gum trees and most have ended up in the delete bin. Turns out it's actually quite difficult to capture all those forms and shadows without it looking like...well.... a boring solid mass of trees. I was reasonably happy with this shot - taken one soft, sunny morning on a massive drive around the Fleurieu Peninsula, south of Adelaide in 2007. If you just happen to be travelling to Adelaide, I'd strongly advise you to pick up a rental car and make a day of it - better still a couple of days because there are plenty of wineries, beautiful landscapes and interesting towns to visit. The south of the peninsula also gives you access to Kangaroo Island. I love Melbourne's Flinders Street - that one mile long (exactly they tell me) stretch named after explorer, Matthew Flinders, that runs almost parallel to the Yarra River. It's where you'll find the incredibly busy Flinders Railway Station which is, in my view, just about one of the best people-watching places on the planet; and just across the road, Federation Square with its galleries, cafes, restaurants and events. I'm heading across the Tasman in a few weeks' time and you can be reasonably certain that I'll be spending an unnatural amount of time hanging out here with my camera. This is the very handsome State Library of Queensland in Brisbane, which is located in front of the Queensland Museum of Art. It opened after extensive redevelopment in 2006 at the hands of Australian architectural practice, Donovan Hill Peddle Thorp. In 2007, it was voted Australian Building of the Year by the Royal Australian Institute of Architects. I spent half a day in both buildings back in 2008, on my way home from a wild adventure in the Queensland Outback. Brisbane, it must be said, seemed tame and very civilised by comparison. A perfect little building in the Victorian town of Malmsbury - little more than a speck on the map, with just 587 people (or thereabouts), 96km northwest of Melbourne. Gold was discovered here in 1858 and the town became a centre for diggers on their way to Bendigo and Castlemaine. I discovered it in 2010, when I hit the road in rural Victoria with a map, a camera and an assortment of drinks and snacks. From Woodend, an hour north of Melbourne, I headed north past Kyneton, and turned off the highway, heading for Malmsbury, then in a giant loop back to the south, and north again to Woodend. It was one of those magnificent days of taking ten hours to do a trip that would normally take 3-4 hours - stopping all along the way to explore and take photographs. My idea of heaven.

Sightseeing in Australia - 4

I'd hate to count the number of hours I've spent walking the streets of inner city Melbourne with my camera. I visit at least once a year and regardless of the weather, I find endless inspiration in the people, the buildings, the colour, the movement - it never stops. It's easy, it;s familiar - yet at the same time, different enough from New Zealand to be endlessly interesting to me. I usually stay at the small commuter town of Woodend, an hour north of Melbourne on the main train commute. From there, I either train into the city, or I leap in the car and drive for miles and miles and miles, around rural Victoria, exploring the many small towns and villages along the way. Some days, when Victoria winds up the temperature, it can be an arduous business - but nothing air conditioning or a wound-down car window can't fix These Aboriginal shields were part of a stunning display at the Museum of South Australia in Adelaide. I spent a long time here and had time permitted, I would have made a return visit.

I photographed this local couple outside the Eulo Queen, an old hotel in the tiny town of Eulo in the southwest Queensland outback. I was on my way to the opal mines at Yowah and stopped off for a short sprint around town, a natter with a few of the locals and a peek inside this historic hotel.

Sightseeing in Australia - 2

Interior: The Eulo Queen, Eulo, Outback, Southwest Queensland, 2008.

One of my best Aussie adventures yet, took me to the Outback region of Southwest Queensland - ten days of unbridled madness and fun. Outback life is raw, rugged and rough - a fantastic place where people pitch together in their battle against the trying forces of nature. Snake-handler. Kyneton, Victoria, 2008. For New Zealanders, there is a wonderful familiarity about a lot of Australia, yet that's always offset by significant differences - like snakes for instance! I took this shot at the annual Kyneton Country Fair, the equivalent of our A&P Shows I expect.

Bendigo, Victoria, 2009 I drove up to Bendigo one day when I was staying just north of Melbourne. It was - or is normally - a two-hour trip but I stopped at every little town and village I passed along the way. And the closer I got to Bendigo, the hotter it got, so that when I finally arrived around midday, it was 39-degrees and I was sweltering. But I adored Bendigo. It was one of Australia's richest cities during the gold rush and that early wealth is reflected in much of the astonishing architecture.

Adelaide Hills, Adelaide, South Australia, 2007.

I flew over to Adelaide with a photographer in 2007, on a writing mission for Air New Zealand's magazine, Kia Ora. It was a brilliant 5-6 days spent exploring the city, nearby Adelaide Hills and the magnificent Fleurieu Peninsula. I'd heard a great deal about Adelaide in the year's prior, mostly that the city was designed by the same urban planner who designed the layout for Christchurch; and I have to say I wasn't disappointed. I'd move there in a heartbeat.

Sightseeing in Australia

Brisbane, Queensland. 2008

I Love Australia!

Every part of it.

Everything about it.

Castlemaine, Victoria , 2009.

Tired of long haul flights to Europe and North Asia, I have, these past four or five years, devoted at least one trip a year to some part of Australia. I've visited many times prior to that of course, but I see it differently now - not just as a quick jaunt across the Tasman to something familiar but as a vast country that most New Zealanders (and many Australians) never see anything but a minute portion of. So I have been making it my business to move beyond the obvious east coast cities and venture out into the wider country. Suffice to say, that in the last five years, I have already amassed thousands of photographs taken in various parts of Australia - there are even more thousands on slide film that I have yet to digitise.

Cunnamulla, Outback, Southwest Queensland, 2008. Melbourne, Victoria. 2009. So, rather than leaving them tucked away in my computer files, I've decided to give some of them an airing in a new blog series "Sightseeing in Australia." It's going to be a mixed bag. People, places, the weird and the wonderful. Consider it a mini sightseeing trip. And it begins here. And if anything interests you, click on the location in the index line below the blog, because I guarantee you'll find more.

Showtime 2 - Behind the Scenes

Noorama, Queensland, Australia. 2008. Ajr

I’ve been digging around in my Australian photo files again to bring you a few more images from the Noorama Picnic Races, a crazy much-anticipated annual event in the Queensland Outback. This by way of introducing the fact that this year, for the first time, I will be bringing news and views from Canterbury’s major racing event, New Zealand Cup and Show Week, here in Christchurch. That’s not until November 7-14 but in the lead-up to the numerous events that take place that week, I’ll be bringing you a whole lot of behind-the-scenes insights into the country’s largest spring festival – and it goes without saying that I’ll be making numerous Twitter comments to add colour to the proceedings. So stay tuned for my new Showtime series – New Zealand Cup and Show Week as you’ve never seen it before! www.nzcupandshow.co.nz

Showtime 1 - The Culture of Racing

I was sorting through my Australian Outback photo files the other day when I came upon these ones from the annual Noorama Picnic Races that I attended in 2008. Noorama is miles from anywhere. You probably won’t even find it on a map – it is after all, little more than the recreational centre that was formed in the mid-1900s as a meeting place for the farming community’s sporting and social activities. Yet in the South West Queensland outback, Noorama is legendary. The district dates back to the 1880s and has a rich pastoral history; and the Noorama Picnic Race Club is the jewel in the region’s social crown. Formed in 1964, it held its first race meeting on May 14th 1966 with 43 horses competing for A$365 worth of trophies. It was a huge hit and today people still travel hundreds of kilometres to attend the three-day event. Forty-two years on, the 2008 five-event programme offered prize money in excess of A$31,000 and the feature race – the Noorama Cup – was worth A$7,900.

Located on Noorama Station, almost one hundred kilometres southeast of the tiny outback town of Cunnamulla, Noorama is isolated. It took me 14 hours to get there from Christchurch and I flew most of the way - via Brisbane followed by a two-hour flight to Charleville, a two-hour drive to Cunnamulla (where I was given a hot pink jackaroo hat for the occasion) and another two-hour drive further south to Noorama. By the time I arrived it was just after 5pm on a Friday night and I felt as though I had been to London and back. My pink jackaroo hat was on a nasty lean, I was dusty, over-heated, tired and wondering what I had let myself in for. The race track was all but deserted, there wasn’t a horse in sight and I was still pondering the mystery of why the plane’s flight attendant had given such detailed lifejacket instructions - given that we were flying over a vast, shrivelled outback landscape and the chances of our crashing into water seemed highly improbable.

My outback hosts were kindly. They propped me up in a chair with a bottle of water, trying for their part to digest the fact that they had landed themselves a non-drinking, non-smoking Kiwi journalist who didn’t eat meat and had never attended a race meeting in her life. Noorama promised to be a learning curve for us all. And so it was. My first lesson the Friday night Calcutta – the pre-race horse auction - kicked off around 6pm just as I began thinking about sleep. Locals arrived in a steady stream of dust and congregated around the bar in the biggest marquee. Everyone was primed for action, the barbecue was fired up and the auctioneer started the bids. And that’s all I remember of my first night at Noorama. I fell asleep to the pleasant drone of outback hilarity and the sizzle of gigantic steaks.

By 11am the next day, it was 28-degrees and the first horse floats were pulling up to the open-air stables. Horses were being hosed down, brushed and fitted with nose-bags; track preparations were underway; the First Aid team had arrived; the bookies were setting up; and the first fancy hats were bobbing among the growing crowd. The energy was infectious. Ladies in their race-day finery banded together, swigging champagne and preparing the members’ pre-race cocktails and treats. Men strutted around the grounds clutching beer cans and brushing flies from their Akubras. Jockeys gave the track a pre-race check; and kids of all ages ran free and wild.

Later, as the horses turned for the straight, locals in fancy race-day outfits leaned over the rails cheering for their favourites. Glasses of champagne spilt over, hearts pounded, fists pumped the air and the loud speaker was drowned out by hooves thundering down the dirt track. It was a dramatic scene set against enormous cloud-filled skies and parched red dirt that hadn’t seen rain for seven years; and as the locals yelled and cheered in 35-degree autumn heat, I thought how similar race meetings were the world over. And now, with spring in the air here in Christchurch, racing fans are already thinking about the annual New Zealand Cup and Show Week in November – a crazy extravaganza of six major horse racing events, fashion awards, international rodeo events, the Royal New Zealand Show and more. This year, New Zealand Cup and Show Week runs from November 7-14 and you can find out more about how we do the whole race-day thing here in Christchurch by checking out www.nzcupandshow.co.nz And this year, my appetite whetted by my Noorama race day experiences, I'll be checking out everything the Christchurch week of racing festivities has to offer!

Going Solo

South-west Queensland, Australia. April 2008. Ajr

This single tree in a flat plain of crisp, golden grass somehow sums up the vastness of the South West Queensland outback in Australia. I took this photo as I shuffled across this spectacularly endless landscape on the Charlotte Plains Camel Wagon Safari, which progressed at the perfect pace for considering the grander scheme of things. www.charlotteplains.com.au

When Art Goes Public

Brisbane, Australia. April 2008. Ajr And speaking of public art, (I was yesterday), I have returned (in spirit) to Brisbane in Australia … if only to have a change from Napier. These were two contemporary works that caught my eye as I wandered the streets. I have yet to discover who created them - watch this space!

Shadow Play

Brisbane, April 2008. Ajr

I spent as much time in Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane photographing shadows and reflections as I did actually looking at the artworks. I’ve said it all before so many times I'm almost sick of myself – I love shadows, I love reflections. www.qag.qld.gov.au

My Kind of Fruit

Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, April 2008. Ajr

“3 Pears 1975”, cast polyurethane with shellac finish by George Baldessin; photographed at Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, in April. If you enter the name George Baldessin into Google, you’ll come up with several artists by that name. This sculpture was created by Italian-born Australian resident, the late George Victor Joseph Baldessin (1939-1978). www.qag.qld.gov.au

Use Your Brain

Here’s an eye-catching environmental message from Australian artist, Michael Callaghan from New South Wales. I photographed “Use Your Brain, Use the Train, ”screen print,1990, at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane in April. www.qag.qld.gov.au

Booming Brisbane

Brisbane High Rise, April 2008. Ajr

It's an understatement to say that Australia's Brisbane is in the middle of a building boom - it has been for the last ten years. When I was there recently I counted at least 30 cranes on the skyline. A taxi driver told me it was all about the booming mining and coal industries. Who am I to argue? I loved this new central city building - and from where I'm sitting in freezing cold Christchurch, that blue sky looks especially enticing.

Dirty Down Under

Fire the name Julia Galvin into the GOOGLE search engine and you’ll find out everything you ever wanted to know about the World Bog Snorkelling Championships. Julia, 37 of Ireland, was recovering from a serious accident and on 16 painkillers a day when she decided it might be fun to try bog snorkelling; now she’s up there with the world champs and is about to make an appearance at Queensland’s Dirt’nDust Festival on April 4-6, at the coincidentally-named, Julia Creek. She’ll take on Australia’s brawniest bog snorkellers in a sloppy event that calls for compulsory snorkel and flippers. The aim? To complete two consecutive lengths of a 60-yard filled trench cut through peat bog in the shortest possible time. If you feel like joining them for a down and dirty weekend, check www.dirtndust.com