Qantas Magazine - April 23

This is the place...

THE ONE... GELATO, SPRITZ AND CICCHETTI TO HAVE IN VENICE

THE ONE... MOROCCAN CITY YOU MAY NOT HAVE CONSIDERED

THE ONE... ROCK ‘N’ ROLL ICON TO CHECK OUT IN NEW YORK

Electrifying performance

The all-electric Audi RS e-tron GT

With a powerful presence, wide stance and fowing lines — the Audi RS e-tron GT is designed to turn heads. With up to 475 kilowatts at your disposal, onlookers will have to turn quickly.

25 The people, places and pop culture to put on your radar

46 Spotlight on the Moroccan port city of Tangier

Dine

54 On The Menu: Where to find the best Vietnamese pho across Australia

60 The Crowd-pleaser: Anchoa with smoked tomato sorbet at MoVida

62 Best of: Newcastle, NSW

64 Local Heroes: McLaren Vale, South Australia

66 Wine List: Cabernet franc

140 The Robots Are Here: What are the potential pitfalls and benefits of adopting AI in your business?

148 View From The Top: Lisa Singh, CEO, Australia India Institute

150 Career Path: Kieren Perkins, CEO, Australian Sports Commission

152 Small Business: How a financial coach can rethink your company’s direction and boost revenue

154 Upstart: HEX

156 Clock Wise: Rhys Gorgol, founder and creative principal, The Company You Keep

Special report

159 Workplace design trends that will make people want to come back to the office

Design

124 On The Inside: Arku House, Sisters Beach, Tasmania

126 Creative Process: Daniel O’Toole

128 Foundations: Pantheon, Rome

130 The Statement: Florence Knoll sofa

132 Packing List: Men’s and women’s fashion

136 The Classic: Hermès Kelly bag

On board

169 Inflight entertainment

174 Health, safety and security on board and when you land

178 Games

Editorial Editor-in-Chief

Kirsten Galliott

Content Director

Genevra Leek

Deputy Content Director

Faith Campbell

Content Manager

Natalie Reilly

Contributing Editor

Jessica Irvine

Digital and Content

Operations Lead

Hana Jo

Online Editor

Christina Rae

Managing Editor, Qantas Hotels

Bridget de Maine

Digital Producer

Anneliese Beard

For editorial inquiries, contact: qantaseditorial@mediumrarecontent.com

Advertising

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Rare Creative Strategy and Partnerships

Head of Rare Creative Paulette Parisi Content and Partnerships Director Mark Brandon Senior Content

Editor Natalie Babic Partnerships Editor Helen Martin Senior Writer Terry Christodoulou Creative Director Philippa Moffitt Strategy and Insights Director Jane Schofield Senior Strategy Manager Natalie Pizanis Commercial Insights Manager Molly Maguire Qantas Loyalty Partnerships Manager Alana Baird

Qantas Partnerships Manager Emily Ryan Content and Events Campaign Manager Jessica Manson

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For Rare Creative inquiries, contact: rarecreative@mediumrarecontent.com

Managing Director Nick Smith Chief Commercial Officer Fiorella Di Santo Head of Content, Travel and Business Kirsten Galliott Digital Director Karla Courtney Head of Audience Intelligence Catherine Ross Financial Controller Leslie To Finance Manager

Yane Chak Junior Accountant Yongjia Zhou

FROM THE EDITOR

We all have singular memories. Highlights, in a lifetime of moments, which stand out, take us back in time and bring us joy.

Often these memories are tied to a feeling so what has significance for one person may not feel momentous to another. I remember walking through a park in New York after dinner one night. It started to rain but instead of dashing for cover, I tilted my head to the sky. It was my first time in New York, I was newly single and the future was filled with possibilities. More than 20 years later, those few frames of my life remain razor sharp.

Travel gives us some of life’s biggest “wow” moments. Do you remember how you felt when you finally stood before the Sphinx or climbed the Eiffel Tower? The journey to that moment may have involved a long-held dream. Perhaps there was some sacrifice to afford that privilege. Or maybe it was just serendipitous – the great boon of travel.

As we prepared this issue, which focuses on “the one”, I thought about all those incredible moments that are stitched together to create my travel tapestry. The one meal? My younger self would plump for New York again and the bar at Babbo where I feasted on orecchiette and a glass of chianti. My older self would say Tokyo and the unmitigated joy of watching my daughters order sushi for breakfast (and what sushi it was!). I can still taste both meals.

The one adventure? Hands down, swimming with humpback whales off Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia.

The one surprise? The Galápagos, which was like nothing I could ever have imagined and nothing I imagine I will ever see again.

And the one safari? Ah, that would be the most recent, where I had a bucket-list experience at Sabi Sabi in South Africa. You can read about the trip on page 76.

What have been your singular moments… and what are yet to come?

Kirsten Galliott Editor-in-Chief

kirstengalliott

Our writers are not armchair travellers. Rest assured any assistance we accept from the travel industry in the course of preparing our stories does not compromise the integrity of our coverage.

FROM THE CEO

We have about two dozen hangars around Australia and I visited one at Melbourne Airport recently. One of our engineers came up to chat to me with his son, who is a second-year apprentice. The dad, Robert, has been looking after our aircraft for about 20 years and he and his son, Fletcher, were clearly really proud to be working alongside each other. It was great to see.

This is the kind of talent pipeline we need to expand as Qantas gets back to growth. Engineering is a highly skilled job and it takes up to five years of on-the-job training to be qualified. At Qantas, we’ve been training apprentice engineers since 1927. We had 54 apprentices join the Group earlier this year and we’re going to need a lot more as we fly more and to cover natural attrition. That’s why we announced the Qantas Group Engineering Academy, which will have the capacity to train up to 300 engineers each year – about 200 for us and the remainder for the broader industry. And like our Pilot Academy that opened in 2020, we’ll be looking at ways to encourage more women to consider aviation as a career.

It’s not only engineers that we’ll need as we grow. Over the next 10 years we’ll create more than 8500 highly skilled aviation roles in Australia – pilots, cabin crew, airport staff, as well as engineers. Those new jobs will underpin our significant investment in the new aircraft, network, lounges and technology we’ve announced over the past few months. We’ve ordered up to 299 narrowbody aircraft for our Qantas and Jetstar fleets to arrive over the next decade and 12 Airbus A350s for our Project Sunrise flights that will fly direct from Australia’s east coast to New York and London. On average, we’ll have a new aircraft arriving every three weeks over the next several years, including three brand-new Dreamliners that are expected to join our fleet by the end of next month.

After three very difficult years, it’s fantastic to be back investing heavily in the future of the national carrier – and to know that more people like Robert and Fletcher will be coming through our ranks.

As always, thanks for choosing Qantas.

Alan Joyce CEO, Qantas

Qantas will undertake a $100-million upgrade to its lounges over the next three years, including a new First Lounge at London’s Heathrow and refreshed Hong Kong International Lounge. The International Business Lounges in Sydney and Melbourne will be updated, Hobart gains a new Qantas Club and Broome’s new lounge will get double the seats. These are on top of a refurbished Auckland International Lounge (above).

Connect to Qantas Fast and Free Wi-Fi

Once onboard, connect your own device to Qantas Free Wi-Fi on domestic flights in three simple steps:

Enable Aeroplane Mode and select the “Qantas Free Wi-Fi” network in your Wi-Fi settings.

Follow the prompts on the “Welcome Onboard” screen to connect.

Once you’re connected, you’re ready to access the internet and start exploring.

Having trouble connecting? Make sure you’re connected to the “Qantas Free Wi-Fi” network and go to wifi.qantas.com in your preferred browser to start the connection process. To ensure an enjoyable flight for everyone, keep flight mode activated, switch your device to silent and refrain from voice and video calls.

We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land on which we work, live and fly. We pay our respects to Elders past and present and are committed to honouring Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ unique cultural and spiritual relationship to the land and water.

Lounge renewal

Building trust and delivering excellence is what drives us.

“Achieving excellence requires dedication. I’m proud of the hard work I’ve put in over the years and the relationships I’ve built.

Which is why it’s an honour to partner with a company that continually strives for excellence. LSH Auto Australia is dedicated to building trust. It’s the place for all your premium motoring needs, where the goal is to deliver an exceptional customer experience.”

Australia’s leading Mercedes-Benz retail group YOU

Mercedes-Benz Sydney | Mercedes-Benz Melbourne | Mercedes-Benz Brisbane | AMG Sydney | Mercedes-Benz Melbourne Airport

Stephanie Rice OAM Olympic Champion and LSH Auto Australia Ambassador

I just got back from…

Next-level

Canada

Pip Moroney

FREQUENT FLYER STATUS Gold

“I flew Qantas direct from Sydney to Vancouver, before heading to Whistler. It was so good to get back on a plane and feel the magic of aviation. Summertime in Whistler is bigger than wintertime: people are mountain biking, kayaking and hiking. My two favourite spots were House Rock with its raging rapids and picturesque Lost Lake, where you can walk the entire perimeter and swim out to pontoons. It was funny – at Lost Lake it was 30°C and people were swimming. Half an hour later we’d taken the gondola to the top of Whistler and it was snowing. People were skiing!”

Singapore

Danny

Mandrides

FREQUENT FLYER STATUS Platinum

“I quit my job to take a career break and my first stop was Singapore, where I visited the city’s best bars and restaurants. As a Platinum Qantas Frequent Flyer, I was able to take extra luggage and upgrade through the app, which was great. I like a Dirty Martini and Koma (komasingapore.com), a Japanese restaurant in Marina Bay Sands, does an excellent one. The sushi bar is fantastic and the desserts look spectacular. I also really enjoyed Mandai Wildlife Reserve’s Night Safari (mandai.com). You’re on a tram and ride through the animals’ habitats – it’s surreal.”

Chile

Alana

Mai Mitchell

FREQUENT FLYER STATUS Bronze

“I flew to Santiago with my Chilean fiancé, Hector, to meet his family. We went to San Pedro de Atacama and explored Moon Valley, which is full of craters, and Mars Valley, which is red. We also went to the Tatio Geysers, with steaming air coming out of them. At night, the stars can be incredibly bright because there’s no cloud cover or humidity. In the Meteorite Museum you can see meteorites that have crashed into the desert – it’s spectacular. We were so well looked after on our Qantas flight. The staff were able to switch between English and Spanish seamlessly. It was the best flight I’ve done in a long time.”

cocktails, meteorites in the desert and gondolas to ski fields. Here, three Qantas travellers share highlights from their recent trips.

Restaurants

THE WAITLIST

STORY BY ALEXANDRA CARLTON PHOTOGRAPHY BY CASSIE ABRAHAM

Two beloved restaurants launch offshoots and a heritage Rutherglen winery gets a graceful makeover.

Such and Such

Mal Hanslow, executive chef at Canberra’s dégustationonly fine-diner Pilot, was whipping up a simple dinner at home when he thought, “Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a restaurant where I could just cook like this?”

Now he does: 80-seater Such and Such (andsuch andsuch.com), which he opened with partners Dash Rumble and Ross McQuinn in Constitution Place in the CBD, moments away from the Canberra Theatre. On the surface, the new eatery seems to be everything that Pilot isn’t: colour-popping interiors filled with art, lots of share plates and a good chunk of real estate reserved for walk-ins. But taste the food and Hanslow’s signature skill is on show.

“At Pilot, the menu is about different takes on dishes that remind you of something,” says group manager Rumble. “Such and Such has that, too.” She cites Hanslow’s sirloin, which he cooks with what appears to be a straightforward French-style jus-based sauce but is spiked with tamari and kombu. “It’s just a way to give it more punch,” says the chef. The wine list also charts a path away from the mothership: where Pilot is all-Australian, Such and Such welcomes international winemakers into its fold, with a focus on small-scale and sustainable drops. “As long as the producers have the same values and ethos as we do, we’ll put them on there,” says Rumble.

Pilot will never lose its fan base – it’s too good for that. But the team hopes Such and Such becomes somewhere diners don’t just save for a special occasion. “We want it to be the kind of place you eat at once a week,” says Hanslow. Kind of like you’re one of his mates, dropping in for a feed after work.

Take a seat

NSW St Siandra

Could anything be more Sydney than arriving at lunch in a boat? Make a movie-star entrance at Mosman’s breezy, Amalfi-style St Siandra (stsiandra.com.au), which has its own moorings and private beach. In the kitchen, chef Sam McCallum (ex-Nomad) creates holiday-feel fare like fresh grilled seafood and steaks, paired with spritzes and light wines.

NSW Beau

Nomad’s mini-me has finally opened in Sydney’s Surry Hills (beau.sydney). Led by chef Jacqui Challinor, Beau & Dough serves up fragrant manoush, baklava and coffee at the front, while sultry Beau Bar presents generous seafood platters, lobster thermidor and steak frites. The spiced lamb manoush is an instant winner.

VIC Kin

All Saints Estate (allsaintswine. com.au) has long been a drawcard in Rutherglen – it sits inside a 159-year-old castle, after all. But a multimillion dollar restoration and a brand-new cellar door and restaurant have taken things to new heights. All terracotta, blonde wood and vineyard views, Kin is headed up by executive chef Jack Cassidy (ex-Jackalope), who takes his ingredients straight from the landscape. We’re talking Murray cod, Rutherglen honey and durif, the region’s signature grape.

QLD Komeyui

Claiming to be the home of Australia’s longest sushi bar (12 metres, if you’re asking), the twin to South Melbourne’s Komeyui has opened a warmweather outpost in Brisbane’s Spring Hill (komeyui.com.au).

Diners have the options of à la carte or omakase and there’s also a refined bento box menu for an upscale working lunch.

Such and Such in Canberra’s CBD

The Edit

MAKING THE CUT

Style

The last time we saw corsages this big, they were attached to the outfits of Sarah Jessica Parker et al in Sex and the City. Just like that TV series, they’ve returned – only now it’s men as well as women affixing the floral accessory to their lapels. Actors Eddie Redmayne and Chris Perfetti wore versions to the Golden Globes in January but it’s Harry Styles (right) who definitively embraced the trend at the Brit Music Awards, sporting a black satin flower that was larger than his head.

Book

Curtis Sittenfeld, the reigning monarch of feminist chick lit, is back. Romantic Comedy, her first novel since 2020’s bestselling Rodham, focuses on a Tina Fey-type late-night TV comedy writer, Sally Milz, fed up that her male colleagues only date glamorous actresses (Colin Jost and Scarlett Johansson, anyone?). Her tune changes when a pop star who usually dates models shows an interest in her. In bookstores 4 April.

Podcast

In case you haven’t heard, Gen Z is obsessed with 1990s songs right now. But casually mention that you already knew that Dave Grohl played in both Nirvana and the Foo Fighters and they’ll probably roll their eyes. Enter 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s , which gives the cultural context for how bangers like Pretty Fly (For a White Guy), I Want it That Way and Enter Sandman came to be – minus the parental bragging.

COMPILED BY NATALIE REILLY PHOTOGRAPHY BY KARWAI TANG

Movie

Blame it on The Social Network, the 2010 movie about Facebook’s genesis, but business biopics – The Dropout, WeCrashed and Tetris – have never been hotter. Add in the enormous success of the 2020 Michael Jordan documentary series, The Last Dance, and it makes sense to develop Air, a movie about the start of the hugely profitable relationship between Nike and Jordan and how it changed the way sneakers were marketed. The film is directed by Ben Affleck, who also stars as Nike co-founder Phil Knight, with Matt Damon as the man who got the ball rolling, shoe salesman Sonny Vaccaro. Viola Davis and Jason Bateman star in peak 1980s garb and hairstyles in the film, which is set to be a slam dunk at the box office. In cinemas 5 April.

Beauty

Coco Chanel once said that it was artists, including her close friend Pablo Picasso, who showed her how to be exacting. That type of collaboration – between fashion, beauty and art – is on full display this month, with Guerlain’s Jasmine Bonheur perfume ($560; davidjones.com) paying homage to Henri Matisse’s masterwork One Thousand and One Nights. In keeping with the theme is Jurlique’s latest collaboration with Byron Bay artist Tiffany Kingston, who has illustrated the packaging for its Aloe Vera Mist and Hand Cream ($55 and $50; jurlique.com.au). Meanwhile, top South Korean skincare brand Sulwhasoo has gone sculptural, bottling its First Care Activating Serum ($144; sephora.com.au) in a limitededition porcelain design.

We’ve scanned the zeitgeist for what to read, watch, wear and listen to now.

INTERVIEW BY NATALIE REILLY PHOTOGRAPHY BY TREVOR KING

My favourite book is…

The Boy From The Mish by Gary Lonesborough. It’s a great coming-of-age story about two young Aboriginal boys who are finding their identity and falling in love with each other as they navigate community and culture. It was very sweet – and a book that I wish was around when I was a teen.

The last movie I watched was…

Strange World – it’s by Disney. I enjoy fantasy and adventure so with this animated movie it was a great way to see the imagination of a different world. The film was funny and excellent for a night in with popcorn.

The last TV series I watched was…

The White Lotus. I loved that it was a dark comedy and had such dynamic actors whose characters were so close to real people. It was so enjoyable and Jennifer Coolidge is just the best.

The app I use the most is…

That would be Instagram. My favourite accounts are artist Dylan Mooney, cultural health and wellness page BlackFit Fitness and, of course, fashion program Mob in Fashion. They are all things I love – art, fitness and fashion – and they always post inspiring content.

My favourite podcasts are...

Pop Pantheon with DJ Louie XIV. I loved the four-part breakdown of Madonna’s career as the forever Queen of Pop. It’s so interesting to hear how complex and instinctive artists can be as they navigate their careers, to balance artistry, commercial success and personal achievement, especially someone like Madonna. It was amazing.

The last show I saw was...

Not really a show but the Alexander McQueen: Mind, Mythos, Muse exhibition at the NGV in Melbourne was spectacular. As a fashion-lover, McQueen was one of the most influential and groundbreaking designers and it was incredible to see the garments and stories behind each collection.

Nathan McGuire

The model and founder of Mob in Fashion – an initiative to promote First Nations voices in the fashion industry –is busier than ever. We catch him between gigs to find out how he unwinds.

CELEBRATE HISTORY, ART, FOOD & CULTURE

LYON, PROVENCE & THE

FRANCE’S FINEST

From $5,995pp in Standard stateroom SAVE up to $4,600 per couple

SO/ PARIS

It’s part hotel, part gallery and captures all the charm of the City of Light.

STORY BY HANA JO PHOTOGRAPHY BY GAËLLE LE BOULICAUT

So/ Paris (hotel.qantas.com.au/SOParis) isn’t your typical five-star Parisian hotel. For a start, it’s fun. Facing the Seine in the 4th arrondissement, within walking distance of Canal Saint-Martin and Opéra Bastille, the property has a subdued retroglam vibe that’s first hinted at by bronzetinted mirrors adorning the walls, orange velvet chairs and flared columns in the lobby (left). The staff are laid-back and decked out in cheeky uniforms (think sailor hats with red pompoms) courtesy of French designer Guillaume Henry of Patou.

The Bonnie restaurant, bar and club occupy the top two floors – above the 162 suites and rooms – and look out over a roll call of the city’s greatest hits: the Panthéon, Notre-Dame and the Tour Eiffel. Inside, there are mirrored Olafur Eliasson installations, replicating the Seine and splicing the scenery into striking reflections. There’s really not a bad seat in the house. The French menu has a New York diner bent so while you might begin with escargots and finish with mille-feuille, you can sample fried chicken with coleslaw and barbecue sauce in between.

On Level 16, peer over the rooftops of the Republican Guard barracks and you might catch the glint of the golden Spirit Of Freedom atop the Bastille – an even prettier site with a B&C Manhattan, avec Ricard, in hand. And if it’s a Thursday, Friday or Saturday night? The adjacent club is open until late for those who want to party with the Tour Eiffel as a striking backdrop.

Whenever it’s time to retire for the night, tap your key and, voilà, here’s the plush cocoon of your room, where you’ll find plastic-free packaging, robes and cork-soled slippers – along with sweet treats from Maison Carrousel. Draw back the blue velvet curtains and watch the City of Light twinkle before you.

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STORY BY BEK DAY

BY EMMA LOUISE MURRAY

PARRTJIMA FESTIVAL, ALICE SPRINGS

Putting into words exactly what to expect from Parrtjima Festival (7 to 16 April; parrtjimaaustralia.com.au) –a free, 10-day light and culture festival on Arrernte country in Alice Springs (Mparntwe) – is a tough ask, says Paul Ah Chee, specialist cultural advisor for Northern Territory Major Events.

“Parrtjima [which is pronounced ‘Par-cheema’ and means ‘shedding light and understanding’] tells the story of Aboriginal culture from within the Central Australian region and the Tjukurrpa, the Dreaming, of the area,” he says. “They share the songs, the stories and the answers that blow through the wind across this beautiful landscape.”

On the surface, the festival is a celebration of ancient stories through modern technology; in reality, it’s

PHOTOGRAPHY

Be part of this First Nations event that tells ancient stories through cutting-edge technology in the Central Australian desert.

A piece of you since 1972.

a cultural conversation as layered as the 300-million-year-old MacDonnell Ranges that make up its backdrop.

“One of my favourite parts is an installation called Grounded ,” says Ah Chee, an Aboriginal man with Arrernte bloodlines, “where the work of different artists is projected onto the desert floor. Watching kids run over the works, only to have them shift and change underfoot, never ceases to amaze me.”

Grounded is a collaboration between Maruku Arts painter Rene Kulitja, who helmed a group of artists from Mutitjulu to create the Uluru Statement from the Heart artwork, and several creators

Make it a weekend…

Nestled behind a patch of mulga trees just a 10-minute drive out of Alice sits Red Desert Views (right; airbnb.com), a converted, off-grid shipping container offering a glass-walled panorama of the East MacDonnell Ranges. Watch sunset bleed into the inky night sky from the two-person outdoor bathtub before heading into town for a meen moilee –pearlescent wild barramundi kissed by coconut, turmeric and fresh curry leaves – at Hanuman (hanuman.com.au), the DoubleTree Hilton’s high-end restaurant. Alternatively, a jug of frosty beer on the rooftop at vibey Epilogue Lounge (1/58 Todd Mall; 0429 003 874) in the heart of town will show you exactly what laid-back Territory hospitality is all about.

(including Aboriginal Australian electropop duo Electric Fields). The large-scale light and sound installation will serve as the event’s centrepiece.

The festival, which last year ushered 25,000 visitors through Alice Springs Desert Park, began in 2016 and is curated by Bundjalung arts executive Rhoda Roberts in close collaboration with a local First Nations reference group. Billed as the only Aboriginal light festival of its kind, the program packs plenty of nonilluminated offerings, too, from punu (woodworking) workshops to live talks with First Nations authors and interactive bush food demonstrations.

MCLAREN ARTURA

Is this another supercar? Yes, but not just any supercar – the McLaren Artura is a hybrid, marking the British company’s first foray into electrification on a road car. What’s powering it? A combination of a 3.0-litre, twin-turbocharged V6 engine and an electric motor powered by a 7.4kWh battery. The two combined allow it to max at 500kW of power, 720Nm of force and a top speed of 330km/h. How does the power compare to a regular passenger car? Think of it as about four and a half Volkswagen Golfs. Wow! What else makes it special? It’s the first car to be built using the new McLaren Carbon Lightweight Architecture (MCLA), which is a highly technical material technology made for hybrid powertrains and designed by the clever folks at the Mclaren Composites Technology Centre, who are also behind its F1 tech. This helps to make the Artura the lightest in its class at 1498 kilograms. Does hybrid mean it’s more efficient? It’s still a supercar but is McLaren’s most efficient ever, with a read of 4.6L/100km and 31 kilometres of battery-only range – that’s more efficient than just one VW Golf (5.8L/100km). Is it as good inside? It’s definitely race-y. The Artura debuts a brand-new interior, which includes steering-wheel-mounted controls for fewer distractions, an 8-inch touchscreen and smartphone mirroring. How much is it? From $449,500, plus on-road costs. cars.mclaren.com

STORY BY NOELLE FAULKNER

The British marque’s first hybrid supercar delivers racing technology for the road.

A LEGEND REBORN

The dial

From the original Tank Normale, designed in 1917 and modelled on a World War I tank, to its many contemporary versions, such as the Tank Américaine and Tank Anglaise, Cartier’s sleek timepiece is legendary. The updated Tank Française watch features black or silvercoloured Roman numerals with blue swordshaped hands and a railroad minute track.

The case

In the model pictured, the parallel brancards characteristic of the Tank series are studded with two symmetrical rows of 11 diamonds. The curvature of the yellow-gold case has been softened along with its bevelled edges, while the watch is water-resistant up to 3 bar (approximately 30 metres).

The movement

This is the first revamp of the Tank Française since its launch in 1996 and all the models feature a quartz caliber, except for the large steel model, which has the caliber 1853 MC automatic.

The band

Rendered like a piece of jewellery, the Tank Française’s bracelet is made up of polished links, with the aim being the seamless integration of case and bracelet.

The price

Cartier Tank Française watch (small) in yellow-gold with diamonds / $41,600 / cartier.com.au

Splendour in green

Family is at the heart of Australian luxury watch and fine-jewellery retailer J Farren-Price, which celebrated its 80th anniversary last year under second-generation owner and director Julian Farren-Price. This glittering cocktail confection from Piedmont-based jeweller New Italian Art unites 1.68 carats of emeralds with 0.32 carats of diamonds, set on an elegant 18-carat white-gold band. Give yourself the green light.

New Italian Art 18-carat white-gold emerald and diamond ring / $18,250 / jfarrenprice.com.au

WELL READ

STORY BY MICHAEL WILLIAMS

From the latest novels to classic books worth discovering, these are the page-turning picks for the month.

The book everyone is reading

Pip Williams’ debut novel, 202o’s The Dictionary of Lost Words, was an international bestseller and one of the fastestselling Australian novels of all time. Her beautiful follow-up, The Bookbinder of Jericho, once again dives into the world of books and knowledge against the backdrop of Oxford University Press in the war-ridden early 20th century. Lovers of her first book won’t be able to get enough of this (even better) iteration, with its rich cast of characters, luxurious storytelling and powerful sense of humanity. Irresistible.

The book you should be reading

There’s something seductive about the true-crime genre, however problematic it may be. In Rebecca Makkai’s thrilling new novel, I Have Some Questions For You, the entertainment that transpires from reckoning with another’s trauma and unearthing their secrets comes under scrutiny. Page-turning, frightening and addictive, this is a fabulous read about ethical grey areas and the battle between the debt to a story and the debt to the truth.

The non-fiction to know about About 150,000 Australians experience miscarriage each year: it’s a particular loss and grief that touches so many of our lives. But as Isabelle Oderberg points out in Hard to Bear, we’re still –as a society – terrible at talking about it and helping those who are struggling with it. Combining lived experience and systematic, considered journalistic investigation, Oderberg asks hard questions and offers meaningful insights.

The Australian book to read now Poetry is not for everyone but Australian poet Omar Sakr – who won the 2020 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Poetry with The Lost Arabs – is a powerful writer with an expansive voice. His latest collection, Non-Essential Work, will lure you in and leave a mark.

The classic to revisit Elliot Perlman’s modern Australian classic, Three Dollars, turns 25 this year and as good as it would be to say that its story about financial insecurity and the precarity of modern life in the face of economic rationalism is a snapshot of a forgotten era, it feels as relevant today as it did when it first came out.

MINE. NOT MINED.

Ethically grown in a lab, not mined from the Earth, Secrets is the sustainable alternative to mined diamonds. We’re working towards a better future, bringing you luxury that won’t cost the Earth.

CHRISTCHURCH, NEW ZEALAND

The unexpected is around every leafy corner in the South Island’s biggest city.

The thing to do Going for a punt on the Avon River (below; christchurch attractions.nz) is something that the locals actually do themselves. You’ll float down the ribbon of water on a 30-minute ride through the peaceful Botanic

Gardens and the centre of the city in a small, flat-bottomed boat poled by a guide dressed in Edwardian costume. The trips begin and end daily at the historic green-and-white-striped Antigua Boat Sheds.

The food scene Riverside Market (riverside. nz), which sits along the Avon River, is a must-see with its 30 eateries and 40 produce stalls. A local favourite here is Dimitri’s (dimitris.co.nz). Brothers Dimitri and Nick are known

for their generous souvlakis of pita bread stuffed with shaved meat (lamb, chicken, beef), salad, tzatziki and home-made tomato sauce (hummus and hot chilli are optional), all served in a paper cone. Just the thing for eating on the go.

Or stop in at Riverside Cantina (riversidecantina. info), which serves up Sour Mango Daiquiris of rum and mango nectar and chicken and peanut wontons with satay sauce or Canterbury Wagyu spring rolls. For something sweet, Gelato & Tea (gelatoandtea. co.nz) is a good bet. The gelato is made in-house and comes in flavours such as Snickers, pistachio sorbet, matcha banana and orange mandarin.

The bar scene

If you’re seeking a pint, Pomeroy’s Old Brewery Inn (pomspub.co.nz) in the city centre is the place to be. Within the red brick building with exposed wooden beams inside, you can sample the

pale lager or a local brew like Beer Baroness Brewing Company’s Lady Danger Red Ale. Pair your drink with a gourmet burger or freerange Cumberland snags. For spirits, head for The Last Word whisky and cocktail lounge (lastword. co.nz) on Spanish Missionstyle New Regent Street, in the centre of the city, where the buildings are in an array of pastel colours. The bar’s whisky tasting lets you try six local and international whiskies, including a cocktail and four Scottish single malts. Afterwards, pop across the road to Wilko (wilko.nz) and relax in the soft leather chairs by the windows with a craft beer while you watch the action on the street.

The stay

The refurbished heritage Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora (artscentre.org.nz) –close to the city centre and the 21-hectare Botanic Gardens – isn’t just for losing yourself in the creative arts. It’s also home to The Observatory Hotel (above; hotel.qantas.com.au/ observatoryhotelchristchurch), each of its 33 rooms filled with antique, locally crafted furniture. Forget neutral tones – these guestrooms celebrate colour at every turn, with sorbet, jewel and candy hues combining to whimsical effect.

One for the kids

People have travelled from Christchurch to Antarctica for decades and you can get

a taste of that experience at the International Antarctic Centre (iceberg.co.nz). Check out the enormous all-terrain Antarctic vehicles, learn about exploration of the continent, see penguins frolic and more. A must-do is the Storm Dome, a room chilled to -8°C that feels colder because of a -18°C wind chill machine.

The easy day trip

Lyttelton is a small port town 20 minutes drive south-east of Christchurch. Packed with boutique shopping, cafés and gastropubs, it’s also a great spot to swim at the tree-bordered beaches or hike the hilly trails. Try the Bridle Path – the view of the blue harbour and town below is cinematic.

It was a series of spectacular vistas some years ago that ultimately changed the course of Mike Smith’s life. “I trekked the border of Afghanistan and Tajikistan, stayed in Kurdish villages in Iraq and made it to Kamchatka, in the northeast of Russia near the Arctic Circle,” recalls the founder of eco-friendly company Zero Co (zeroco.com.au). “And sadly, I saw plastic waste everywhere.”

That’s how the idea for Smith’s business, which generates $1 million a month, was born. “I said to myself, ‘As woefully underqualified as I am, I’m going home to build a business that solves the world’s plastic waste problem.’”

His company launched on Kickstarter in 2019 and quickly became a success. It’s a simple concept: customers purchase Zero Co’s range of products (from multipurpose cleaner to shampoo and, soon, toothpaste) in recycled “forever” bottles made from plastic pulled from large-scale ocean clean-ups. After the initial sale, they’re sent refill pouches (also made from recycled ocean-sourced plastic), which are then returned via prepaid postage to be cleaned and reused.

Having just celebrated its second year in business, the outfit’s growth has been exponential, with a host of new products and expansion into major supermarkets around the country. But it’s the environmental wins that truly inspire the Byron Bay-based entrepreneur. “We’ve now removed 3.4 million water bottles’ worth of rubbish out of the oceans, beaches and rivers.”

And while the perspective from far-flung mountain tops might have started the whole process, these days it’s a view closer to home that keeps Smith’s passion for change alive. “We welcomed our first child, Tilly, this year,” he explains. “I’ve never felt more committed to pulling as much rubbish out of the natural environment as we can. For her sake and for the sake of everyone else’s kids.”

Zero Co founder Mike Smith with “forever” bottles

Mike Smith’s daughter drives his passion to rid the world of plastic and clean up our oceans.

Tangier, Morocco

A little bit Europe, a little bit Africa, a whole lot authentic Morocco. In recent years, the port city – once as famous for its decrepit seediness as its rich cultural heritage – has been reimagined as an exotic, must-visit destination (that’s still a bit rock ’n’ roll).

By Di Webster

Photography

By the time Elise Hassey reached the port of Tangier after travelling through Morocco’s more intense tourist cities, she was match fit and ready for more mayhem. But what the photographer from Yamba, NSW, found was “a beautiful seaside town” with fabulous restaurants, quaint alleyways lined with fruit stalls and heady with the scent of orange blossom, grand homes filled with magnificent antiques, humble dwellings covered in bougainvillea and crumbling paint, and hotels with views to forever.

“We would sit on the balcony in the afternoon eating plates of sardines, drinking rosé and watching the sunset,” says Hassey of her stay at the five-guestroom Hotel Nord-Pinus Tanger (nordpinustanger.com).

Hassey spent spring days “glorious with sunshine” exploring the boutiques of the rambling medina, contained within the walls of a 15th-century Portuguese fortress. “I bought beautiful indigo mudcloth and cushions from Africa, along with some Tangier pots,” she says. “The shopping is incredible.”

by Elise Hassey

Hotel Nord-Pinus Tanger

Fresh fruit for sale on Rue de la Kasbah (above); the city’s old town or medina (opposite)

(Clockwise from left) One of the medina’s labyrinth of colourful alleyways; the old city from the Marshan Quarter; a local fruit stall

Fashion’s quiet achiever

Australian label Anna Thomas celebrates reaching 20 years in the face of adversity.

With a love story at its heart and exquisite tailoring its calling card, Anna Thomas has been part of Australia’s fashion landscape for two decades. Today, the label can be found in the wardrobes of high-profile customers including Gladys Berejiklian and Annabel Crabb, as well as modern professional women. Despite the loss of designer and namesake Anna Thomas in 2020, the brand has prevailed under the leadership of Anna’s husband, David Barrington , the label’s managing director.

What was the catalyst for creating the Anna Thomas label?

“Anna and I met while working for Country Road. She then moved to Italy to work for Max Mara and while I was living in New York, I visited her. She whisked me down to the coast of Tuscany; that was the moment we fell in love. Anna had first articulated her vision for a brand in 1999 and after experiencing Italy together, we decided to come back to Australia to start the label in 2003.”

Did you question going on without Anna?

“We all have moments of self-doubt, but you just have to accept that they pass. Anna had a terminal diagnosis in 2017. We were told she had three to five years but she told me at the time, ‘I’ve only ever wanted to be a designer – I just want to keep designing.’ So that’s what she kept doing.”

You’ve weathered many storms in 20 years of business. What have you learnt?

“I had a great boss once who had a really simple mantra: do what’s right by the customer and the dollars take care of themselves.”

What sets the Anna Thomas garment apart?

“When Anna was working in Italy, she was able to experience the best fabric mills, tailoring, colour and prints and combine them in her own label. We draw inspiration from our mills – family businesses with hundreds of years of heritage. We might look at 4000 fabrics to arrive at 100 for a season. There’s an emphasis on fit, style and quality and we embrace longevity and sustainability. I’m never surprised to see someone in a current-season blouse with a skirt from 10 years ago.”

What’s next for Anna Thomas?

“We want to develop a more comprehensive accessory collection, cross over into luxe activewear and expand our special occasion range. We envision 20 stores across the country, in every capital city, while also reaching New Zealand and Singapore. The ethos is to grow with integrity and sincerity.”

Presented by Anna Thomas

Anna Thomas

Muni in Willunga, McLaren Vale, South Australia

SUPER BOWL

STORY BY ALEXANDRA CARLTON

If you want to fire up a southern Vietnamese auntie, ask her whether she’s a fan of the pho that’s made at the other end of her home country. “Bland. Just beef floating in water. They don’t put much bone in there and cook quicker,” says Lynda Tran of the subtle, clear pho that’s usually served in the north of Vietnam. Tran knows her stuff, having opened one of the first Vietnamese takeaway restaurants on Marrickville Road in the mid-1990s, after moving to Sydney in the ’80s. She pauses before adding diplomatically, “It’s not for me but it’s for someone.”

Today, Tran helps her son, Cuong Nguyen, run the busy and friendly Hello Auntie (hello-auntie.com.au), one of dozens of Vietnamese restaurants in Marrickville, the inner-west Sydney suburb that’s home to a precinct the local council recently branded “Little Vietnam”. Nguyen’s pho is anything but bland, nor is it traditional. He boils the beef bones for his stock for 24 hours but

unlike most recipes – whether from the north or the south – he doesn’t use a method known as “washing the bones”, where most of the marrow and blood is skimmed away after the first boil. This means Hello Auntie pho has a richer, darker, beefier broth than purists might recognise. Nguyen also uses sweet basil rather than Thai basil as a garnish, though the spice mix, made to his mum’s secret recipe – which she refuses to share with her son or anyone else – is the same one she used way back in the ’90s.

In other words there’s pho and then there’s pho. And it can be traditional, inventive, regional or even vary within families.

“I think it’s the same as with any culture or cuisine,” says Nguyen, who will be opening a new venture, Hey Chu (heychu.com.au), in the CBD (Hello Auntie 2.0 is down the road in Darling Square). “You need to respect tradition to a degree but you also need to have progression and creativity.”

Found everywhere from Marrickville to Mansfield Park, pho, the fragrant Vietnamese noodle soup, might be as Australian as the meat pie.

Pho dac biet with Angus beef, meatballs, brisket, beef broth, rice noodles, shallots and coriander at Hello Auntie in Marrickville, Sydney

Single-origin steaks

This family-run Sydney butchery is bringing its own brand of beef to the table.

Picking up a few sausages for the barbecue rarely requires specialist clothing. But at the Australian Meat Emporium, in Sydney’s Alexandria, donning one of the store’s signature orange puffer jackets before entering is all part of the experience.

The butchery is a go-to destination for chefs, home cooks and meat-lovers alike. On the 800-square-metre coolroom floor you can expect to find marbled Wagyu, dry-aged beef and wild game that can be cut to your liking by the on-site butchers, free of charge.

The store is owned by the Greenhalgh family, who have been involved in the meat industry for three generations. The Australian Meat Emporium – helmed by dad Graham Greenhalgh and run by daughter Harriette GreenhalghWard and her husband, Rob – was purchased by the family in 2019. While Harriette is busy in-store, Graham oversees the management of his 2500 Angus cattle on the 3200-hectare family farm at the foothills of the Snowy Mountains. “Beef is our number-one protein category, “ says Harriette. “With a wide range of beef grades instore – including Angus grassfed from our own farm – and Wagyu, it’s what really drags our customers in.”

The herd supplies the family’s Our Farm brand, which focuses on nose-to-tail production and is available exclusively from Australian Meat Emporium. “Launching the Our Farm range direct from the family property a couple of years ago was a proud moment of ours.”

The Greenhalghs are committed to producing high-quality beef in a respectful, waste-free way. Their single-origin grass-fed cattle are free of hormones and antibiotics and the herds are raised a little longer for perfect marbling.

“Good food takes time. We work hard to produce our Angus herd so it’s important we use as much of the carcass as possible. It’s satisfying watching our customers embrace this sustainable aspect of butchery.”

And the Our Farm brand is not the only thing that draws people to the store. Many come for the premium selection of Wagyu, from marble score 5+ through to 9+ and some imported Japanese Wagyu 12+ cuts. They’ll also find everyday meats such as lamb and rosemary sausages, less common Brazilian cuts, offal and game, plus sauces, fresh produce and pantry items.

For the Greenhalghs, watching people enjoy themselves is as important as providing beautiful meat. “Our customers have made

the effort to get to our destination store so we want to make it unique. Everything matters to us and our ultimate goal is to give the customer a great experience.”

Learn more at meatemporium.com.au

Or on Instagram @ausmeatemporium

29-31 O’Riordan St, Alexandria NSW

Presented by Australian Meat Emporium

The Greenhalghs’ cattle farm

Pho’s origins in Vietnam are somewhat murky but what’s certain is that it was first made in the north (so the “beef floating in water” thing is a feature, not a bug) around the early 20th century. It’s likely a mash-up of at least a couple of colonising cultures: Chinese rice noodles and French pot-au-feu (hence the name).

The dish arrived in Australia with refugees from Vietnam in the 1970s. Vietnamese communities (or Viêt Kiêu) settled all over Australia – in Bankstown, Cabramatta and, later, Marrickville in Sydney and Footscray, St Albans and other western suburbs in Melbourne – though initially pho was only served at home or between families. Recollections vary but arguably Sydney’s first Vietnamese restaurant, Pho Tau Bay, opened in 1980 (it’s still there, at Shop 12, 117 John Street, Cabramatta – and it’s still great). It wasn’t until the 1990s that non-Vietnamese Australians, at least in the capital cities, could name a favourite pho spot.

Generally pho falls into two camps: pho bo – beef stock with beef – and pho ga – fragrant chicken soup with chicken meat. It usually contains medium-thickness rice noodles, which can be fresh or dried, and spices, including cassia or cinnamon, cloves, fennel seeds, coriander seeds and star anise, as well as fresh ginger and onion. Southern-style pho tends to be richer, saltier, sweeter and garnished with bean sprouts, fresh chilli and basil, plus hoisin and chilli sauces, while the northern style has a more subtle clear broth and is lighter on the herbs. Traditional pho has offal, though most “Australianised” versions leave this out. “Even younger Vietnamese Australians ask for it without,” says Nguyen, laughing.

But there’s one thing that every good pho is, according to Jerry Mai – a big bowl of comfort. “When you’re hungover it’s an elixir that fixes you,” says the chef from restaurants Pho Nom (phonom. com.au) and Bia Hoi Vietnamese Beer Hall (biahoibar.com.au) in Melbourne and the author of the cookbook Vietnam: Morning to Midnight. “If you’re starving and have to go somewhere quickly it fills you up and moves you along. If you’re not feeling well it’s the penicillin of food. It’s the hug you didn’t realise you needed.”

Adelaide

Where to find Australia’s best pho

Pho Minh

This tiny but always packed café in the city’s north-west (Shop 7, 86 Wilson Street, Mansfield Park; 08 8244 6288) serves a rich, aniseed-heavy beef broth topped with pickled onion. You can choose rare beef only or add tripe, beef balls, tendon and oxtail.

Melbourne

Pho Hung Vuong 2

When she’s not eating at her own restaurants, chef Jerry Mai

heads to this Richmond eatery (108 Victoria Street; 03 9428 8680) for a pho fix. The pho ga (chicken pho) gets particularly good reviews and can be ordered with liver and giblets if that’s what you’re into.

Pho Thin

This chain originated in Hanoi in 1979 and opened its first Melbourne outpost at Shop 3, 399 Lonsdale Street (03 9193 8668), 40 years later. As its city of origin suggests, this is northern-style pho bac,

which means a clear-ish beef broth, garnished with nothing more than spring onion and coriander (though there are also add-on condiments such as house-made chilli sauce). An extra, unusual touch are the fried dough dippers for dunking in the delicious soup.

Pho Chu The

A Footscray mainstay (92 Hopkins Street; 03 9687 8265), where the beef broth is on the darker side with just the right amount of fattiness and flavour, and the

Pho Thin restaurant on Lonsdale Street in Melbourne’s CBD

portions are huge. There’s a good reason you’ll usually have to queue – happily, it moves fast.

Perth Trang’s Café & Noodle House

There’s a choice of eight different types of pho at this tiny, nondescript Vietnamese café tucked inside a strip mall in Perth’s northern suburbs (Shop 11, 70 Marangaroo Drive, Girrawheen; 08 9247 3880). The raw beef and beef ball version is the crowd favourite, with the thin-sliced meat getting a light cook as it hits the hot broth.

Thanh Dat Vietnamese Noodle House

The twist here is the signature dish: a pho made with beef short rib, bone and all (thanh datperth.com.au). Pick the bone up, caveman-style, and the gelatinous meat will fall into the marrow-rich broth. For a local touch, there’s also a Margaret River Wagyu pho.

Sydney Huong Giang

Good luck narrowing down the best pho in Marrickville; it’s hard to find a bad one. Huong Giang (287 Marrickville Road; 02 9569

3698) deserves a special mention because it’s one of the few in the suburb that retains the oldschool vibe, décor – including a traditional altar near the cash register – and service. Plus, it’s owned by one of the loveliest Vietnamese couples in the neighbourhood.

Pho 54

You might need to join the queue to nab a table at this Cabramatta bastion (another contender for Sydney’s first) but that’s how you know you’re in for a treat (Shop 2, 54 Park Road; 02 9726 1992). There’s

nothing fancy about this soup but it includes everything good. And the eatery’s open from 8am so it’s ideal if you have a hankering for breakfast pho.

Brisbane Tan Thanh

The south-western suburb of Inala is the heart of Brisbane’s Vietnamese community and this restaurant is always busy (Shop 16, 57 Corsair Avenue; 07 3278 8883). There are eight kinds of pho on offer, including pho tai, made with rare beef, that sticks pretty close to the home-country original.

Owners Thi Hong Nguyen (left) and Quoc Hung Ninh at their restaurant, Huong Giang, in Marrickville, Sydney (above, left); chicken pho with liver and giblets at Pho Hung Vuong 2 in Richmond, Melbourne (above, right)

ANCHOA WITH SMOKED TOMATO SORBET AT MOVIDA

Even anchovy sceptics succumb to the magic of this Melbourne mainstay’s signature snack.

Arguably MoVida’s greatest asset, this dish began with a mistake. “We used to get smoked tomatoes from [cold-smoker] Tom Cooper,” says MoVida’s founder, Frank Camorra (movida.com.au). “One day I stuffed up and ordered too much. I had this excess of smoked tomatoes and thought, ‘What am I going to do with it all?’ So I made smoked tomato sorbet.”

The sorbet sat in the freezer and confounded Camorra until a lightbulb went off: “Anchovies. Bread. Tomatoes. That’s a classic trio of flavours you find all over the Mediterranean – France, Greece, Italy, Spain. But instead of using raw tomato or grated tomato, I thought the texture and chill of the sorbet could give it that MoVida twist.”

He played around and a star was born. The MoVida Anchoa is a piece of crisp white bread topped with a lightly salted, oil-rich Cantabrian anchovy and a scoop of smooth, subtly sweet smoked tomato sorbet. “A lot of our best dishes have happened that way,” says Camorra. “You have a problem to solve and you find a way to make it work.”

And this is one dish that works hard. It first hit the menu shortly after the original MoVida opened in Melbourne’s CBD in 2002, where it still sits centrestage, and is now served at the smaller MoVida Next Door on Flinders Street and MoVida Aqui on Bourke Street. The fat, oil-rich Emilia brand anchovy is imported from Spain. “Each can holds about 80 anchovies

and we easily go through one can a day at each of the restaurants.”

Some diners make a dent in the supply in a single meal: one online reviewer describes how she orders two of the dish as a starter, two after her main and another two after dessert. “Every now and then we get someone who’ll order over a dozen,” says Camorra, adding that the dish even has the power to overturn the humble anchovy’s divisive reputation. “We often get people saying, ‘No, no, I don’t like anchovies’ but we encourage them to try it. We say if they don’t like it, they don’t have to pay for it.”

In fact, he says, one recent anchovyphobe ended up ordering eight more serves after one bite. Not bad for a mistake.

STORY BY LARISSA DUBECKI

NEWCASTLE, NSW

Best Korean CorEat

Cultures merge at this East End newcomer, where chef Sunny Chae combines modern Australian influences with his Korean heritage. Dishes such as cheesy Wagyu cutlet with pineapple kimchi salsa or Hunter Valley mushroom and tofu with soy kombu sauce coax maximum flavour from the fusion, while yuzu gives Eton mess a citrus kick. The elegant dining room and a local wine list makes it worthy of a celebration.

35 Hunter Street, Newcastle; (02) 8376 2329

Best Japanese Susuru

Get your fix of noodles and dumplings, Japanese-style, at this yellow-hued canteen in the thick of the CBD. The menu dives deep into comfort food with a ramen list of pork, chicken or vegan broth customised with the likes of fried chicken curry, pepper shiitake or spicy miso butter. Gyoza swing from classic pork to Wagyu with cheese and all the way to dessert, with an apple pie filling topped with miso caramel sauce.

140 King Street, Newcastle; (02) 4049 8448; susuru.com.au

Best Mexican Antojitos

The Californian sun shines on Steel City, thanks to expat Eric Flores and the buzzing taqueria he co-owns. Splashed with stencil art, the rugged warehouse space and its indoor Kombi van reflect a street-food menu that riffs on the greatest hits of Cal-Mex fare, from fried fish tacos to pulled pork burritos and loaded nachos. And while the mood is fun and fast, Flores’s exacting slow-food standards mean corn tortillas and salsas are made fresh each day.

11 Steel Street, Newcastle West; (02) 4925 3768; antojitos.com.au

Best brunch

Estabar

A wholefood haven opposite Newcastle Beach, Estabar’s mod-café menu celebrates regional producers. That could mean ethical eggs served with macadamia and miso pesto or local halloumi with pickled beetroot, hummus and tomato chutney in a veggie toastie. A seasonal creed also guides the freshly churned gelato: try blood plum or fennel and dark chocolate chip.

61 Shortland Esplanade, Newcastle; 0447 300 896; estabar.com

Best casual lunch

Merewether Surfhouse

Eyeballing Merewether Beach (just south of Newcastle CBD) from its front-row position, this glass and steel pavilion rocks a lively atmosphere from morning coffee at the kiosk to late-night cocktails in the bar. For a lazy lunch, there’s no beating top-floor Surfhouse Italian, where the Med-style menu meets golden-sand views.

5 Henderson Parade, Merewether; (02) 4918 0000; surfhouse.com.au

Best coffee

Good Brother Espresso Shop

Newcastle has started its day at this welcoming café for the past 12 years, thanks to brews to suit every taste and bags of beans to grab and go. Take a seat for a toastie – classic ham and smoked cheddar with housemade relish – or check the specials board for plant-based treats.

40 King Street, Newcastle; (02) 4023 3158

Best brewpub

Modus Merewether

An industrial-cool brewhouse with a rotation of 36 beers on tap (including the zero-proof Nort plus limited-edition pours), Modus also offers wine, cocktails and elevated pub grub

– think spicy Margaritas, burgers and tacos. Those keen to go deeper can take a brewery tour that ends with a tasting paddle.

20 Merewether Street, Merewether; (02) 4011 5850; mobrewing.com.au

Best deli Arno

Opened in 2022 by a chef with an Italian obsession, this Euro-classic deli is the perfect spot for a lunchtime porchetta panini or a grazing platter with a glass of sangiovese. The location, close to Newcastle Beach and the Hunter River foreshore, also makes it the ideal pre-picnic pitstop.

181 King Street, Newcastle; (02) 4926 1698; arnodeli.com.au

Best yum cha Ginger Meg’s

At this warehouse lurking down an inner-city laneway, a glowing industrial staircase proves irresistible Instagram bait. A vast cocktail bar and dining room are the mood-lit stage for pan-Asian eats and cocktails but for lunch on the weekend, head here for a parade of steamer baskets filled with fat har gow, pillowy fried chicken bao and crisp spring rolls.

212 King Street, Newcastle; (02) 4069 1888; gingermegsx.com.au

Best fancy dinner Flotilla

This chic restaurant on the CBD’s western fringe has a magazine-worthy fit-out that includes leather booths and polished concrete floors. Head chef Jake Deluca’s mod-Oz set menu is just as appealing, while the minimal-intervention wine list brims with easy-drinking drops.

9 Albert Street, Wickham; (02) 4965 3885; theflotilla.com.au

While the sun and surf are a given, it’s the diverse and sophisticated dining scene making waves in this vibrant coastal city.

Ginger Meg’s

McLAREN VALE, SOUTH AUSTRALIA

Want to eat at a restaurant with your feet in the sand, find the best breakfast of your life and drink wine at almost every stop? Follow chef Karena Armstrong’s lead.

“When I started, I had a chef’s view of this restaurant – it was all about the food,” says Karena Armstrong, head chef and co-owner of the acclaimed Salopian Inn (salopian.com.au) in South Australia’s McLaren Vale. “But as the restaurant’s grown, I’ve grown with it. Now, we’re very much focused on experience in hospitality; everyone who walks through that door is a rock star. And that’s what I like when I travel. You carry those memories with you.” What hasn’t changed? Salopian’s status as one of the country’s leading regional restaurants for its emphasis on “eclectic food and wine”, as Armstrong describes it. And some of its most popular dishes have stayed the same, too. “The dumplings and pork buns are always there,” she says, laughing. When Armstrong, who is also co-director of the Tasting Australia food festival (28 April to 7 May; tastingaustralia.com.au), isn’t serving them up, this is where she’s getting her fill.

Ben Macmahon, Sam Pearce

STORY BY JESSICA IRVINE

Muni

For Taiwaneseinspired bites

“This natural wine bar and restaurant (munirestaurant.com) in Willunga is run by two Taiwanese chefs [Mug Chen and Chia Wu] and it’s just magnificent. They do a beautiful steamed spring onion bun and the squid dish, with a housemade squid garum sauce, is exceptional.”

Little Wolf at Mitolo Winery

For the steak

“Little Wolf (mitolowines.com.au) serves simple Italian food, matched to the wine. You know when you go to a winery and the food doesn’t match the wine? Here, it’s really integrated. I wouldn’t normally eat a big steak but chef Vincenzo [La Montagna] does an amazing bistecca, a Florentine-style steak. You do have to book and it is a set menu but it doesn’t feel formal. It’s ultra-modern and set in the middle of beautiful bushland.”

Silver Sands Beach Club

For the wine list

“Silver Sands (silversandsbeach club.com.au) is a very casual restaurant with one of the best wine lists you’ll come across. The food is delicious – I’ve had everything from a burger to prawn rolls – and you can pair it with a Benjamin Leroux wine. It’s that real juxtaposition that I enjoy. Plus, you’ve got your feet in the sand because it’s right on Aldinga Beach.”

Willunga Farmers Market For

breakfast

“There’s a business called Little Acre Foods that’s here every Saturday morning (willungafarmersmarket.com.au). They produce ethical charcuterie – you can buy pâtes and terrines and chorizo – but they also do a cooked breakfast and it is so good. It’s like a Spanish bocadillo, a crusty roll, and it’s filled with something different every week. They might use their chorizo or

smoked brisket and it’s the best breakfast you’ll ever have.”

Dawn Patrol

For coffee

“Dawn Patrol (dawnpatrolcoffee. com.au) has just set up a little cellar door down the road from us. They’re coffee roasters so there’s real attention to detail. It’s a cool spot but if you drove past you would think it was just a viticultural shed.”

Bodega Wine Bar

For a late-night drink

“This place (bodegawinebar.au) opened late last year on Main Road. The other night I went and had some snacks and a bottle of albariño. They’re not trying to compete with the cellar doors during the day; it’s a place where you can have a late-night cocktail. It’s good for our region that people can come, have dinner with me or with Vince up at Mitolo but then they have somewhere to go afterwards.”

(Clockwise from left) Little Acre Foods stall at Willunga Farmers Market; Little Wolf at Mitolo Winery; Muni’s genmaicha toffee choux au craquelin; McLaren Vale grapevines; chef Karena Armstrong

STORY BY PETER BOURNE PHOTOGRAPHY BY CRAIG WALL

CABERNET FRANC

Cabernet sauvignon is familiar but what is franc? Consider cabernet franc the parent of cabernet sauvignon (with sauvignon blanc its co-parent). The franc is a lighterframed and less tannic drop than its more structured offspring. Does cab franc come from Bordeaux, too? With origins in southwest France, it flies solo in the Loire (in wines from areas such as Chinon and Bourgueil) but is usually blended in Bordeaux. Cab franc partners with merlot in Saint-Émilion, where the region’s premier drop, Château Cheval Blanc, sells for thousands of dollars. Sounds serious. It can be but cab franc also makes a delicious nouveau-style red. Look for Airlie Bank, Murdoch Hill, The Other Wine Co. and Penley Estate, which are all made in the Loire style and deserve a light chill. A more potent version is Philip Shaw’s Jade Moon. What does it taste like? Svelte and elegant, with flavours more in the red fruit spectrum. Expect enticing, almost pinotlike perfumes with aromas of violet, raspberry and pink peppercorn. Franc’s tannins are mild-mannered, with a zing of acidity. Where does it grow locally? Coonawarra and Margaret River, plus cooler sites such as the Yarra Valley, Adelaide Hills and Orange. What food works best with it? Mushroom risotto or spaghetti Bolognese. Game in all its forms, lamb or a roast loin of pork but beef needs cab sav. How much does it cost? About $25 to $50 but super-structured The Islander Estate 2015 The Investigator hits $150 a bottle.

Frankland Estate Cabernet Franc

Cab franc dominates Olmo’s Reward, Frankland Estate’s hero Bordeaux blend. Here, the cab franc goes it alone with precision. Intense cranberry and mulberry, while brazen dark berry fruits and grainy tannins power the finish.

Frankland River, WA / 2022 / $38

The Lane Provenance Cabernet Franc

The Edwards family planted The Lane in 1993, with the Vestey Group taking over in 2012. From a cool year, the 2021 has perfumes of boysenberry, ripe plum and aniseed. Slinky tannins and savoury spices add their voice.

Adelaide Hills, SA / 2021 / $45

Ross Hill Pinnacle Series Cabernet Franc

Violet leads the way with cranberry, cedarwood and wild thyme. The palate is mid-weight but highly flavoursome with more red fruits, star anise and coffee grounds. A gentle kick of tannin seals the deal.

Orange, NSW / 2021 / $50

Hickinbotham The Nest Cabernet Franc

Though cabernet franc was only planted in 2013 at Hickinbotham Vineyard, this is an amazing red with elegance the key but not at the expense of flavour. There’s redcurrant and boysenberry with hints of cool bracken fern.

McLaren Vale, SA / 2020 / $80

Try this of-the-moment red that’s related to cab sav and savvy b.

Qantas magazine and Travel Insider are proud to support Australia’s Wine List of the Year Awards, the most prestigious awards program for wine and beverage lists.

Vote for your favourite wine list and you’ll go in the draw to win a magnum of Champagne Bollinger Special Cuvée and a magnum of Henschke Keyneton Euphonium.

To nominate a restaurant for the Australia’s Choice Award, go to qantas.com/wineawards.

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The beat goes on at the reimagined Hotel Chelsea in New York

The lobby at The Hotel Chelsea in Manhattan

The runway and a Sky Pod at White Desert’s Echo camp on Queen Maud Land, Antarctica

place you would never think to go glamping.

“Stand proud and walk confidently!” shouts Philippe, one of three mountain guides waiting nearby as I crawl around a narrow ledge of rock as rough as sandpaper, with solid ice just metres below.

The wind is so loud it’s a roar. Feeling faint, I step off the ledge.

“It’s the unknown we’re afraid of,” says Philippe later, after I’m lowered safely on a light-blue rope that’s attached to my snug harness. My measured descent of Snowbird Mountain – more than 71 degrees south latitude – is only one of the thrills on my expedition to Antarctica with White Desert (white-desert.com).

The South Africa-based outfit flies to remote (even by Antarctic standards) Queen Maud Land in an Airbus A340 or Gulfstream 550 but only takes up to 24 adventurers at a time – the rest of the space on the plane is filled by scientists, cargo and fuel. With an ethos of “leave no trace” and having been net zero carbon for several years, as co-founder Patrick Woodhead tells me on the 5.5-hour flight south, White Desert runs three camps where guests can stay for a day, a week or longer during the Antarctic summer.

“Antarctica is a very empowering place to be,” says Woodhead, explaining that while thousands of people visit every year,

“about 99 per cent” take a cruise. Only a few make the trip to the interior where his company has its camps. “It’s also scary. But mainly beautiful.”

I quickly realise how right he is while staying at Echo, its newest luxury camp, for seven days. The outpost features six heated, igloo-like, solar-powered pods (in summer it’s light here almost 24 hours a day), with king-sized beds, plenty of warm blankets and huge, curved windows that frame snowy expanses and frozen lakes, which stretch for dozens of kilometres into the distance until hitting dark mountains so jagged they look like dragon’s teeth.

Perhaps a sister of the White Witch of Narnia – who also covered her realm in eternal ice and snow – lives in those mountains, I think. The entrance to her lair is no doubt the nunatak (the top of a mountain sticking out of an ice field or glacier) named “Cheesegrater” by the team; I explore it on the first full day of my trip. It certainly looks like it belongs in a fantasy story, as well as being intimidating. Sunlight has heated the pockmarked rock (hence the name) and melted all of the surrounding snow,

You expect ice and adventure on an expedition to Antarctica. But five-star food? That’s just one of the surprises in store for Ben Mack .

creating a large “scoop” of towering ice cliffs so high that the sun is blocked out when I stand at its base.

South polar skua seabirds occasionally fly overhead and one of the guides tells us they have nests nearby. There’s no sign of a witch; perhaps the unpredictable wind, which can suddenly become a shiver-inducing gale then just as suddenly stop, has convinced her to stay indoors.

But maybe she’s enjoying the same food as we are at Echo. Chefs Jenna and Sarah whip up breakfast, lunch and dinner using ingredients brought on the same plane I arrived on, while others come from an ice cave they use to store food outside the spacious, well-lit kitchen. “There’s a whole lot of maths involved,” explains Jenna about balancing sustainability with making sure the guests have enough to eat. “We also only use quality ingredients – we take no shortcuts.”

It shows. I’m amazed that despite being in such a remote place, the buffet breakfasts are like those at a five-star hotel. Jenna and Sarah even cook omelettes made to order – I try one and it’s among the best I’ve ever eaten, the gooey cheese melted perfectly. For lunch I tuck into roast beef and aubergine wraps with Greek pesto, while dinner is chicken wrapped in bacon with gorgonzola salad and potatoes. Early evening canapés include salmon and caviar and a seemingly endless supply of Laurent-

Perrier champagne or a Cape Town-brewed beer appropriately named “Shackleton” in honour of the explorer.

Delicious as the food is, much of what’s not eaten is reused. It’s only the tip of the sustainability iceberg. I shower in hot water that’s sourced from melted snow – and look out to the cinematic landscape while doing so. I’m told by staff that all waste, including from the toilets, is returned to Cape Town.

White Desert’s guests usually arrive and depart at the same time but it’s not a guided tour. Doing your own thing is completely fine. Daily adventures include hiking, riding orange “fatbikes” fitted with special studded tyres across the icy terrain or crosscountry skiing. But a guide will almost always accompany visitors when they leave camp.

I’m glad to have a guide with me one afternoon when I come upon a crevasse. It’s only a metre or so across but looking down into it, the whites and blues of the ice give way to impenetrable blackness. I would not be getting out of it if I fell in, which is why I call out “HELP!” when I feel myself slipping in. A guide, Frederic, pulls me to safety in the blink of an eye – good thing I’m wearing a harness for him to yank.

“Antarctica attracts adventurers from all over the globe,” says Woodhead, a polar explorer himself, and it shows in our group. Among my cohort are Alex and Mina, a father and uni-student

Echo camp (opposite) and inside its library pod (above)

daughter from California using the trip as a bonding opportunity. Liz is from London and works in PR. She tells all of us during a dinner that includes duck with honey and Dijon mustard sauce that she once kissed David Beckham.

“Being in Antarctica’s a dream I’ve had since I was a child,” says Alex, adding that he’s been chatting with White Desert for five years to make his dream a reality. “It really has that sense of being off-world.” Mina tells me she plans on making a video game based on the surreal experience.

The surrealness cannot be overstated. One day we climb to the top of Cheesegrater to find the rock and sand flecked with nuggets of quartz, mica and feldspar. There’s so much that it sparkles like an enormous jewel left behind by a giant.

If the giant dropped their jewel, they also spilled a lot of sugar – the snow looks just like the sweet stuff when it twinkles in the sun. My imagination runs riot but another guest, named Sarah, who runs a high-end travel agency, is more pragmatic: “There’s an intensity of the moment that forces you to be present.”

Like any explorer, my skills are tested. On one occasion, I’m tied with another guest to a guide so we don’t get separated or fall and we scramble up rocky terrain to summit a nunatak called Shark Fin. On another, I use ice axes and crampons to scale walls of ice, which leaves my arms sore but I chat excitedly with my fellow guests and staff for the rest of the trip about

how exciting and unique it was. The activities are so numerous that it’s difficult to process one before I’m kitting up for the next.

Speaking of kit: I find I’m dressed more than adequately –I even sweat climbing Cheesegrater. Most of my gear, such as thermal pants and tops, down jackets and hiking boots that crampons can be attached to, I had to bring myself, using a list of recommended items White Desert sent me before the trip. Other pieces of equipment, like a polar jacket, ultra-thick Baffin boots that keep your feet warm when standing still and a helmet (required for many activities in case of slipping on the ice or falling rocks) has been lent to me by the company.

I may be in Antarctica but it’s not as cold as I had imagined. Most days it’s only a few degrees below 0°C, though the wind –stronger near the tops of nunataks – can make it feel colder.

The activities are all incredible but it’s the unplanned moments that really make for a memorable adventure. An impromptu game of table tennis with the guides, using the dining table, lasts late into one evening. Helping chefs Jenna and Sarah in the kitchen and learning how the camp operates is as fun as it is rewarding.

Being in such a rarely visited part of an already rarely visited continent is supposed to be once-in-a-lifetime. But on the flight back to Cape Town, I’m plotting how to get a job in the Echo kitchen so I can go back.

Ben Mack

(Clockwise from above) Rock climbing; a cave near the summit of Shark Fin nunatak; an icy crevasse near Wolf’s Fang

holiday where everyone feels like a kid again.

A lioness, scarred but strong, pads towards me until she is just a metre from the open truck I’m sitting in. There’s nothing but air between us. She stops and looks directly at me, her eyes like molten lava. My heart isn’t thumping, as you might expect. Instead, I’m absolutely frozen with fear.

Our tracker, Laz, laughs gently at my paralysis. “Don’t be scared,” he says. “You won’t die in Africa.”

He’s right, of course. I’ve returned to this continent for the first time in 15 years with my family and, as we fly in, I feel overcome once again by the colours below. Rusty veins slice through emerald swatches. Blinding white clouds – the kind of white that paint-makers dream of achieving – create colossal shadows that look like rivers.

On the ground, the landscape buzzes with life. We watch the lioness’s pride of 10 prepare for nightfall, waking from their slumber and grooming themselves for the long night ahead. Then, just like the willis in Giselle, they arise en masse and move in unison across the plain towards us, a great, hulking triangle.

We‘re in South Africa at a private game reserve in the south-western section of the Greater Kruger National Park. Before this trip, my knowledge of game reserves was limited. I imagined them as small, fenced-in areas that offered an inferior experience to the vast plains of the Serengeti. How wrong I was. The reserve owned by Sabi Sabi (sabisabi.com), which operates four luxury lodges here, is 6500 hectares. To walk its circumference would take nine hours. And because it’s open to the vast Kruger National Park, the animals are able to come and go. “You can drive for hours and not see anything,” says our guide, Jason. “But for me, the most exciting

This South African getaway offers every thrill of safari – and the chance to share it with family, writes Kirsten Galliott .

thing is that you never know what’s around the next corner.”

In our four days here, we see animals my daughters – aged 15 and 11 – have only dreamed of. The Big Five, so-called because they’re the most dangerous to hunt on foot: lion, elephant, buffalo, rhino, leopard. The elusive cheetah (an estimated population of 300 in the Kruger) and a pack of wild dogs (only 250 in South Africa). Gorgeous, yawning hippos. A giraffe so close we see her elongated neck quiver as she swallows. And what Jason and Laz introduce as the “ugly five” – wildebeest, warthog, vulture, hyena and marabou stork. “We call the storks undertakers,” quips Jason, “because they hang around kills and eat anything.”

Each day, we venture out at sunrise and sunset, happily adjusting to the cadence

of safari, eat, rest, repeat. Time slows and we tune into the orchestra of sounds around us, from the laboured breathing of the rhino to the melodic trill of the woodland kingfisher. It’s just as author Gary Eberle once described it: “The clock does not stop, of course, but we do not hear it ticking.”

seven suites), while Earth Lodge nods to the future with a modern minimalist design and an eco-tourism focus. Bush Lodge and its sibling, Little Bush Camp, are contemporary and sumptuous. Our two-bedroom villa – one of 25 types of accommodation on the reserve – has a separate living area, a private pool and a bathroom that features two “couples bathtubs” and an outdoor shower.

During the day, guests have the option of visiting the on-site spa, lazing next to one of the two pools or taking an excursion, whether it’s a walking safari or community tour. Sabi Sabi not only employs locals from the surrounding villages but also supports a digital learning centre, an orphanage and special projects, such as three new water towers. “The money that guests pay to go into the village goes directly back into the community and the projects we’re working on,” says Clerence, the lodge’s community liaison officer.

I have journeyed to Tanzania before but never South Africa and am surprised by the easy access – for us, a direct flight to Johannesburg then a short flight to the resort’s airstrip. While a lot of people like to visit in winter – less foliage means more opportunities for animal spotting – we’re here in the wet season, which brings birds and flowers (and we’re overwhelmed by the range of animals we see).

Home base is the ultra-luxurious Bush Lodge, the largest of Sabi Sabi’s four camps and the most suitable for families, with an EleFun Centre that offers junior ranger programs. Each of the lodges has been designed to echo the past, the present and the future. Selati Camp has a romantic Out of Africa feel (and only

Going on a safari is a bucket-list experience and it has the price tag to match. But once you get to Sabi Sabi, all meals and drinks – under the stars, by candlelight – are included. And the safari feels much more intimate. Yes, the guides are on the radio to each other all the time to share information about where the animals are but there are only ever two or three Land Rovers at one spot. We have a private vehicle – where possible, the lodge tries to keep family groups separate – and Laz and Jason accompany us on every outing.

There are rules. Walking alone in the camp after dark is a no-no. “You need to be escorted by your ranger,” says lodge manager Lauren, who tells us a leopard was spotted drinking out of our private pool a few weeks earlier. “But don’t worry. We haven’t lost anyone in 42 years.”

Dirk Bischoff. Mike Palmer

Futurefocused careers

The next chapter in the Snowy Scheme is creating jobs and upskilling Australian workers to provide renewable energy for generations to come.

The Snowy 2.0 project – located in the stunning Snowy Mountains of NSW – is the largest committed renewable energy project in Australia. Linking the Tantangara and Talbingo reservoirs, it is expected to generate enough electricity to power three million homes over the course of a week and provide 4000 direct jobs over the life of the project.

Daniel McGowan started working on Snowy 2.0 in 2020 and now supervises a team of 70 at the Tantangara water treatment plant. He gives us a glimpse into his role with the project’s principal contractor Future Generation Joint Venture (FGJV) and how it’s advanced his career.

What made you want to work on Snowy 2.0?

When I first heard about Snowy 2.0 I was pretty excited. I remember saying to my partner, “I’ve got to get on this job – it’s renewable energy and it’s the way of the future.” I was the first boilermaker on the project.

How has your career progressed since you joined the project?

After working as a boilermaker in the dewatering team, I was promoted to leading hand at Lobs Hole and, last March, I was asked if I’d like to take on the role of supervisor up at Tantangara. It was one of my goals and it was a pretty quick transition thanks to the training program here at FGJV. Our people are giving their best and they’re here away from their families for 14 days at a time so it’s important to invest in them. It’s my goal to lead a happy team who are giving 110 per cent and really enjoying working here.

You work 14 days on, seven days off. What’s camp life like?

You have your own room, with an ensuite, desk, TV with Netflix and Stan, and there are basketball courts, cricket nets and a big gym, which is really popular. From my site office I look out on Tantangara reservoir and it’s just such a beautiful place to work, even when it gets cold.

Do you think about the legacy of working on Snowy 2.0?

A lot of our team members had family who worked on the first Snowy Scheme so it’s

EXPLORE OUR NATION-BUILDING CAREER OPPORTUNITIES

Snowy 2.0 is an internationally recognised project using engineering innovation to enhance the iconic Snowy Scheme. Future Generation JV provides work-life balance, FIFO rosters and charter flights from Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Now hiring Drill and Blast personnel, Slurry Treatment staff, Engineers, Supervisors, Superintendents and more.

really interesting hearing stories that have been passed down to them. As with that scheme, Snowy 2.0 has quite a few world-first engineering feats. I see renewable energy as the new boom for Australia. I’ve got four kids – aged three to nine – and I hope in the future they, or their children, will be taught about what we’ve done here just as we learnt about the first Snowy Scheme when I was at school. It’s an iconic project.

Presented by Snowy 2.0 Principal Contractor, Future Generation Joint Venture

Daniel McGowan

On safari “we get fairly close to animals so I do ask you not to put your hand outside the vehicle”, says Jason. “And please don’t stand up. The other day a man stood up and the lion ran straight off. We have a good relationship with the animals and have a lot of respect for them.”

Jason carries a rifle as a precaution and a first-aid kit for any minor injuries. “But if you get bitten by a black mamba,” he says with a laugh, “we’ll just wish you well.”

A former civil engineer, Jason grew up in South Africa and joined Sabi Sabi as a guide last October. Laz has been a tracker for 22 years and sits on the front of the car in a “jump seat” so he can scan the landscape and look for footprints. He’s like a meerkat (one of the few animals we don’t see), his back ramrod straight and his head darting left and right, keeping watch for eyes and ears. One night, I’m stunned when he spots – in the dark, from a moving vehicle – a chameleon clinging to a leaf. “Laz has got a special connection

with this land,” explains Jason. “It’s very intuitive for him. I will do a lot of research on where the animals will be but for him, it’s quite instinctive.”

I find myself doing a poor impression of Laz and am keenly aware of how dull my senses have become. When Jason asks if I hear the lion in the distance, I confess that I don’t. I struggle to identify the alarm call of the squirrel. Nor do I smell the acrid stench of the wild dogs, their coats stained with blood from the impala they have just devoured. But I am alive to the sun on my back, the hover of the birds above and the thrill in my gut as we hurtle over the rocky path to our next find.

Lauren promises that we’re going to make “some special memories together as a family” and we do. There’s such joy seeing my daughters gasp when a leopard scales a tree in front of us or hunts a baby impala, which darts away on legs like toothpicks.

We’re often happy to sit in silence and soak up the landscape around us, whether

we’re surrounded by a herd of elephants or contemplating the fiery setting sun from a rocky outcrop (Negroni in adult hands).

Small moments can be as rewarding as the big. We watch in fascination as a dung beetle rolls his ball across the ground, waiting for a female to land on it and hitch a free ride before laying her eggs. But two competitors fight him off. “It’s a three-way war,” says Jason. “A battle for poop.”

Sadly, time doesn’t stop. Our last day beckons. But a surprise encounter sweetens the sorrow. There, across the way, is the same pride of lions we saw at the start of our trip. “They look well-fed,” says Jason. “They’ve been smashing the wildebeest.”

The pride is in a different mood today. Less menacing, more playful. While the mothers rest in the drizzle, the cubs practise their hunting skills on each other, pouncing and swiping and gnawing. They leap into the air, as agile and graceful as ballerinas.

It’s a sight we’ll remember forever.

Photo credit: ©PONANT: Lorraine Turci; Violette Vauchelle.

Annie Schlechter

(Clockwise from below left) The hotel’s Lobby Bar and the solarium adjoining it; seating in the bar; a Mercury Pool cocktail; wrought-iron stairs

JFK Qantas flies from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane to Los Angeles, with connecting flights on partner airlines to New York.

(Clockwise from below left) A Chelsea King Room; the hotel’s monogrammed sheets; the dining room at El Quijote restaurant

After an 11-year revamp, The Hotel Chelsea is back. Barry Divola checks in to check

out the vibe.

In her award-winning 2010 memoir, Just Kids, Patti Smith wrote lovingly of her time living at The Hotel Chelsea (hotel.qantas.com. au/thehotelchelsea), where she moved in 1969, describing the inhabitants as “guitar bums, stoned-out beauties in Victorian dresses, junkie poets, playwrights and broke-down filmmakers”.

I remember the last time I stayed at the Chelsea. It was almost 15 years ago, in what were commonly known as “the bad old days” of New York. I got into my room and heard a distressed voice coming from next door at high volume.

“I don’t need anything grand!” a young woman complained to her companion. “I just want to stay somewhere that doesn’t remind me of my grandmother’s spare room from the ’70s!”

Man, was she in the wrong hotel. My room measured about four square metres, the carpet was a ratty shagpile, there was a chipped chest of drawers supporting a chunky old TV and I was sharing a small bathroom in the hall with half a dozen other rooms on the same floor. Back then, no-one booked into the Chelsea expecting a high-end experience. You stayed here because of the history, the vibe and the incredible roll call of musicians, artists, writers, poets and actors who had created magic in those rooms.

Opened as a co-op apartment building in 1884, its illustrious history as a bohemian hotel began in 1939, when it was purchased by Joseph Gross, Julius Krauss and David Bard. The Chelsea’s downtown Manhattan neighbourhood, with its proliferation of art galleries and open embrace of the LGBTQIA+ community, was a magnet for those seeking an alternative New York. The hotel became both a meeting place and a home for creatives.

In Room 211, for example, Bob Dylan wrote songs for his classic 1966 Blonde On Blonde album and 10 years later, in the song Sara, he name-checked the place with the line “staying up for days in the Chelsea Hotel, writing Sad-Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands for you”.

Elsewhere, Leonard Cohen had a liaison with Janis Joplin, whom he met in the elevator, and immortalised the occasion in Chelsea Hotel #2: "I remember you well at the Chelsea Hotel, you were talking so brave and so sweet.”

Almost every Beat writer checked in at some point during the 1950s, including Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. Punk pioneer Patti Smith and her partner, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, started out in the smallest room in the hotel and worked their way up from the first-floor digs. Arthur C. Clarke stayed in the mid-’60s and wrote the script for 2001: A Space Odyssey, Andy Warhol filmed Chelsea Girls here in the same decade and Madonna shot photographs for her book Sex here in 1992.

And infamously and tragically, on 12 October 1978, Nancy Spungen was found dead in the bathroom of the apartment she shared with her boyfriend, Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols. “Nearly every day we get a call from someone wanting to know if they can stay in the same room where Sid and Nancy lived,” says William Benton, who works the hotel’s front desk and the door. Well, the answer to that question is now a yes.

After more than a decade largely without guests because of a dispute with some of the hotel’s residents, a revolving door of owners and a renovation some thought would never end, the Chelsea finally opened for business again last year.

When I stayed here in 2008, I met David Bard’s son, Stanley, the hotel’s former long-time manager, who’d been ousted in a takeover the year before. Bard famously ran the hotel on handshake deals, sometimes taking a painting from an up-and-coming artist in lieu of rent – there was a Brett Whiteley hanging in the reception area, as the artist lived in Room 1028 for a couple of years in the late ’60s. Despite still smarting from his firing, Bard called himself an ambassador for the Chelsea and remained upbeat about its future.

“It will always remain,” he told me. “Nothing can change it. Management companies come and go, people come and go, but the heritage of the Chelsea and the walls of the Chelsea and the feeling you get from the Chelsea will be here long after I’m gone.”

Bard died in 2017 at the age of 82 but he was right. The Chelsea lives on. A lot has changed but many of the hotel’s defining characteristics are preserved: the iconic vertical neon sign; the black wrought-iron staircase; the beautiful mosaic floors; the art on the walls from former residents such as Robert Lambert, Brion Gysin and Donald Baechler.

The biggest change is in the renovated guestrooms, which are a vast improvement. The décor is a beguiling mix-and-match of vintage styles, including plush velvet couches and tiger-striped chairs. Rock ‘n’ roll touches abound: artfully distressed curtains; Pollock-like paint-splatter designs on the bedheads; Marshall bluetooth speakers next to every bed.

The Chelsea was never a cookie-cutter proposition and there are 14 different types of rooms and suites, plus four apartments – ranging from a small Studio up to a Deluxe two-bedroom piedà-terre with a kitchen and marble benchtops.

Unbelievable as it may seem, the property never had a bar. Instead, the unofficial clubhouse and meeting place was El Quijote, the Spanish restaurant in the same building that could be accessed from the lobby. It had been around since 1930 but closed in 2018. Now it’s back, smaller in size but retaining the long bar, the red leather booths, the huge Don Quixote mural down one wall and a menu featuring its signature paella.

And now the Chelsea finally has its own drinking hole. The lavish Lobby Bar is actually a series of adjoined spaces, including a lounge bar and an indoor/outdoor terrace. On the drinks menu are signature cocktails from famous hotels in London (Duke Martini), Singapore (Raffles’ Singapore Sling) and beyond.

There are about 50 permanent residents in the hotel. One of them is Tony Notarberardino, an Australian photographer who arrived in 1994 and never left. He lives in Room 629, which is actually two connected apartments – one used to be inhabited by Dee Dee Ramone, the bass player in the Ramones, while the other was the home of the late Australian artist, dancer and self-described witch, Vali Myers, whose wild murals and dazzling colour schemes still radiate from the walls.

“The Chelsea is New York history,” says Notarberardino, sipping tea in his living room and stroking his white cat, Coco. “People want to stay here because they want to touch the walls where Jack Kerouac and Patti Smith lived.”

Yet he’s realistic about the changes.

“Obviously it’s not the home for artists it once was. It’s a business. And I get that. I woke up one day and found I was living in a five-star hotel. But no matter how much they’ve cleaned up the hotel, you’ll never get rid of the ghosts of creative energy in the place. That’s why I’m still here.”

Feel connected

Take

Snowy Mountains Ngarigo Country

Wiradjuri Country

There’s a rhinoceros asleep in front of our tent. He’s so close we can see the flicker of his ear and the curve of his double horns. But there’s no cause for alarm. The dusty colossus is snoring behind a barely noticeable fence that separates our luxe safari tent from the vast African Savannah area at Dubbo’s Taronga Western Plains Zoo (taronga.org.au/dubbo-zoo). There are

On

also giraffes, antelope and zebras, all roaming freely just metres from our private deck at Zoofari Lodge. The kid and I are in David Attenborough heaven.

“Do you want to sleep at the zoo for the night?” is the best question I’ve ever asked as a parent. For my son, Alby, 10, and me (somewhat older), escaping the daily grind of Grade Five and working life by running away to Taronga is a bucket-list thrill.

Our canvas-sided tent redefines the notion of camping with its hardwood floor, fresh linen and air-con. Most importantly, there’s a plush king-sized bed that’s perfectly positioned to look out across the deck – with a daybed, of course – onto the savannah. Both of these vantage points exert a ferocious pull but eventually the heat

entices us up to the swimming pool and umbrella-shaded sun loungers.

At dinnertime, we meet a carrot-loving giraffe named Kindu, who bends his neck over the fence to take food from our outstretched hands. Our own evening meal is in a more sophisticated setting. In the African-themed communal dining room, canapés and cocktails segue into mains such as bobotie, the South African dish of minced buffalo meat under a rich layer of custard and ginger salmon with rice for my pescatarian boy.

After dark, the animals come alive. We jump on a night safari to capitalise on their nocturnal habits – first stop, the black rhino, who gobbles a thick tree branch like it’s a celery stick. We see a lioness who’s looking

Sleeping alongside animals and roaming around a zoo after dark, Larissa Dubecki finds big adventures – and makes big memories – with her son in the heart of NSW.

Fly Sydney to Dubbo (1 hour 5 minutes flight time) Drive five hours north-west from Sydney to Dubbo

Cover: Eugene Tan. Rick Stevens

safari

a little too interested in our group (“We’re walking steaks, like in the Madagascar film,” jokes Alby) and a hippo devouring heads of iceberg lettuce. “Lettuce is its second-favourite treat,” says Emma, our guide. “They get watermelon on their birthdays.”

Even not-so-early birds will find it worthwhile to set their alarm for the sunrise tour to spot lemurs breakfasting and an elephant having his morning bath. The experience doesn’t end after checking out. We’re off to grab our bikes (free with a Zoofari stay) to introduce ourselves to the other animals in the 300-hectare open-range zoo. As Alby calls out while I puff along behind him, “Mum, this is the greatest!”

“Did you know that hippos sleep underwater?

When they need to take a breath, they bob back up and don’t even wake up. I learnt so many animal facts at Taronga Zoo when Mum and I stayed at Zoofari Lodge. I loved our tent and we had a swim in the pool. But the best thing was meeting the animals with the keepers, which was something my school friends were all really jealous about. We did a hippo encounter where we fed a mother hippo called Cuddles with lettuce and

gave her a nice bath. And we went on a safari bus where we visited lions, rhinos, giraffes, elephants and different types of antelope. I’ll never forget it.”

Alby Foster, 10 (above)

Stay a little longer

Glamp among the vines, soak in a tub under the stars and get cosy around a fire with friends. These getaways offer more than just a bed: they’ll reconnect you with what’s really important.

Feel connected to nature

Wiradjuri Country

This mellow eco-hut in Mt Adrah on the edge of the Snowy Mountains, 45 minutes from Wagga Wagga, ticks all the right farmstay boxes: smudgy-sage mountain views, crumpled olive-toned linens and a balcony bath positioned to see the stars. But even more consideration has gone into Kestrel Nest EcoHut (highfieldfarm woodland.com/kestrel-nest-ecohut), with most of the 222-hectare off-grid and offline conservation-conscious farm set aside as a protected area of eucalypts for endangered birdlife. Wake to the sun hitting the honey-gold hills before scrambling farm-fresh, free-range eggs and spending the morning with a book in the hammock or meandering along Yaven Creek. Wander further afield to Tumbaramba for a homemade pizza and a glass of wine at the 25-seat cinema at Nest (cafe-nest.com). Or on a winter’s day, be sure to snap up one of the most coveted (and cosiest) spots in the region: a seat beside the wood fire at the Sir George pub in Jugiong (sirgeorge.com.au).

Feel connected to culture

Arakwal Country

The treasures inside Hidden Byron (aperfectstay.com.au/properties/hidden-byron), a reimagined bungalow in the tiny hinterland town of Myocum, have been curated by interior designer Justine Hugh-Jones and no surface or object is an afterthought. The style is a blend of Mid-century Modern, Portuguese finca and balmy beachside, with a soft pastel wash of the Australian bush tinting the overall palette. Artworks are prominent, from Australian artists such as photographer Tim Salisbury and ceramicist Sophie Nolan, giving guests a sense of local character.

First Nations art and culture are at the heart of this warm northern corner of the state. Dive into it at an Aboriginal-led tour of Cape Byron or a Bangalow bush tucker experience with Explore Byron Bay (explorebyronbay.com), visit the Ninbella Art Gallery in Bangalow (ninbella.com) or sit down to dinner at the warm and generous Karkalla (karkalla.com.au) in Byron, which is run by Mindy Wood, a Bundjalung woman of the Widjabul Wia-bul clan.

Feel connected to self and soul

Gundungurra and Tharawal Country

Resetting your inner compass doesn’t have to mean a full-immersion yoga retreat or restrictive health farm. Sometimes just adding a touch of healthiness to an otherwise luxe-laden getaway is enough. The day spa at Osborn House (hotel.qantas.com.au/ osbornhouse) in Bundanoon, a two-hour drive south of Sydney, is filled with fresh native blooms and rich jewel tones. The self-care starts with the first deep, regrounding breaths you take when you enter and follows through to the menu of face and body treatments, including the popular “OMG” massage. There’s also a steam room, sauna and pool with views to Morton National Park, and all guests are given a complimentary one-month subscription to online Pilates workouts (and there’s equipment in your room). At night, the property’s regular outdoor asado fire feasts, curated by chef Segundo Farrell, are a fun chance to catch up with friends and family. By day, take an easy 35-minute drive to Belmore Falls for a bushwalk – a surefire way to be nurtured by nature – before heading to nearby Moonacres Kitchen in Robertson (moonacres.com.au) for a straight-from-the-earth meal.

Feel connected to the city

Gadigal Country

Capella (capellahotels.com), which opened in Sydney in March, is a new level of Australian hotel excellence. Every room and suite includes standalone tubs, Italian Frette linens, Haeckels amenities and access to the Auriga spa, indoor pool and Brasserie 1930, curated by the team behind Sydney’s prestigious Bentley restaurant. It would be easy to get lost here all day but when the sun sets, make sure you have a booking for Madama Butterfly on Sydney Harbour (opera.org.au), seen from the iconic parklands of Mrs Macquarie’s Point. Or try some of the restaurants at the newly reinvigorated Quay Quarter, where chef Alex Wong is creating Italian classics with Asian techniques at Lana (lana.sydney), while the omakase craze is fine-tuned beautifully at Besuto (besutosydney.com).

A swim in Sydney Harbour? It’s a thing these days – and yes, it’s netted. You can jump into the water at Marrinawi Cove, the new swimming spot at the tip of Barangaroo, smack bang in the CBD.

Feel connected to your creative passion

Wiradjuri Country

At Nashdale Lane Wines (nashdalelane.com) in Orange, a four-hour drive over the Blue Mountains from Sydney, pull up to one of the airy, hardwood-floored glamping cabins and get ready to unleash your gourmet creativity. Start with an on-site wine-tasting experience to learn about the Central West region’s cool-climate wines, before heading into town to pick up chutneys, relishes and sauces from The Agrestic Grocer (theagresticgrocer.com.au). They’ll go perfectly with the sausages you’ll whip up at a three-hour sausagemaking class at Cured (curedorange.com.au), where you’ll learn the fine art of mincing, seasoning and linking a good banger. Return to your accommodation and cook them on your alfresco barbecue deck, before turning into the four-poster bed that waits underneath a canopy of fairy lights.

“A lot of my work is inspired by the spiritual connection to the land, the water, wind, moon and sun. It all has a direct translation to what I paint. I was born and raised in Gumbaynggirr Country on the NSW Mid North Coast and recently moved to Bundjalung Country, north-east NSW to south-east Queensland. I went from one home to another. My grandfather was one of the last traditionally initiated men around Mount Warning – I feel very connected to Country here.”

Otis Hope Carey Artist and Gumbaynggirr/Bundjalung man

Wilsons Creek, Northern Rivers NSW Bundjalung Country

Kane Skennar

FEEL TIME STAND STILL

Presented by Qantas Travel Money

Hong Kong

Ready, set, go!

The Vertical City is more than high-rises and harbour views. Pencil in these new openings that have everyone talking.

Look through Hong Kong’s lens

You’ll want to stop by this newly opened museum just to get a snap of the exterior. After five years of construction, the $645-million harbourside Hong Kong Palace Museum (hkpm.org.hk) has landed in the West Kowloon cultural district. Inside, the boldly designed building features three neck-craning atriums, which play on contemporary and traditional Chinese design concepts in a configuration of the Forbidden City. There are travelling exhibitions from around the world and you won’t want to miss the permanent collection of Chinese antiquities – highlights include Ming and Qing Dynasty porcelain, gold and silver objects and calligraphy.

Stroll anywhere from this stay

Natural textures, minimal lines and neutral tones: that’s what you can expect at the AKI Hong Kong – MGallery (hotels.qantas.com/ akihongkong). The hotel opened in July 2022 in the centre of bustling Wan Chai and is within walking distance of art galleries, world-class dining and the Causeway Bay shopping district, with its traditional street markets and high-end boutiques. AKI’s signature restaurant, Tangram, serves Japanese-inspired tapas-style plates (or “Japas”) for dinner, such as lamb kushiyaki and truffle toast.

Taste

the fusion

of flavours

Rosita (rosita.hk) is one of Hong Kong’s latest culinary evolutions. A venture by acclaimed chefs Agustin Ferrando and Ricardo Chaneton of the city’s Andō and Mono respectively, the newcomer offers refined Latin dishes that combine influences from Japanese and French cuisines. Expect a warmly lit, art-filled room cloistered behind a lucky-red façade, where dishes such as ceviche of hamachi and kurobuta pork with criolla sauce, as well as Latin favourites like arepas, churros and arroz con pollo, are on the menu.

Head over to Hong Kong with Qantas Travel Money – the card that’s made for travel

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View competitive exchange rates with the currency converter. Then, buy up to 10 foreign currencies with easy, fee-free load options.3

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the Flinders Ranges where your every need is anticipated.

The South Australian outback, my wildlife-obsessed son informed me, is home to the shy yet deadly inland taipan, the most venomous snake in the world. And while nothing would please my five-yearold more than his mother returning with an eyewitness account, the reticent reptile’s deadly credentials – “It can kill a human in under an hour, Mum! One drop of its venom can kill 100 men!” – are ringing in my head. I’m at Arkaba Conservancy (hotel.qantas. com.au/arkaba), 24,000 hectares of former sheep station in the Flinders Ranges, and scanning the ground for taipans when guide Bruce Lawson, walking metres in front and keeping his eyes on the steep incline ahead, calls out, “Pace okay?”

Lawson – who moved from his native South Africa two years ago when his Australian wife, Dee, got a job as manager of the Arkaba Homestead – has clocked up more than 20,000 hours guiding wilderness treks and safaris. He also once covered the entire length of the African continent on foot. Suffice to say, the pace is at the pacier end of “okay”.

“If we can keep this up for another 10 or 15 minutes, we should be at the top in time for the big show,” he says.

Our group nods in unison, the crunch-shuffle-crunch of eight feet a satisfying baseline to the squawks of waking corellas.

As we climb, the terrain throws off its blanket of shadow, the spinifex grass and craggy rocks reach skyward and a brown falcon swoops overhead. In a commotion that briefly distracts me from my impending death-by-snakebite, two emus burst from behind an outcrop, zig-zagging cartoonishly over the nearest bluff.

“They look so embarrassed,” says Kerry, a girlfriend joining me on this 48-hour kid-free, wifi-free reset. “Like we walked in on them in the shower!”

The absurd idea slaps a cackle from the group; it reverberates out across the dry creek bed in the valley below.

The earth evens out just as curtains rise on a kaleidoscope of colour. Sunrise paints purple and amber bands across the bluffs of the Elder Range, known in local Adnyamathanha language as Urdlu Warlpunha, which means “kangaroo bones”. Far below, I can see three white specks, the rooftops of the Homestead and the only sign of human life. A thin plume of smoke from the chimney promises a hot breakfast but for now, we drink in the view with steaming espresso from Lawson’s thermos.

“Here ’tis,” he says, gesturing proudly as he hands out fat wedges of sticky orange and almond cake. “The show.”

Less than 24 hours earlier, four-and-a-half hours into the five-hour drive from Adelaide, I waved an outwardly cheerful goodbye to my family via FaceTime from the side of the highway just outside Hawker, the closest town to our destination. For the first time in my children’s lives, I was about to be incommunicado for an entire weekend. Twenty-five minutes later, the clench of maternal guilt was eased as a saltbush berry gin and tonic was pressed into one hand, a hot towel into the other.

The rambling 1850s Homestead is an oasis in more ways than one. Each of the five ensuite guestrooms is tucked inside its own private corner of the heritage home, with custom nods to its agricultural history everywhere you look: sheepskin bedheads, printed wool bales that moonlight as side tables and historical artefacts lining the walls. An erstwhile wool classing table serves as an alfresco dining hub for multi-course feasts such as twicecooked Berkshire pork with glazed native cranberries or “muntries”, prepared under the expert eye of chef Michael, whose gentle manner belies more than a decade of experience.

(Opposite) One of the Homestead’s five bush-luxe suites; safari drives are tailored to guests’ interests

Time, space and nature are chief among the luxuries of this remote South Australian stay.

By Bek Day

“You get creative with produce when you’re working in such a remote location,” he says, detailing his 10-hour round trips to Adelaide for supplies. The kitchen garden – a view of which filters through the linen drapes in my north-facing guestroom – supplements his culinary pilgrimages, with foraged bush tomato, native pear and acacia pod lending upscale bush tucker accents to his hearty fare.

Native harvests aside, Arkaba's caretakers are squarely focused on giving more to the land than they take. The fruits of this labour are most evident from the ridgeline, where there’s no need to point out the property’s boundaries, so stark is the contrast between arid sheep-farming country beyond its borders and the green bursts of life that scatter the conservancy like letters to a better future.

The conservation efforts underway here began with the destocking of more than 7000 head of sheep from the property and continue through its contributive tourism model, where part of the cost of each visit is funnelled back into regeneration and wildlife protection.

Arkaba is billed as a “fully hosted, all-inclusive bush luxury immersion” but how you engage with the landscape is up to you. The options, facilitated by guides as adept at reading their guests as they are at deciphering the tracks left by local wildlife, are as endless as the interests you bring with you. The day might begin with a walk along a red gum-lined riverbed. (“The reason we’re so drawn to trees,” says Bruce, his passion for the environment turning his clipped South African vowels into poetry, “is because they are nature’s great givers.”) You might follow that with a ramble through the scrub with Adnyamathanha elder Pauline McKenzie as she weaves ancient knowledge into the tour. A helicopter flight over Wilpena Pound (known by local Adnyamathanha people as Ikara or “meeting place”) is an unforgettable way to witness the 800-million-year-old natural amphitheatre rising from the landscape like a giant’s cupped hand.

But the true luxury of our stay is captured in the thoughtful hospitality of our hosts. On day two, Michael quietly modifies someone’s breakfast because he noticed she didn’t touch the tomato in the previous night’s caprese salad. “Thank you,” she says to him. “I always just pick it out.” When it’s discovered that Ellie – a solo traveller whose final night at the Homestead falls on my first – is a keen twitcher, she’s whisked away on a bespoke expedition through the ridges in Arkaba’s modified safari LandCruiser, complete with a gourmet picnic lunch.

“You meet the ringneck parrots in the afternoon,” she tells me later at dinner, eyes shining as she tucks into her roast lamb in wattleseed rub, “but it’s the weebills I love – they are Australia’s smallest bird. Oh, and the yellow-footed rock-wallabies. They’re much more difficult to spot but we found them.” A retiree from Queensland’s Gold Coast, Ellie is having precisely the kind of holiday she wants.

“I’d stay forever,” she confides as our plates are cleared to make way for dishes of rich chocolate and rosemary mousse, “but I’d leave the size of a house!”

During my final meal at Arkaba, Bruce arms me with a fact that’ll either impress or disappoint my son (the inland taipan rarely travels as far south as the Flinders Ranges), while Dee suggests that if I venture a few hundred metres from the Homestead, I’ll get a celestial show like I’ve never seen before.

My third glass of Clare Valley riesling in hand, I meander outside, wobbling slightly in the black night. The Milky Way is a dazzling slash of pearl that looks close enough to touch and the absence of any other light gives the psychedelic impression that I’m standing inside a star-filled snow globe. Dee sidles up with a wool blanket to ward off the chill and I’m struck again by this place’s unique ability to make me feel both incredibly small and like the most important person in the world.

Tracey Leigh

(Below) The historic Homestead is at the heart of the property

ADL Qantas flies from all Australian capital cities, plus 10 regional centres, to Adelaide. qantas.com

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2023 marks the 100 th anniversary of The Walt Disney Company and Disneyland Resort in California is the heart of the Disney100 Celebration!

There are exciting new experiences, attractions, dazzling décor and limited-time merchandise, food and beverages to help celebrate this milestone across Disneyland Park, Disney California Adventure Park, Downtown Disney and our Hotels. From the all-new Nighttime Spectaculars, Wondrous Journeys and World of Color – ONE, to the return of the ‘Magic Happens’ parade, and the debut of Mickey & Minnie’s Runaway Railway attraction, there is something for everyone!

Check for performance times. Both a Theme Park reservation and valid ticket for the same Park on the same date are required for Park entry. Entertainment and offerings are subject to availability, restrictions, and change or cancellation without notice. Park admission and offerings are not guaranteed. Visit Disneyland.com.au for important information before visiting the Disneyland Resort. ©2023 Disney

Natural wine bar Vino Vero in the Cannaregio district of Venice

Italian city that might be famous for the wrong reasons.

Houses on the Fondamenta della Misericordia in Cannaregio

Photography by Colin Dutton

FOR AFTERNOON SPRITZ

You don’t need me to tell you that the light in Venice is exquisite. Entire artistic movements have risen up to depict the way the light here flickers and ripples, reflecting onto canals and bouncing off limestone. Every corner of the city appears to be lit from within and they’re all radiant in their own way. The best place to enjoy golden hour is at Osteria Al Ponte (Cannaregio, 6378; +39 041 822 0172), a wine bar set on the side of a bridge (left) at the foot of the city’s ancient hospital.

It’s past six on a summer evening when I park myself there and the bar itself is empty. But the owner is busy, slinging Campari spritz after Campari spritz to a crowd of chic Venetians holding court on the bridge. “Stay on the right side!” he tells me as he hands over my drink: bright and cheerful, a shade of orange that warms my spirit. And it’s in a real glass, a fact that feels like an occupational hazard as I carry it carefully to my spot overlooking the canal. I stand next to two mothers who are enjoying aperitivo hour while their children kick a football in the square. We’re all here for the same reason: to perch on the bridge with a drink as the sun sets in a blur of rosegold and Campari bronze.

Qantas flies seasonally from Perth to Rome between June and October and year-round from Melbourne, Sydney, Perth and

Forget wandering along the canals and canoodling in a gondola. What you should be doing in Venice is eating, writes Hannah-Rose Yee

.

FOR CICCHETTI

The dish known as “Venetian tapas” is essentially little bites of bread with toppings, such as prosciutto or salami, wedges of salty pecorino and creamy, whipped salted cod called baccalà mantecato. Cicchetti are eaten at all times of day. But not all cicchetti are created equal.

One morning, I wander over the Rialto Bridge and into San Polo, where some of the city’s oldest cicchetti bars can be found. Cantina Do Mori (above, right; Calle do Mori, San Polo, 429; +39 041 522 5401) opened in the 15th century and still commands a queue for rustic slabs of salami and cheese. The baccalà at All’Arco (San Polo, 436; +39 041 520 5666), around

the corner, is legendary. I head north to the residential district of Cannaregio and the bustling Fondamenta della Misericordia, a long promenade overlooking a canal that’s frequented by local teens in their tinnies blasting Europop. At Vino Vero (above, left; vinovero.wine), a Scandi-minimalist natural-wine bar, you can get whisper-thin wafers of prosciutto draped over slices of peach or a slick of ricotta under crushed broad beans and mint. I eat here while waiting for a table at Paradiso Perduto (ilparadiso perduto.wordpress.com), a buzzy seafood restaurant just down the road. A few days later, I return to Vino Vero for a nightcap – and a nightcap plate. It’s never a bad time for cicchetti.

FOR FRITTO MISTO

“No.” I seem to be hearing that word a lot. I’ve been trying to get a walk-in table at Osteria Al Portego (osteriaalportego.org), a wood-beamed trattoria in the heart of Venice, a five-minute walk from the Rialto Bridge, for days. The place is always busy – it has a cicchetti counter and a few tables in a courtyard that are never empty – but I thought that I might get lucky at an off-peak time, especially as I’m staying right around the corner. But no matter when I turn up, the proprietor meets my request with a negative. On my third attempt, he sizes me up. “Make a reservation,” he counsels, pulling down an enormous leather-bound calendar from a shelf behind the counter. That “no” suddenly becomes a “yes” and I have a table for lunch on the following day.

This is not my first Osteria Al Portego rodeo. In 2018, on a sweaty summer holiday with a friend, we ate here three times. I’ve since had a painting commissioned of the restaurant’s seafood linguine, a heaped plate of steaming mussels, clams and squid swimming in white wine and garlic. It’s delicious in a don’t-kiss-anyone-for-a-few-hours kind of way but the true drawcard at Portego is the fritto misto (left). You can find fried mixed seafood and vegetables everywhere in Venice but this eatery does them best: light, bubbly batter, served hot at the table with only lemon to keep it company. It’s fresh, moreish and crisp. So unpretentious and yet so very good. No wonder you can never get a table here (make a booking!).

FOR LICORICE GELATO

I discovered La Mela Verde (Fondamenta de l’Osmarin, Castello, 4977; +39 349 195 7924) on the Instagram account of cookbook author Skye McAlpine, who has lived in Venice on and off since she was a child. She names this small gelateria

(open from February to November) near the tourist trail of San Marco as the best on the whole island.

I peer in one afternoon. The place is aggressively lit, like a convenience store, and it’s tiny. This can’t be right. Still, it’s very hot –and La Mela Verde is airconditioned – so I inspect the cabinets just in case. That’s when I spot it – licorice gelato, my favourite, and a particularly good use of the divisive herb. I order a big scoop.

Licorice isn’t the only must-try flavour on offer here. There are also herby sorbets and a luxurious pine nut, which feels very Venetian. But La Mela Verde’s licorice (being sampled by a gondolier at left) is sublime: creamy with a rounded and delicate aniseed taste that should convert even the most staunch licorice-haters. You’ll find licorice gelato all over Italy and there are several other shops that serve it in Venice. But none of them compare to La Mela Verde.

FOR PISTACHIO PESTO AND RED PRAWN PACCHERI

I’m pounding the pavement, walking all the way from the Accademia Gallery in Dorsoduro to the Castello district, where the city unfurls like a spiral. As I turn onto Via Giuseppe Garibaldi, I know what I’m looking for. The familiar emeraldgreen awning of a restaurant that serves my number one dish in the city: pistachio pesto and red prawn paccheri (below, left), the signature offering of the never-quiet Nevodi (below, right; nevodi.com). The name means “nephew” in Venetian Italian and it’s so called for the cousins – one the nephew, the other the son of owner Silvio – who work side-by-side in this classic family establishment.

The pistachio pesto is creamy and rich, the red prawns salty yet sweet and the big tubes of paccheri al dente. A sprinkle of chilli brings the dish together and every time it’s placed in front of me – I must have eaten this exact same pasta about half a dozen times over the years – it’s as good as I remember. The bad news is that getting a table here at a reasonable hour on most days is nigh on impossible, given how popular the place is with locals. The good news? Nevodi has opened a takeaway pizza joint across Via Giuseppe Garibaldi, within walking distance of the green expanses of the Giardini Biennale. The even better news? They have a pizza that features pistachio pesto.

Beware the English-language menu. The one handed to me at Vini da Gigio (above; vini dagigio.it), on a corner next to a canal in Cannaregio, offers a simple translation for sarde in saor, a dish as Venetian as gondolas and bellinis – pickled sardines. It’s hardly an appetising or even accurate rendering of this symphony of fried sardines left to brine a little in vinegar and served with

FOR CLASSIC VENETIAN

soft onions, pine nuts and raisins. The result is a flavour extravaganza: sweetness blending with sour, salty fish with a kick of acid, surprisingly sophisticated and totally unique.

This elegant seafood restaurant, with starched white tablecloths and an old-school maitre d’ who treats the wine list like it’s his bible, is one of my beloved places in Venice when I want

to eat like a local. Aside from the sarde in saor, I’m spoiled for Venetian classics here: grilled seasonal seafood, such as prawns or cuttlefish, on a bed of polenta, spaghetti vongole with added bottarga and a rich seafood risotto (right). For dessert, I ask for a couple of buranelli, butter biscuits from the island of Burano, to dip into a glass of sweet wine. It doesn’t get more Venetian than that.

The bigger picture

Presented by Samsung Galaxy

Photographer Tina Smigielski traded her camera for the new Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra to capture some of Victoria’s most-photographed destinations. The results? Epic.

Photo taken on the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra with 200MP camera.

CAPTURE EVERY DETAIL

Rugged cliffs, jewel-coloured waters and fairy-floss-like skies at sunset: the Great Ocean Road has long been a favourite destination for photographers as well as travellers. “As far as coastlines go, the Great Ocean Road is up there with the best,” says Melbourne-based photographer Tina Smigielski. “There are so many stunning spots to shoot. My favourites are the 12 Apostles, Thunder Cave, Bay of Martyrs and The Grotto.”

Smigielski – who usually has an array of equipment for a location shoot – captured Thunder Cave (left) on the new Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra.

“I shot at sunrise, in the afternoon and early evening so I covered all bases of light and gave the camera a good workout. The sharpness and clarity of the images was incredible. The camera brought out a dramatic saturation and balance of colours, which isn’t easy.”

The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra features a 200MP camera so that you can shoot in high-quality resolution. “Even when I zoomed to the highest setting, the clarity was outstanding. The fine detail I captured from the rocks and the ripple of the ocean is game-changing.”

LIGHT UP THE NIGHT

When the sun sets, Melbourne comes to life. “The city always surprises me,” says Smigielski. “I love wandering down Melbourne’s laneways and discovering secret bars and restaurants like Section 8 on Tattersalls Lane. There’s always something new.”

Capturing the bright lights and colourful street art after dark can be tricky. The new Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra has an in-built Night Mode capability, which means long exposure – where the camera absorbs more light for brighter images – occurs automatically.

Earn 5,000 bonus Qantas Points when you shop the new Galaxy S23 Series until 14 May 2023 at the Qantas Marketplace. Visit marketplace.qantas.com/au

“When I used Night Mode, there was striking contrast with gorgeous pops of colour. To get that level of crisp hi-res detail in a night shot is fantastic.”

Smigielski was also able to use other features such as wide screen and zoom while using Night Mode. “Sometimes when you gain features you lose others but that wasn’t the case. There’s also a timer if you want to set up the phone on a tripod.”

See the world through a new lens with the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra

Photo taken on the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra with Night Mode.

Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra*

Cocktails

By Jessica Irvine

Cocktail to order at The Connaught Bar, London

Okay, the premise is broken – you wouldn’t order just one. But the one to start with? That would be a Martini (left). “It’s our most popular drink, via the Martini trolley,” says Ago Perrone, director of mixology for The Connaught Bar in London’s Mayfair (yep, the place you want to own on the Monopoly board is also where to toast your win). Opened in 2008 and currently ranked number eight on the list of The World’s 50 Best Bars, this is one of four drinking dens in The Connaught hotel (the-connaught.co.uk) and is undoubtedly the most decadent, with high ceilings, marble and mirrors at every turn. As for that Martini trolley, it’s something of an icon here. “It’s a wonderful piece of theatre that delivers on a true Martini-lover’s passion for the ceremony involved in the creation of this cocktail,” says Perrone. “We add elements to make the experience out of the ordinary – be that a garnish, a bespoke stirrer or vessel or a cocktail card that guests can take away.”

and road trips, steakhouses and train stations – you can find them almost anywhere in the world but these are the spots that make them memorable.

Coastal drive to detour for: the Atlantic Road, Norway

No-one will be asking, “Are we there yet?”, on this road trip. Looking like a real-world join-the-dots challenge – the bitumen winding, rising and dipping over rocky outcrops that appear to have been scattered like pebbles – the Atlantic Road (Atlanterhavsvegen in Norwegian) on the country’s south-western coast may be the origin of the phrase “it’s about the journey, not the destination”.

Opened 34 years ago, the road is made up of

eight bridges connecting islands and reefs between Kåvåg and Bud. And while it runs for a little more than eight kilometres – meaning you can easily tackle it in a lunch break – the various rest stops and lookouts along the way are designed to maximise the drive, with sculptures, hiking paths and platforms set over the ocean. Coasting along it in stormy conditions raises the thrill (and risk) quotient, as the wind whips the waves onto the road.

Train station to linger at: São Bento, Porto, Portugal

Turnstiles, ticket machines, timetables – there’s little to spark the soul in most railway stations. But one, in Portugal’s second city, is a place that travellers, art-lovers and historians seek out rather than scuttle through. “Inside São Bento are 22,000 azulejos, blue-and-white hand-painted tiles,” says tour guide Mónica Marabutt Nogueira. “It’s a station with that normal, busy atmosphere but it’s also full of history.”

That history is one of kings, conflict, culture and a particular kind of evolution – from horse-drawn carriages to the first train here, in 1896. Head to the main hall to capture the best of it and swing your head from ceiling to floor. “Most locals started looking up to admire the tiles because the tourists did,” says Nogueira. “For some, the number of people going in just to see the azulejos is still a surprise.” And her key tip? “Be there early in the morning, before the crowds. People forget that it’s a train station.”

National park with its own food scene: Durmitor National Park, Montenegro

“There are 17 glacial lakes in this park and when people come to visit they usually ask to see Black Lake,” says Tanja Pejović, tour guide and co-founder of Montenegro Wonders (montenegro wonders.me). “It got its name because it’s surrounded by pine trees and from the peaks it looks black. But locals recommend Vražje Jezero – The Devil’s Lake when we translate it. From a hill above this lake you can see the most beautiful sunset. Some people even kitesurf here when it’s windy.”

That’s only one of the ways to be awed by nature in this reserve, which was formed by glaciers and spans more than 300 square kilometres of the Dinaric Alps in the country’s north. The adventurous go canyoning in Nevidio Canyon

or rafting in Tara River Canyon (Europe’s deepest gorge). There’s also mountain biking and countless hiking trails, including to Prutaš peak (“We call it the king of Durmitor’s viewpoints,” says Pejović) and to Bobotov Kuk, the region’s highest mountain at 2522 metres above sea level.

But perhaps one of Durmitor’s most rewarding treasures is also the most surprising: the food. “There’s a road in the park with some small cottages where local produce is sold,” she says. “At the end of August you’ll find delicious wild strawberries, blackberries and raspberries. I recommend everyone try the cow’s and goat’s cheeses, as well as the kajmak, a cream cheese.”

Steakhouse to book in Buenos Aires: Don

Julio

“I want only the pure taste of beef, no smoke,” restaurant owner Pablo Rivero told The New York Times. It may seem out of step with what we’ve come to expect from the classic Argentinian grill experience (isn’t it all about fire and smoke?) but if Rivero is saying it, it’s got to be right. For more than 20 years, he’s been the mind behind Don Julio (above; parrilladonjulio.com), a rustic neighbourhood

restaurant that seats fewer than 100 people in Buenos Aires’ boho-cool barrio of Palermo and took the 14th spot in last year’s World’s 50 Best Restaurants list.

If you book a table at the diner, where wine bottles signed by customers line the walls and a grill measuring more than 10 square metres is the focal point of the dining room, you’ll soon understand what all the fuss is about. And if you haven’t called ahead? Join the queue outside and wait and hope: a number of seats are set aside for walk-ins (and the patient will be rewarded with a glass of prosecco in line). As for what to order once you’re inside, trust Rivero – a rump or skirt steak are his top picks.

Place to meet the real Santa: Santa Claus Village, Rovaniemi, Finland

Maybe you have kids asking thorny questions. Or perhaps you’re a big kid yourself, looking to double-down on the festive magic. Either way, put this little town in Finland’s Lapland region, an eight-hour daytime train ride north of Helsinki, at the top of your list. The village sits eight kilometres out of Rovaniemi in the Arctic Circle, opened nearly four decades ago and attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. Yes, there are photo ops with Santa but that’s only the beginning – sleighs drawn by reindeer, a post office belonging to the man in red (it receives more than half a million letters and parcels for Mr Claus each year), elves to spot, igloos to sleep in, the Northern Lights to see. It really is like all your Christmases have come at once.

Chinatown where Chinese-American cuisine began: San Francisco

There are more than 50 Chinatowns in the United States but the one that’s generally considered the best in the country (and, arguably, the world) was also the first: San Francisco’s. With a history that stretches back to the mid-1800s, today it spans more than 20 blocks, its famous alleyways home to art galleries, tea houses, temples and churches and festivals throughout the year. Even those who’ve never visited will recognise the Dragon Gate, an elaborate, green-tiled entry point that sits on Grant Avenue at the district’s southern end.

“The thing that draws Chinese Americans back to

this neighbourhood is that it was our beginning,” Brandon Jew, owner and executive chef at the Michelin-starred Mister Jiu’s (misterjius.com), has said. It is, he writes in his 2021 book, Mister Jiu’s in Chinatown, “the place where Chinese-American food began”. And eating is a large part of the lure for visitors.

But, like Chinatown itself, much has changed over the past 150-plus years. “There are more regional Chinese cuisines represented than ever,” writes Jew. “And there are fusions of culture you’ll only find in Chinatown… The bakeries offer pork buns and cow’s ear cookies alongside apple pie. Each generation’s resourcefulness flavours the food. Chinatown grew out of fear but rose up by reaching across boundaries. And that is how it will continue to thrive.”

Freedom to have it all

Whether you’re a solo adventurer, having a romantic getaway or taking a break with family, your trip shouldn’t feel like a choice between this or that Qantas Money Home Loans helps you holiday year after year, making it easy to travel your way.

Hawai’i

Fly Sydney to Honolulu Economy return for one person from 63,000 Qantas Points plus AUD$339 taxes, fees and carrier charges.

STAY IN STYLE AT TURTLE BAY

Pull up a stool at Turtle Bay Resort’s (hotel.qantas.com/turtlebayresortkahuku) Sunset Bar around 6pm and you’ll realise how it earned its name. The colours in the sky each evening are epic at this 443-room playground, which makes the most of a prized location on an arrow-shaped peninsula on O’ahu’s North Shore. The newly renovated resort features 42 Ocean Bungalows, from LA architect and designer Dianna Wong, with reclaimed wood, hand-stitched leather finishes and organic linens to reflect the landscape. Outside, five pools dot the grounds, including a new addition for adults only, while eight on-site restaurants include celebrity chef Roy Yamaguchi’s Beach House. Book well ahead to appreciate the Misoyaki Deepwater Black Cod with Forbidden Rice.

SNORKEL WITH SHARKS

Come face-to-face with whitetip reef sharks, sandbar sharks and, occasionally, hammerheads or tiger sharks on Hawai’i’s first cage-free shark experience. Created by world-renowned shark experts Ocean Ramsey and Juan Oliphant, One Ocean Diving (oneoceandiving.com) is a conservation and educationbased tour that promises to be unlike any other snorkelling experience you’ve had. Spend two unforgettable hours free diving in the blue pelagic waters of Waialua Bay, five kilometres off Hale’iwa Harbor (a 55-minute drive from Turtle Bay). The biologist-led tours host a maximum of eight people, making for an experience that will leave even the sharknervous transformed.

Silken chawanmushi “omelette” and “ulu tot” with lashings of Grandpa’s Crack BBQ sauce – that’s what you can expect at Nami Kaze’s (namikaze.com) Japanese-inspired brunch. The spot, helmed by Hawaiian food royalty Jason Peel, expanded last year to an izakaya and sushi bar and has quickly captured the attention of locals and travellers alike. This year it nabbed a nomination for Best New Restaurant in the prestigious James Beard Foundation awards for 2023.

TAKE OFF FOR TWO

Fiji

Fly

FIND SERENITY IN THIS KIDS-FREE RESORT

With their powdered-sugar sand and crystalline waters, Fiji’s Mamanuca Islands are the perfect place for a grown-up escape. Lomani Island Resort (hotels.qantas.com/ lomaniislandresort), a 30-room adults-only property on the south-western tip of the archipelago, is free of highchairs or pool cannonballs. The addition of 10 airy, light-soaked beachfront bures – complete with private plunge pools, day beds and outdoor rain showers – means the only thing waking you will be the gentle waft of breakfast. Dining at Lomani’s Flame Tree Restaurant is a journey through Fijian fare, such as the Ika Vakalolo (line-caught local fish in coconut cream) served with baked taro galette. If romance is on the agenda, ask staff to organise a private table on the sand with uninterrupted views of the sunset.

SIP COCKTAILS ON A FLOATING SLICE OF HEAVEN

If you can manage to drag yourself away from your resort, the aptly named Seventh Heaven (seventhheavenfiji.com) – a purpose-built pontoon bar and restaurant positioned a short boat ride from Port Denarau – will reward the effort tenfold. Floating in impossibly clear water, the aquatic day club is an exercise in indulgence; kayaks, day beds and Piña Coladas served in coconut shells make this the ultimate big kids’ playground. Tired of luxuriating? Grab a snorkel and explore the nearby coral reef or take the Leap of Faith, a five-metre dive from the top-floor jumping platform into the water below.

ZIP-START YOUR HEART OVER THE JUNGLE

Careen through the Garden of the Sleeping Giant on 1.3 kilometres of zipline in what will be one of the most unexpected highlights of your trip. Nadi’s verdant Koroyanitu National Park is a jungle adventure masquerading as a botanical garden, with mud pools, wilderness hikes and a waterfall. Hand over your camera to the guides at Zipline Fiji (ziplinefiji.com) – they’re experts when it comes to getting the action shot.

Sydney to Nadi Economy return for 2 people from 72,000 Qantas Points plus AUD$464 taxes, fees and carrier charges.

Hamilton Island

SLEEP ON THE REEF

Stay overnight on a pontoon, in purpose-built deck beds under the stars, at Reefworld Pontoon (cruisewhitsundays.com). Turtles, reef sharks and Queensland gropers dance in the tropical waters of Hardy Reef – about two hours from Hamilton Island by catamaran –where you’ll spend the day snorkelling, exploring the underwater observatory or test-driving a semi-submarine. The clutter of tourist boats then clears for the evening and you’re left with nothing but the sound of the ocean lapping beneath you and the stars above.

A FAMILY STAY WITH ALL THE FRILLS

If you could bottle the essence of the ultimate Australian family holiday it would look, smell and sound like the frangipaniscented oasis of Hamilton Island. At the island’s rainforestfringed Palm Bungalows (hotel. qantas.com/palmbungalows), you’ll have a laid-back A-frame perfect for the whole family. Guests under 12 stay and eat free at a number of restaurants on the island (Manta Ray, Sails, the Pool Terrace and Tako) and thanks to all the amenities on site – high chairs, prams and even microwaves that can be set up in your room prior to arrival – parents can travel light. Each sun-drenched villa, from which you can stroll to nearby Catseye Beach, comes equipped with everything you need, as well as a private balcony that conjures up tropical treehouse vibes.

CHILL AND GRILL AT WHITEHAVEN BEACH

Whitehaven Beach is the crown jewel of the Whitsundays. It’s a talcum-meets-turquoise paradise renowned the world over as a true bucket-list destination. Put your feet up and let Cruise Whitsundays’ Beach Chill and Grill (cruisewhitsundays.com) whisk you away to Whitehaven for a packed day of gourmet barbecuing, beach games and guided walks – with plenty of free time to get your toes into that world-famous sand before you sail back.

Fly Brisbane to Hamilton Island return for 4 people from 64,000 Qantas Points plus AUD$452 taxes, fees and carrier charges.^

Presented by Qantas Money Home Loans

Arku House, Sisters Beach, Tasmania

STORY BY RACHEL LEES

PHOTOGRAPHY BY LEAN TIMMS

ARKU HOUSE, SISTERS BEACH, TASMANIA

Emma Woods had never been to Tasmania, let alone renovated a property, when she first set eyes on a 1960s beach shack on Tasmania’s wild north-west coast. Surrounded by Rocky Cape National Park on three sides, with Bass Strait to the north, “I just had a feeling it could be a great adventure,” she says.

The crane driver and her partner, Charlie Whittaker-Smith, were trawling through real estate websites at the start of the pandemic when they spotted the unique A-frame on Sisters Beach, about a 2.5-hour drive from Launceston. After FaceTiming with the agent, the pair quit their jobs in Sydney and did a stint in hotel quarantine before transforming the two-storey, two-bedroom property into what is now Arku House (airbnb.com.au).

“The previous owners had modernised it and painted everything white but I saw more potential,” says Woods, who added hand-cut Spanish tiles, new cabinetry and an archway (arku is Basque for arch) to the kitchen. Superfluous doors were removed to create a seating nook made from Tasmanian oak and an old boatshed next to the property was converted into a bar and movie theatre.

But with views of the ocean and bushland from almost every room, it’s what’s beyond the windows that’s most memorable.

“From November to April it’s so picturesque – with white sand and crystal-blue water – then it starts to feel a bit more rugged,” she says, noting that the cinema and reading nook are a favourite with guests during winter. “And there’s no light pollution so you can fall asleep looking at the stars.”

A renovated shack on a rugged stretch of coastline inspires guests to reconnect with nature.

DANIEL O’TOOLE

BY SUSAN HORSBURGH

This multi-media artist uses everyday miracles of nature to mesmerise gallery-goers.

If Daniel O’Toole had been better at maths, he might have become a pilot like his father, grandfathers and uncles but “I was too much of a daydreamer to be trusted at the helm of a 747,” jokes the 38-year-old. Instead, his love of flying and wonder at the world above the clouds have fuelled a lifelong fascination with light and inspired his art. A recent video work, for example, grew out of a daily ritual at his local café – filming the sunlight refracted through a glass of water onto his sketchbook. “I’d like people to feel connected to nature, even though they’re in a gallery,” he says. “It’s my goal to create the same magic you feel when you happen across a rainbow or notice some small, beautiful miracle in nature.”

Starting out 15 years ago as a busker known as “Ears”, O’Toole pumped out up to 100 Picasso-esque portraits a day on King Street in Sydney’s Newtown, painting on cardboard for a donation, before venturing into abstract public murals and more experimental territory. Influenced by the 1960s Light and Space movement, he now creates paintings, photography, videos and installations, selling half his work overseas.

In 2019, O’Toole moved to Melbourne just before the pandemic lockdowns but his career has since taken flight: he made a video that formed the 20-metre-wide backdrop of the Ginger & Smart Australian Fashion Week runway show in 2021 and had three solo exhibitions in 2022, as well as works commissioned for the Louis Vuitton store at Sydney Airport.

A musician, O’Toole often incorporates sound into his work, making use of his synaesthesia – what he calls a “miscommunication in the brain”, which means he sees colours with sounds. As a five-year-old learning violin, he’d call the G string “the red string” and he still experiences music as flashes of colour. His current focus is minimal colour field paintings, each of them framed behind a frosted acrylic screen with mirrors on the inside edges of the frame to subtly animate the image and create a play of light that seems kinetic. He likens the hypnotic viewing experience to that of staring at rain or fire. With light, nature and natural phenomena as his core themes, “I don’t feel I’ll run out of rope. Light’s kind of everything. We don’t exist without it.”

Studied at: Diploma of Audio Engineering, SAE, Sydney; National Art School, Sydney

Exhibited at: The National Gallery of Victoria; Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art; Affordable Art Fair Brussels; A.M. Bjiere gallery, New York; Benalla Art Gallery, Victoria

Breakthrough moments: Last year, O’Toole was named as a finalist in the Dobell Drawing Prize and his first institutional solo show – sound installation Voices from the Void – is at Victoria’s Benalla Art Gallery until 9 April.

What the experts say:

“Daniel O’Toole is a highly accomplished and inventive artist. Voices from the Void sees Daniel push further into his artistic experimentations with sound, drawing on his background as a musician and training as an audio engineer. The work is multi-sensory and also experiential. It comprises nine bass drums [that] draw audiences in and focus them on the real magic of the work – a soundscape created by the harmonisation of the drums with each other, activated by the movement of audience members.” – Eric Nash, director, Benalla Art Gallery, Victoria

(Opposite) Daniel O’Toole spraying a commissioned work, Ascension ; the artist in his Melbourne studio

Foundations

PANTHEON, ROME

AS TOLD TO RACHEL LEES

I saw the Pantheon on my first big overseas trip when I was 25. I did a bit of a grand tour of Europe. As young architects we learn about these buildings so to go and see them is exciting. The enormity of the space was amazing and there’s almost a haze in the air. The contrast of the shaft of light that beams through the ceiling and that dark haze is a magnificent, romantically beautiful thing.

It demonstrates some of the Romans’ greatest contributions to civilisation. One of them is their love of concrete and how they used it. Two thousand years later, the Pantheon dome is still the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world. It’s bigger than the dome in St Peter’s Basilica so it’s gigantic.

The proportions inside the Pantheon are amazing. It’s exactly as wide as it is tall and about 43 metres in diameter. So you could fit a perfect 43-metre sphere in the space. You can feel how incredible the shape is when you’re inside it. The Romans were also fond of an arch and if you rotate an arch, you get a dome so that’s how they constructed these things.

The oculus, the hole in the ceiling, is about nine metres wide. There’s no covering over the oculus – it’s open to the sky – and the floor is domed as well so when the rain comes through it drains away. It’s all very clever in terms of managing the elements and means this vast space is lit by daylight.

A lot has been removed from the Pantheon over the centuries. When you’re standing in the portico waiting to get in, look up and you’ll see timber framing. Previously, it was a magnificent bronze ceiling. The bronze was removed by Pope Urban VIII in the 1600s and much of it went to the Castel Sant’Angelo and the Baldacchino, the canopy over the altar in St Peter’s Basilica.

It’s the most well-preserved Roman building in the world. It’s sometimes referred to as the oldest existing building in constant use and is a link back to people in ancient times. If we’re still astounded by the Pantheon in the 21st century, just imagine how amazing it must have been to people nearly 2000 years ago. Everyday people in ancient Rome must have lost their minds walking through that door.

Fooi-Ling Khoo established residential design practice OOF! Architecture (oof.net.au) in St Kilda, Melbourne, in 2005. A former chair of the board for ArchiTeam Cooperative, a membership association for Australian architects working in small, medium and emerging practices, Khoo has also taught design studios at RMIT and the University of Melbourne.

An ancient Roman temple continues to inspire awe in Melbourne-based architect Fooi-Ling Khoo.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SUSAN WRIGHT

FLORENCE KNOLL SOFA

STORY BY SUSAN HORSBURGH

The brainchild of a maverick designer was the backbone of Mad Men’s set design – and is still a picture of sleek modernity.

When the ad execs on Mad Men were chain-smoking Lucky Strikes, downing their pre-lunch drinks and perpetrating some casual workplace sexual harassment, a Florence Knoll sofa witnessed it all. The social customs of the 1960s may have been dubious but the interior stylings were impeccable: when the TV series premiered in 2007, it inspired a renewed swooning over all things Mid-century Modern, including the iconic sofa design that sat in the Sterling Cooper lobby for four seasons.

The piece was the 1954 creation of pioneer architect and designer Florence Knoll, who was a protégé of one-time Bauhaus director Ludwig Mies van der Rohe – the Peggy Olson, if you will, to his Don Draper. She joined the Knoll furniture company in New York in 1941 and married its founder, Hans Knoll, in 1946. During the post-war boom, when skyscrapers were multiplying across the country, Florence defined the look of American offices with her insistence that contemporary architecture needed sleek, open-plan interiors to match.

A creative powerhouse with a rare seat at the table, Florence set up the Knoll Planning Unit and transformed the corporate headquarters of IBM, GM and CBS, turning her back on the stuffy chintzes, florals and brocades of the time and exploring unconventional upholstery materials, such as woollen war blankets and men’s pinstripe suiting. In 1964, The New York Times called her “the single most powerful figure in the field of modern design”.

Her timeless sofa – which the Knoll company describes as a “scaled-down translation of the rhythm and proportions of Midcentury Modern architecture” – is still in production. It’s available from De De Ce (dedece.com), from $23,350 for a three-seater.

“Florence was revolutionary,” says interior designer Jessica Viscarde of Melbourne’s Eclectic Creative. “With its clean lines and unfussy approach, the sofa lends itself to almost any interior style and can blend in or stand out depending on the material. It’s a design that never dates nor screams for too much attention.” Mad Men’s own trailblazer, Peggy, would approve.

8197 6007

556 926

STYLING BY LUCY WOOD PHOTOGRAPHY BY EDWARD URRUTIA

1. Prada tote / $6100 / prada.com.au

2. Chopard L.U.C XPS Twist watch / $35,100 / (02)

3. BOSS shirt / $299 / hugoboss.com

4. Oliver Peoples sunglasses / $690 / from Sunglass Hut, 1800

5. Tommy Hilfiger pants / $299 / au.tommy.com

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Editor’s note: There are sneakers and then there are sneakers. These designer kicks come complete with eco credentials – an upper crafted from 26 per cent recycled apple peel and a sole composed of 25 per cent recycled rubber – and retro styling that will keep your wardrobe in step for decades.

Wear them with: Relaxed tailoring, a crisp collar and a blue-chip timepiece keeps the look business up top, sporty down below, while a graphic carryall says “places to go”

Price: $1670 / harrolds.com.au

The piece: Tom Ford James sneakers

The piece: Christian Dior 30 Montaigne Avenue bag

Editor’s note: The bag that’s named after Dior’s famous Paris headquarters carries its fair share of savoir faire but don’t be fooled by the glossy exterior; it’s a pragmatist at heart with multiple internal compartments and an adjustable strap rendering it ripe for reinvention.

Wear it with: Neutral tones – an ivory blazer, tobacco waistcoat – with classic mules and rich gold accents will transfer you from board meeting to wine bar with cool insouciance.

Price: $5500 / dior.com

1. Gucci spectacles / $600 / eyewearindex.com

2. Matteau waistcoat / $390 / matteau-store.com

3. Louise Olsen necklace / $815 / dinosaurdesigns.com.au

4. Sportmax blazer / $1875 / mytheresa.com

5. Bottega Veneta heels / $1340 / bottegaveneta.com

Saddle bags

Hermès was originally an equestrian company, founded by Thierry Hermès in Paris in 1837, making saddles and harnesses for its upmarket clientele. By the end of the 1800s Hermès had attracted clients from as far afield as America and North Africa. Early in the 20th century, under the leadership of Thierry’s son Charles-Émile, the atelier created the Haut à Courroies – a large leather bag to carry a saddle and other riding kit. Its style planted the design seeds for the Birkin and Kelly bags.

Depeche mode

Fast forward to the 1930s and Robert Dumas, great-grandsonin-law of Thierry, produced the Sac à Dépêches (dispatch bag), designed for documents. Although it found popularity among prominent men of the day – such as the Duke of Windsor and, later, John F. Kennedy – it was a woman, of course, who sealed its fate as one of the most desirable handbags of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The princess effect

When To Catch A Thief was being filmed in 1954, costume designer Edith Head was given clearance by director Alfred Hitchcock to buy appropriately understated yet luxurious accessories from Hermès for the film’s star, Grace Kelly. The Oscar-winning actress was so

taken with the Sac à Dépeches that it became her go-to once the film wrapped. Just two years later, she married Prince Rainier of Monaco in a real-life fairytale and when she became pregnant with her first child, Caroline, she used her bag to hide her growing belly from paparazzi. From then

on, women would head into Hermès asking for “the Kelly bag” and in 1977, the house officially changed its name.

Her own woman

The Kelly differs from the Birkin in two obvious ways. There’s its trapezoid shape,

as opposed to the Birkin, which is rectangular, and its single handle, unlike the Birkin’s two. You can also add a shoulder strap to it. A single craftsperson makes each Kelly bag from start to finish, using 36 leather components. There are two different styles of the Kelly: the sellier, which has exposed stitching and appears more rigid in shape; and the retourné, which starts out as a sellier before being turned inside out to conceal the stitching and reveal a softer edge and supple finish.

Investment piece

Of course, price tags on the Kelly, like the Birkin, are out of reach for most – and that’s if you can even get your hands on a new one. Production is limited and the waiting lists are legendary. For custom styles, where the client chooses every detail from leather to finishes, prices can easily go into six figures. As such, the resale market is so hungry for Hermès’ signature bags that, in some instances, they can be a better investment than gold. Late last year, a Himalaya Retourné Kelly, one of the rarest styles, made in a snowy-hued crocodile leather, set a record when it was sold at a Sotheby’s auction in Paris for $538,755. (A representative said the original price was under $100,000.) So if you can manage to get one, it may be worth more than just its weight in style.

Grace Kelly in 1956, with then fiance Prince Rainier of Monaco (at back), carrying a Hermès bag

Hermès Kelly bag While the Birkin usually steals the spotlight, its sister is an equally coveted accessory with a story all of its own.

Rhys Gorgol, founder and creative principal, The Company You Keep

By Jane Nicholls

Artificial intelligence surrounds our everyday lives, from sometimes helpful chatbots to real-time maps and labour-saving accounting apps to algorithms that keep us glued to social media sites.

While AI has become omnipresent, many businesses are yet to take a deliberate step to unlock its specific benefits. The debate over whether the natural language processing model ChatGPT is an AI superhero or anti-hero will go on but most agree that it’s a game changer. The giant chatbot is not the only show in town: it’s estimated that AI will be worth $22.17 trillion to the global economy by 2030.

“Australia has incredibly strong capability in the area of AI,” says Stela Solar, director of Australia’s National Artificial Intelligence Centre (NAIC). “We lead the world in field robotics, computer vision, Quantum AI, remote operations and responsible AI. Stanford University’s Global AI Vibrancy Tool ranks us third in the world per capita for AI research and development. That’s impressive.”

Not so fast on the gloating, though. “On the flip side, our economic impact ranking for AI is 11th in the world per capita,” she says. “AI is transforming all industries and there’s a lot more opportunity for our commercial sector to benefit from Australia’s great capability.”

In 2021, the federal government’s Artificial Intelligence Action Plan found that 63 per cent of Australian businesses were having “difficulty in knowing where to start when implementing AI technologies”. It stumped up $53.8 million to establish the NAIC, which sits within CSIRO’s Data61, the data and digital specialist arm of the national science agency.

“Large organisations are adopting AI relatively fast and there is a lot more guidance for them, anchored on things like investing in your own data science and developer teams that you enable with AI skills,” says Solar. These big firms have the resources to

As the capabilities of artificial intelligence grow, leaders need to be purposeful and thoughtful about how they deploy it, understanding that AI is at its best when it’s teamed with human intelligence.

A better business travel experience

Working on the move just got smoother. Get more productivity out of your day with Uber’s latest business travel features.

Travel with ease in Business Comfort

Uber for Business customers can now access an exclusive new product in the Uber app: Business Comfort. The feature gives travellers extra leg room, premium vehicles and top-rated, experienced driver partners with over 500 lifetime trips and a consistent rating of 4.85 and above. Business travellers also enjoy up-front, competitive pricing on business trips and premium business support. Sign up to Uber for Business and access Business Comfort today.

Being able to oversee an entire company’s ground travel program on one handy dashboard is just one of the perks of using Uber for Business. The platform allows companies to easily track their corporate ground travel and meal programs and report on and track their carbon emissions from business trips. Find

Use Uber Reserve for ultimate peace of mind

Have somewhere to be? Don’t stress, you’ll make it in plenty of time using Uber Reserve. The feature allows riders to schedule their Uber ride up to 30 days in advance with the Uber app and lock in the price at the same time. Uber has also accounted for life’s little delays, with drivers now waiting up to five minutes for UberX, 10 minutes for Uber Comfort and 15 minutes for Uber Premier. Plus you can reserve your airport pick-up on Uber Premier from selected airports and cancel your ride up until an hour before.

Get dedicated airport priority pick-up

Looking for a taxi alternative? If you’re flying into Melbourne Airport you now have access to an Australian-first kerbside experience. UberX now provides six-digit PIN technology to confirm your driver, reducing wait times and delivering a seamless and safer experience for both riders and drivers. There are also dedicated pick-up zones close to the exits at Melbourne Airport’s Terminals 1-3, or a short walk from Terminal 4 for Business Comfort Premier, Comfort, XL and Assist riders.

fund those teams and engage consultants to help them advance their AI transformation. “Small and medium organisations are not adopting AI as fast.” Without the in-house specialist teams of big companies, AI integration for SMEs is with mostly off-the-shelf products, such as solutions for accounting, HR management, customer relationship management (CRM) and those that enable robotic process automation (RPA).

Often, the AI component in these solutions is optional, says Solar. “SMEs need to know what their options are so they can activate AI services and experience the benefits. The irony is that AI holds the most opportunity for SMEs because AI can tackle scale and volume amazingly well. It can navigate vast volumes of data, which maybe SMEs don’t have the resources to do, and it can take action at scale, which smaller teams can’t do. AI is a tremendous untapped opportunity for SMEs to step up and compete with some of the larger players in the market.”

The NAIC is charged with helping to make that happen, as well as connecting the Australian AI ecosystem and addressing concerns about privacy and bias by promoting responsible AI. “Our mission

is to accelerate positive AI adoption and innovation that benefits business and community,” says Solar.

In March, the NAIC released its AI Ecosystem Momentum report, which found that Australian organisations need an average of four partners in order to succeed with an AI project (28 per cent needed to find six partners). To help businesses navigate their hunt for the right expertise, the NAIC is building an AI Ecosystem Discoverability Portal, a free online directory to connect Australian AI innovators with customers. It also launched the Responsible AI Network, “a network of knowledge partners to demystify what responsible AI means for organisations”.

Solar is passionate about Australia taking a leading role. “AI models are built on historical data, with injustices, biases and gaps in representation. Leaders have an opportunity to intercept the way that AI models are developed by injecting diverse skills, talent and perspectives. Leaders need to be empowered to critically think through this transformation, to ask the why and shape the path their organisation takes towards a vision of doing better in the future, rather than just replicating the biases of the past.”

THE LEGAL FIRM

AI products let it run tasks such as clause comparisons and consistency checks across large volumes of documents. “In the big law firms back in the day, young lawyers would be down in a dungeon reviewing boxes of documents for 12 months – they’d leave and say they hate the law and wish they’d never done it. It was terrible.”

in a law firm so they can then identify the real problem and redeploy and develop a solution for that.”

“Lawyers are trained to look at a problem and think of all the things that can go wrong,” says Genevieve Collins, chief executive partner at Lander & Rogers. “Startups are the opposite – they look at something and think of all the things that can be done, with a lens of opportunity rather than risk. Exposing our lawyers to that is a good balance.”

They’re not doing it by halves at Lander & Rogers, a 77-year-old law firm with more than 600 staff. “Since I took over as managing partner in mid-2018,” says Collins, “we’ve been running an innovation agenda and incorporating AI technologies into projects with clients.”

The firm is using AI in contract review projects and due diligence, e-discovery in litigation and research. Off-the-shelf

AI has been instrumental in removing this infamous drudge work from the profession and making space for the highlevel critical thinking skills taught in law schools. “It’s better for clients and better for lawyers because they’re moving away from the low-level review work and there are so many time and cost efficiencies. It’s definitely better for lawyers from a wellness point of view.”

In 2019, Lander & Rogers upped the ante by opening its LawTech Hub, first with physical spaces in Sydney and Melbourne then moving to virtual in 2020. “It’s our pro bono contribution to the legal tech industry. We don’t take equity; teams get six months of access to our lawyers and clients to test their products.” Each year, there’s an intake of six startups or scale-ups and Collins says the firm is now emphasising those built with AI.

The LawTech Hub gives teams access to basic legal advice and sessions on IP but the value is in the testing ground. “They want to test their products in reallife situations. They might find they’re solving problems that don’t really exist

There are already more than 20 alumni, including Halisok, which uses machine learning to extract and organise unstructured data from files, and DraftWise, which collects a law firm’s collective intelligence to deploy the best language when drafting contracts.

AI has brought in a new way of working and Collins says that ChatGPT is leading a shift in business that’s as significant as the arrival of the internet. “Clients don’t necessarily have access to those paid AI platforms or the embryonic startups,” she says. “The key difference with ChatGPT is its accessibility. It’s exciting and we’re encouraging our lawyers to play around with it – within our governance guidelines around privacy and transparency – to find best-use cases for it.”

Collins uses it herself to write the first draft of an all-staff email, her firm’s legal teams are using it to draft simple documents and the tech team is using it to write basic code. “I’m fascinated that some organisations are banning ChatGPT. That’s just putting your head in the sand. First we had calculators then Google and this is the next iteration. It’s early days – there are clearly limitations and for lawyers a whole host of potential risks –but it’s here to stay and we have to get on board and work with it to progress it in a reasonable way.”

Lander & Rogers

THE BIG BANK

You’d expect a bank to be using the latest AI-based safety protocols to keep its customers safe from cyber attacks and Commonwealth Bank is no exception. As those protection measures play out in the background, more is needed to hit the “surprise and delight” button for customers famously championed by marketing teams.

Armed with rich financial data about its customers, CBA has come up with some novel ways to use that information in conjunction with AI. “It’s playing a central role in building more personal connections with our customers, to really understand who they are,” says Dr Andrew McMullen, the organisation’s chief data & analytics officer.

In 2019, CBA launched Benefits finder, a tool in the online banking platform or app for individual and business customers to search for grants, concessions and rebates they might not know about. “There are hundreds of benefits available from state and federal governments but many Australians don’t know about them or that they’re eligible for them,” says McMullen.

THE SME

VetShop Australia

When Steven Perissinotto and his brother, Mark, a veterinarian, founded their online pet supplies business VetShop Australia in 1999, Microsoft Excel wasn’t quite 15 years old. Based on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, the company’s 22-strong team started using ChatGPT last year and Perissinotto sees parallels. “I’m old enough to remember business before Excel,” he says. “When it was new, some people were better at it than others. You’d ask someone how they got to be good at Excel and they’d say, ‘I just taught myself, I wasn’t scared.’ And that’s the stage we’re at now. We have a Slack channel and we encourage people to share ‘What I used ChatGPT for today.’”

ChatGPT training courses are springing up but Perissinotto finds there’s nothing like being your own incubator – and classroom. “A few of us were using ChatGPT in October and by late November, we said, ‘Hey, everyone should be using this.’ Some staff get better results than others so we’re training each other, saying, ‘Queries like this work better than queries like that.’”

Perissinotto says there also needs to be time to shake out the sillies. “You have to move staff through the novelty of ChatGPT to using it and understanding where they can use it.” When a friend showed him a bad haiku created by the chatbot, Perissonotto likened it to “when we keyed in ‘boobies’ on our calculators. Instead, ask ChatGPT for three ways to improve your haiku or where you can publish it online.”

He’s not a grinch, though. “Ask ChatGPT to write a press release and make it sound like Snoop Dogg – have 20 minutes of that for a bit of fun! Then ask ChatGPT for three ways to improve the release or give it our 1000-word article on fleas and ask it for a summary in bullet points or for the best meta tags to use for that article. We’re still helping each other find the best ways to use it and I see a lot of hot tips on LinkedIn.”

“We’ve used AI to connect all of those benefits and make them available to customers we believe would be eligible. Through that capability, we’ve helped our customers to get access to $1 billion worth of benefits since we launched.”

His favourite story about Benefits finder is a woman who came into a branch to apply for a personal loan to replace her broken-down fridge. “One of the branch staff sat down with her and Benefits finder showed them that if she replaced her fridge with a more energy-efficient model, the government would give her 50 per cent off. They found other benefits she was eligible for and she left with funds to buy the fridge without borrowing any money.”

Two years ago, CBA invested $134 million in leading global AI cloud company H2O.ai to further ramp up its in-house AI development capabilities. The bank’s 2023 graduate intake also included 80 data science specialists. “We’re helping universities to think about providing courses and qualifications that are specifically focused on AI and machine learning.”

He says ChatGPT can be a good unblocker. “Most people aren’t wordsmiths and might be apprehensive about emailing someone. ChatGPT is a great tool for that. It’s replaced ‘just Google it’ because it gives you a significantly better starting point.”

ChatGPT is also helping with VetShop’s business analytics. “We can ask it in normal English, ‘What formula should I run on my database that will allow me to establish whether it’s more profitable to have a free-shipping break at $99 rather than $69?’ It gives us the formula and then we run it on the database.”

Perissinotto is pragmatic about the recommendations from the off-the-shelf products running analytics on VetShop’s data. “The results are only as good as the quality of the data you put in,” he says, estimating the dataset goes back to 2015. “We have to be careful that we don’t spend a fortune changing how our data is structured to get what is probably going to be an imperfect result anyway.

“AI is just a tool and you need to work out the best way to use it. We don’t believe in changing our systems to match the tool – we believe in using the tool in a way that matches our systems.”

Commonwealth Bank

Glencore is one of Australia’s largest producers of the coal, cobalt, copper, nickel and zinc needed for energy, electric cars, smartphones and smart homes. We are more than 17,000 Australians and we are advancing everyday life.

glencore.com.au

Business Passport

Renae James started selling her distinctive, natural-fabric pyjamas at Sydney’s famous Paddington Markets in 2003 – and they were an instant hit. The following year, the design graduate took out a $9000 personal loan and went on to open her first boutique on Oxford Street shortly after, morphing into a fully fledged retailer.

“We’ve been called Papinelle from day one,” says James. “I wanted a name we could own so I played around with the French words for butterfly (papillon) and lady beetle (coccinelle).”

Papinelle grew slowly but steadily and in 2016, James joined forces with fellow Australian entrepreneur Nicole Kelly. “We met at my first trade fair in New York in 2005. She had a stand opposite mine – we were two Aussie girls taking on the world and became friends, although we didn’t start working together for over a decade.”

In 2021, private equity firm Quadrant came onboard to help accelerate Papinelle’s global growth. Today, the company’s range includes loungewear and underwear and is found in hundreds of department stores across Australia, New Zealand and the US (where the intimate-wear market is estimated to be worth US$63.9 billion this year alone).

Paddington remains home to Papinelle’s flagship store but the team has travelled the world to connect with customers and partners, turning a little market stall into a global brand.

Where: Sydney New York

NYC

“We make about four trips to the US each year to see our buyers but our trip in February was our first time back at this particular trade fair since Nicki and I met there in 2005 – 18 years ago! The US market is doing really well for us – it’s close to 50 per cent of our revenue, with at least half of that coming direct to our website. So we decided to do the trade fair again. It’s great to keep up with trends and all our buyers are there so it’s a worthwhile trip. Being a Qantas Business Rewards member means we earn more Qantas Points on our flights, which we can then use for future upgrades and to put towards Qantas Hotels bookings. The benefits are endless.”

Presented by Qantas

The story of Papinelle is a lesson in following your dreams – and a reminder that digital communications can only take you so far. Founder Renae James shares four ways that strong, in-person relationships have helped her business take off.

Where: Sydney Melbourne

“In June 2022, we opened a concept space in the refurbished David Jones flagship store in Bourke Street. Having our own retail stores and concept spaces allows us to tell the Papinelle story through a broader product offering and beautiful imagery. It also gives us an opportunity to learn more about our customers, get feedback on the styles people are loving and what we need to do more of. Our team – including visual merchandisers, retail managers and wholesale managers – travels a lot domestically to meet our customers face to face. Papinelle recently became a Level 3 Qantas Business Rewards member, which means we can nominate one of our team for a Gold Accelerator, a fast-track to help them attain Gold Frequent Flyer status.”

Let your business fly

“Gold Frequent Flyer benefits, like access to lounges and priority check-in and boarding, make business travel more comfortable – especially when the days are long and our staff are away from their families – and the extra baggage allowance is great for samples.”

Where: Sydney

Los Angeles Seattle

“Back in 2017, a buyer from Nordstrom, one of the biggest department stores in the US, asked to meet us the following week, not knowing we were in Sydney. It was an opportunity we couldn’t miss. We filled our suitcases with samples and hopped on a Qantas flight to LA and then on to Seattle where they’re based. They loved our products and after testing them in 25 locations, we became an all-store brand. About 12 months later, Dillard’s, another huge department store, approached us. We’re a growth brand for them and they’re so excited with how it’s going. They’re based in Arkansas so we fly non-stop Sydney to Dallas and on to Little Rock. I’ve always flown Qantas. I’m a Platinum Frequent Flyer and I like the perks that come with that. When you get on the plane to fly back to Sydney, it’s like a big exhale. I can almost get a bit teary. I’m coming home.”

Where: Sydney Hong Kong

“We typically fly to China or Hong Kong once or twice a year to visit suppliers. Making the effort to see them in person is so important for relationships and vital for our brand because we are known for our soft, natural fabrics. We’re not selling data or an app for your phone; we’re selling something that’s tactile so the ability to touch and feel it is priceless. We always have a much better result when we see our suppliers in person and you get so much more done on these trips than you can via email or Zoom. And by accessing our Qantas Business Rewards member flight savings, travelling for work becomes even more cost-effective.”

Help a team member go for Gold

There are a range of benefits for Qantas Business Rewards members – and their employees, too. The more Qantas Points your business earns from flying, the more you progress through the three levels of membership, unlocking bigger rewards and greater savings.1

What is Gold Accelerator?

As a Level 3 Qantas Business Rewards member, you can nominate one traveller each year to fast-track their Frequent Flyer status to Gold.1

How does it work?

The nominated Frequent Flyer will have 90 days to earn 200 Status Credits on new flight bookings departing within that period, to attain Gold Frequent Flyer status.1

What are the benefits of Gold?

Once your nominee successfully achieves Gold Frequent Flyer status, they’ll earn 75 per cent more Qantas Points on eligible flights, enjoy priority boarding and access to more than 600 lounges globally. Plus, they’ll also have access to more availability on Classic Flight Reward seats as well as many other benefits. 2

Discover how other members unlock more for their business at qantas.com/businesspassport

James (right) with business partner Nicole Kelly in New York

From The Top

Lisa Singh

The top end of town has got India all wrong, says the former senator and CEO of the Australia India Institute.

How do you define good leadership?

It’s living by a set of values and having them play out through your actions. For me, those values are integrity, equality, respect for diversity and excellence, if I can call that a value. Good leadership is also about taking people on a journey. You must have a vision and a purpose. You have to be driven and you have to work out what drives you. I’ve always been on a mission to make the world a better place.

Were there particular people in your life who shaped that drive early on?

My grandfather was in politics in Fiji. He was a farmer, a school teacher and a politician. I saw him as a leader of people. Equally, my maternal grandfather was a local police inspector in Hobart and for a long time I wanted to be a policewoman and be just like him. He was a great storyteller. I learnt a lot from my mum in terms of character and values – she’s a strong working-class woman and very resilient.

CURRENT ROLES CEO, Australia India Institute; deputy chair, Australia-India Council (DFAT)

TENURE One year and eight months; two years and nine months

AGE 51

PREVIOUS ROLES Senator for Tasmania, Parliament of Australia; minister and member of the House of Assembly, Parliament of Tasmania; director, Tasmanian Working Women’s Centre

What did you learn about leadership from your time in politics? Politics is fleeting – you don’t get into politics to retire; you do it to make a difference and drive change. I’m privileged to be elected by the people so what’s the legacy I want to leave? For me, it was long-term reforms that went on beyond my time of being there, including a 10-year strategic plan for corrective services, workers’ compensation reform and changes that brought in protections for renters in the housing market. I had a lot of energy and I wanted to get things done.

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INTERVIEW BY JANE NICHOLLS ILLUSTRATION BY MARC N È MORIN

How did politics set you up for your current job?

A lot about leadership – about everything in life, really – is about building relationships. India is all about relationships – it’s not a transactional country where you just do deals and walk away. It’s about building trust over long periods of time. The skills I learnt in my time in politics – building strong partnerships across industry, academia and community – really help me now.

What should Australian leaders do to take advantage of this “sweet spot” you see now in the Australia-India relationship?

At the very top end of the Australian business sector, there is an outdated mindset about India that needs to change. I bang on about this all the time. They still see India as a place where it’s hard to do business. India is modernising, growing in leaps and bounds, and is now the fifth-largest economy in the world, overtaking the United Kingdom. It has an incredible, young population who are skilled-up in the digital space. Trade is starting to improve but there is still not much investment from Australia. India needs investment to increase its infrastructure; Australian super funds are worth about $3 trillion, yet they’re not investing in India. The Macquarie Group, a shining light in this space, is investing. I would love to see Australian super funds investing in India’s critical infrastructure.

What’s the legacy you hope to create from your work as CEO of the Australia India Institute?

Part of my remit is helping to change that mindset and finding industry players who can educate the top ASX companies to see things differently. Our institute partnered with Atlassian’s Mike Cannon-Brookes last year to run a dialogue on this. He’s passionate about plugging the skills gap Australia has in the tech space. India is a complementary country – we need to develop partnerships between our educational institutions and companies in Australia and India, to give graduates the skills they need in the digital age and to increase the two-way mobility between our countries.

You must have some difficult conversations in your role. What’s your approach to them?

It’s good to try to frame things as a question, rather than making a statement about a situation. Ask a question and you get a sense of how the other person might be feeling, as well as getting feedback from them, rather than pushing forward with all your own answers.

Have there been times when you’ve doubted yourself?

We all have self-doubt – let’s face it, I still have it. I didn’t do things conventionally. I was still at university when I had

my first son and then my other one post-study. I was very excited about becoming a young mum but I remember feeling that other people might somehow see this as a failure. I had to juggle university with my first baby and I perhaps doubted whether I could finish my degree and manage both. But I did. I had a lot of family support and I think determination carried me through.

Is that your biggest strength as a leader?

People I work with describe me as someone who makes things happen. So I think it’s my energy and determination. I have a strong vision and commitment to drive change and that energy sometimes can be infectious. But I do set the bar quite high for myself and for others around me.

And what’s your biggest gap?

I’m in a rush to get stuff done. When you’re dealing with large bureaucracies… well, I’ve recognised that not everyone works at my pace and that I need to be patient.

How have you navigated that adjustment in your temperament?

It’s about having time out – the India side of my heritage is really useful because now yoga and meditation are a part of that. I’ve been doing yoga for a bit longer but meditation is relatively recent. I embraced it post-politics because I was going through a huge career change and I needed to reinvent myself. My 26-year-old son, Jack, recognised that I was trying to readjust and thought meditation would be useful. He was right.

How much of your success is due to hard work and how much comes down to luck?

Definitely hard work – you can’t rely on luck. If luck is thrown in for good measure, that’s great. Some things are about “right place, right time”. That’s a foot in the door then it’s up to you to do the hard work and make things happen.

How much do you rely on intuition?

I do rely on my gut feeling but I often go and share that with colleagues to test it before I act on it. When you’re working to build trust, it’s very important to listen to your gut.

What’s the one piece of advice you would give a brand-new CEO? Work out what your values are, what drives you and the vision you’re going to bring to the role and the people around you. You need a vision as a leader and you have to want to execute it – for me, with great gusto! Work out what you’re getting up for in the morning and believe in yourself, obviously. You wouldn’t be a leader if you didn’t believe in yourself.

KIEREN PERKINS

Find the light on the hill

2022-present

“When I announced I got this job, a lot of people said, ‘Why would you want to join the government with all its bureaucracy?’ I was like, ‘Well, if you say that, you don’t understand that sport and the politics of sport are infinitely harder and more challenging than anything that goes on in government.’ Since I’ve arrived, what’s become really clear to me is that all the human behaviours and all the value sets that I’ve experienced within my time in this business are exactly the same as what you find in any large corporate bureaucracy. There are different acronyms and some different processes but the behaviours are all the same. The funding role we have in delivering the federal government’s strategy for sport means that I am arguably the only person in sport in Australia who is responsible and focused on the system, not an individual sport or an individual component of sport. I’m finding it really inspiring and engaging but sport is a massive beast that is filled with amazing amounts of passion and deeply entrenched levels of ambition and ego that are often enabled by the status quo not being challenged. But the 2032 Brisbane Olympic and Paralympic Games are the light on the hill that we’re all aiming for so everybody is motivated to achieve the ultimate outcome together. We can see what we’re all working towards.”

The gold medal-winning swimmer discovered what he was made of when he swapped the pool for the corporate world.

CEO, Australian Sports Commission

Be aware that your words have power

2021-2022

CEO, Australian Unity Bank

“I’ve learnt that the impact I have in everything I say and do stretches far beyond what I can visibly see. I saw this at NAB, too, where a leader would have a question or an idea and throw a comment out without actually giving any reflection to the cascade of events that would lead to thousands of hours of work by at times hundreds of people to provide an answer to something that the leader wasn’t really that worried about. It was just a brain fart. So coming into this role, I had to edit myself and be far more conscious of the shadow and the way that shadow impacts the people around me.”

Be humble and learn, learn, learn

2009-2012

Head of private clients & business development, NAB Private Wealth

Frustration is not your friend

2019-2022

President, Swimming Australia

“I joined the swimming board in 2001, left at the end of 2007 and came back in 2019. I assumed that the system and everybody in it had spent 10 years growing and evolving like I had. But it was the same sport with the same personalities engulfed in the same petty, ignorant, political, myopic challenges – along with all of the incredible inspirational and heroic activities that happened as well. I found myself surprised and challenged by the groundhog day feel about it. I’d had 10-plus years in a corporate environment where we were diverse across gender and cultural lines, mature in our governance and risk management… all the stuff you take for granted in a corporate environment. I had to reset and start the process again. How do I engage my experience and knowledge in a way that brings people with me? How do I suppress the frustration that some of this stuff is just not being delivered the way that it should be? It was a big challenge and a big moment for me.”

Appreciate your own skills

2003-2007

Executive consultant/ director, PST Systems

“If I’d joined NAB straight from sport, I wouldn’t have survived. We see it all the time with athletes who go into corporate life and it just doesn’t work because they’re not able to navigate the transition from being the best in the world [to thinking], ‘I’m ready to be the CEO of any environment I go into.’ I joined NAB at 36 years of age so I was mature enough and self-aware enough to be able to do it. But I wasn’t a fully formed business leader by any stretch of the imagination. It was a bumpy ride because a lot of people assumed that I was employed because I could open doors and I would just be the celebrity. But I didn’t want to sell anything I didn’t understand. In that first 18 months, I got a lot more out of NAB than they got out of me. It was an enormous learning experience.”

“When you retire from any elite sport, the transition is horrific. Sport is an unnatural environment; every day you wake up with certainty and clarity about what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and who is there to support you. On day one of retirement, all that is gone and you are on your own. Who am I? Why do I exist? What am I doing? Where do I go from here? When I finished swimming, I did a couple of keynotes with Clark Perry, who was the head psych for the swimming team, and that turned into co-facilitation, which turned into a business [to help] bring disparate people together to form high-performing teams. I learnt how to see the value in the knowledge and skills that I had and how to purposefully apply them and translate them to people who did not have that life experience.”

Push boundaries but not people

2020-2021

Executive direct, NAB Retail

“This was the first time that I took on a strategic role and had to execute it end-to-end on a massive change program to create a business that I then had to run. One of my big strengths as an individual is that I don’t really have a limit. You do this in training every day – move outside your comfort zone to push yourself to be the best you can be so that when you get into competitive conditions you can deliver your potential in any environment, under any circumstances. It’s the same in business. I’m used to pushing the boundaries. But that means I can pull businesses in too fast or challenge people well outside their comfort zones and break them – or break businesses – and set them up for failure. I got checked a couple of times and I needed to just slow down and help people catch up.”

Understand the value of values

1992, 1996 and 2000

Member of the Australian Olympic team

“In sport, you deliver high performance and excellence. You build teams and trust. You have feedback mechanisms. All of those things that enable sports people to be successful are just as valid in business – and life in general. I learnt to engage people around their knowledge and expertise to make me better. I was never afraid to ask for help and always willing to hear somebody’s story, experience and knowledge and to learn from that. I was lucky to have amazing mentors around me. My parents – and especially my dad – spent a lot of time and effort making me understand the importance of my values and why every time I turned up, everything I said, every outfit I wore, every relationship I had was a reflection of my values. Knowing who you are and what you stand for is incredibly important.”

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS

People might say that numbers don’t lie but for small business owners, success can be buried in figures that aren’t thoroughly interrogated. Somewhere in between accounting software and a CFO, financial coaches are making a mark with businesses that are actively pursuing growth or simply looking for a fresh perspective.

For the past six years, Melissa Kirby, director at Sharpe & Abel, a nine-person legal firm, has engaged Anthony Luvisetto, CEO and founder of iCompass, to help her business thrive and take some of the stress out of its financial management.

She says that monthly consultations with Luvisetto pre-COVID had driven 35 per cent growth year on year and the company’s curve is again on the rise. She initially engaged iCompass to forecast cashflow so she could put aside funds for employee superannuation and tax payments, as well as identify times of the year when there was money available to deploy towards expansion.

But most recently, with one valued lawyer in the firm planning to go on maternity leave, Kirby was concerned that, given Australia’s current skills shortage, she might have to cover the gap herself. Thinking more big picture, Luvisetto advised her that “we could afford to hire two lawyers – one to bring in more business and another to cover the maternity leave – and it would be worth paying slightly more to source the mat-leave replacement through an employment agency, given that a six-month contract would otherwise be hard to fill”.

Liz Grant is one of several coaches working with Small Business Australia, an organisation dedicated to supporting the sector. One of its Zoom-based coaching series, Improving Cashflow and Finances, includes a one-hour, one-on-one session tailored to your business.

Vikki Froutzis and Robert Earp plan to continue having Grant as their coach after working with her through three sessions, funded by Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry business development grants. The self-described

A financial coach can help your SME to negotiate the accounting trail more profitably.

“mum and dad owners” of Glow Studios – a photographic studio and office rental company in Melbourne – wanted to take their business to the next level. Their office spaces are generally occupied but the attached studios are underutilised. How could they use that real estate to increase their income?

Earp says Grant has “given us a lot of chunk to consider and implement in the business”. In fact, the couple tacked an extra five days onto a recent holiday to absorb the implications of what they’d learnt and to run various scenarios in the “What if?” spreadsheet tool Grant created for them, which calculates income based on different ways they could choose to hire out their studio spaces.

In the first instance, says Grant, a skilled financial coach can help clients to uncover the gold in various financial statements. Profit and loss: “Overall profitability is one thing,” says Grant, “but I like to assist business owners to understand the profitability of their different products and services. They may be promoting something that’s not making them much money and not promoting a potentially more lucrative product.”

The balance sheet: “This helps to discover which assets are really serving the business,” she says, and may, for example, prompt a client to explore how many of the company vehicles on the balance sheet are being used effectively. “Do they display company branding? How many are used by salespeople? How many are used for delivery?”

The balance sheet “also gives you a great sense of the debtor and creditor relationships in financing the business. If a company is holding more inventory than they need to, how can we change the business model to have less?”

Cashflow: “This clearly shows where the money’s coming from and where it’s going; what you’re spending on your assets versus your product development versus your staff. What are your debt ratios and how are you paying off the debt? Could you renegotiate your loan(s) and do better?”

Hi-tech healthcare is here

Technology is changing the way doctors run their clinics and it’s having a dramatic impact on patient health.

Technology is the great enabler – with just a few taps on your smartphone, you can order a car or a concert ticket – and it’s transformed healthcare. Digital solutions allow you to book GP appointments online and have your claims processed on the spot.

“Digital tools are a huge opportunity for medical practices to address patient demand and, at the same time, reduce the admin associated with taking appointments, processing claims, scheduling reminders and providing general information,” says Albert Naffah, CEO of CommBank Health, a specialist arm of the bank that provides banking and digital solutions to healthcare businesses.

Research conducted for CommBank’s GP Insights Report showed that two-thirds of general practices plan to invest in more technology. The report found that 86 per cent of practices have adopted SMS and email reminders, 82 per cent have digitally integrated payments and claims and 78 per cent offer online bookings. Naffah says a better digital

experience “is already becoming an important differentiator for medicos” and that it will grow in importance.

“We heard from them that the costs of running a medical practice and access to staff are among their biggest challenges,” he says. “They want to adopt any technology that can reduce the burden on staff, such as digital booking engines. Digital solutions can also free up more time for doctors to spend with patients, deliver insights and analytics to help them better understand their needs and look after them better.” It’s here that CommBank is lending a helping hand in digitising Australian healthcare.

CommBank Smart Health is a suite of intelligent digital capabilities available for GPs and other healthcare providers, turning annoying roadblocks, such as phone bookings and paper claims, into smooth freeways – improving the healthcare journey for patients and practice managers alike. Patients can make contactless claims for both Medicare

and private health insurance on the spot through the wireless Smart Health terminal.

“We’re seeing expectations moving beyond bookings and claims,” says Naffah. “Patients want integration of more aspects of their healthcare journey. They also want portability so that if they need to go to a specialist, hospital or even just a pharmacy to fill a script, their information travels with them.”

The vast majority of Australians “are satisfied with the quality of care they receive but practices are looking for new ways to improve their experience. Younger patients and professionals are more likely to switch to practices that can offer them digital solutions.”

To find out more, visit commbank.com.au/healthcare

Need to know

Founders

Jeanette Cheah (above), 39, Chris Hoffmann, 38, Jaclyn Benstead, 38

First customer

RMIT University, 2017

Number of employees

16

Investors

Giant Leap, Draper Startup House Ventures, Aussie Angels, Scale Investors and individual angel investors

Headquarters

Remote, with HQ in Melbourne

Market valuation

Raised $1.45 million in seed capital in 2021

STORY BY JANE NICHOLLS PHOTOGRAPHY BY LAUREN BAMFORD

Disrupting tertiary education from within has been a winning course for this startup, which aims to supercharge innovation skills.

What’s the startup? An edtech company that’s “reinventing higher education so students can get the future skills they need, in less time, at a lower price and with the added adventure that comes with travel as part of education”, says CEO and co-founder Jeanette Cheah. A global top 50 university is slated to become HEX’s formal school of record partner. Before that, “we’ve had 37 universities – including ANU, the University of California San Diego, the University of British Columbia and Monash – approve HEX programs for undergraduate and postgraduate credit”.

Where did the idea come from? Cheah was part of the innovation team at ANZ. In 2015, while upskilling her economics degree from Monash with a user experience design course, she saw “all this amazing innovation” coming out of Silicon Valley. “I was with these creative, talented people in Australia who weren’t quite catching on to what needed to be done.” She dived into the startup sector, joining meet-ups and entrepreneur programs, and wondered what would happen “if we take Aussies and drop them in Silicon Valley… to see what they can absorb from the networks and mindsets of people who get things done”.

How did it get off the ground? It took 30 meetings with RMIT –“a lot of hustle” – to launch the first Hacker Exchange (HEX) tour in 2017. “We had seven students, one entrepreneur in residence and credit from RMIT University.” The immersive tours to Silicon Valley, Tel Aviv and Singapore were designed to help students learn how to bring ideas to life commercially and see there’s no such thing as a linear career path. “Because there’s academic credit attached, students can get government support to do our programs, so the business was making revenue from day one.” Co-founders Benstead and Hoffmann joined from Deakin University and the University of Adelaide, respectively. “They started as clients, became employees then co-founders.”

What have you learnt? “That I’m ready to do things six months before I think I’m ready,” says Cheah. “I’ve got that perfectionist mindset we get trained in at school and in corporate life. That can hold you back in the startup world, which demands boldness, self-belief and vision. I put off our first capital raise for ages then I said, ‘Jeanette, go out and get some cash – you know how!’”

What’s next? “We see ourselves as innovators in plain sight. Universities recognise the need for fresh, relevant, fast skills, which students can get through us. If they want to go on to a full degree, they’ve got credit for it.” This year brings HEX Ed, “a gap-year program for high-school leavers”, accredited by leading universities, including The University of Sydney, and in partnership with tech giant Atlassian. Exporting the HEX model to the US, the UK and India is also in the works.

startwithhex.com

We’re connecting farmers to carbon market opportunities.

Our specialists are helping farmers understand how sustainable practices could create new revenue streams, reduce their carbon footprint and accelerate Australia’s move to net zero.

commbank.com.au/carbon

06:15

Alarm. Then five minutes later the curtains automatically go up. The alarm is a soft bird sound. The curtains are a passive-aggressive “get up now”.

06:30

I train with friends who also run businesses. It’s as much a board meeting as it is social – getting insight into their worlds of publishing and hospitality. My job [at The Company You Keep] involves looking at things slightly askew. You have a brief and an industry and you try to find a connection between an audience and a product that is novel and captures imagination.

07:15

I take the dog [golden retriever Shirley] around the block with my partner [producer Monica Clapcott], grab a coffee and throw the ball around. Collingwood’s a tight-knit community and my house is 150 metres away from the office. You bump into people.

08:00

Every day, I make breakfast and sit down and talk to Monica, because the day becomes full and it’s nice to have bookend rituals. “Do not disturb” is on from 11pm through to 9am and all notifications are off. Rather than notifications coming to me, I need to intentionally open a device or application.

08:45

Off to a café for emails and office admin; Napier Quarter, Terror Twilight and Cibi are on regular rotation. The white noise of life and culture helps with the sometimes mundanity of administrative tasks. I try to structure my days to capture as many moments as possible to achieve a flow state so I’m completely engaged with a dialogue or in emails or a brief.

09:30

Internal meeting. We’re working as partners on a wine-in-a-can product and treating it almost like a fashion label; the product is utilitarian in how it’s displayed but the world around it is alluring.

10:30

Go to the Yarra Valley. We’ve redesigned the signage and wayfinding for Chandon and want to ensure the positioning and quality is in line with the design intent.

Clock Wise

INTERVIEW BY ALISON BOLEYN

Art has never been about the money for Rhys Gorgol, whose day includes working in the provocative gallery he opened downstairs from his Melbourne branding agency.

14:00

Session with NLP [neuro linguistic programming] coach Jo Hook. Conversations with Jo are like getting outside of myself to observe how I’m operating. Today we talk about the etymology of “responsibility” and wordplay around it: “the ability to respond”. I start to re-see the word as something positive and empowered rather than laid with burden.

15:00

1384861 2023-03-07T16:42:59+11:00

Catch-up with Andy [Kelly, artistic director], Mitchell [Zurek, designer] and Ella [Saddington, glass artist] from Oigåll Projects about an upcoming show in our collaborative gallery space. We took over the bottom floor of our office during lockdowns to engage with creatives who we may not have the opportunity to work with commercially. We’re always trying initiatives that push the team to draw inspiration from alternate sources. The work is provocative and omnipresent

within what’s also a meeting room, library and office breakout space. When clients come, it can start a conversation. It has been value-adding to every single person.

16:15

Press check. Work Works has imported a new sustainable ink made from algae that is non-oil-based and carbon-positive.

18:00

Gallery opening at 1301SW in South Melbourne, where we’ve done the branding and comms. Artist Jonny Niesche’s work is mesmerising. You can look through an almost sheer material and see colour on the back screen and on the front but as soon as you take a step away, it looks like a beautiful flat colour.

20:00

Some of us go for dinner at France-Soir in South Yarra. My team’s interests are diverse and that enriches the conversation. When we’re recruiting, we look for

passion and optimism – the ability to see the potential in everything.

21:15

Knock-off drink at Music Room, a listening bar in the city. We’ve come on board to take the ambition of the physical space – a building with four venues – and translate that to digital real estate. I think about building a life’s work. What do I want to contribute to the conversation of design, society and culture? But also, who do I want to be surrounded by? Buying my own business provided the environment to support those goals.

22:30

Go home, wind down, read a book, The Order of Time by physicist Carlo Rovelli. It’s unfamiliar to my day-to-day experience with design but I feel it informs some mental agility in me – an ability to pivot around things and to occupy multiple vantage points on a situation.

Watch this space

How good design can make workers want to return to the office.

By Alison Boleyn

As employers experiment with new ways of working and brace for further change, designers and forecasters are grappling with what “return to the office” looks like in the physical realm. Workplace design hasn’t changed much since the late 1960s unleashed the office cubicle – an innovation its designer Robert Propst later granted could “create hellholes” – so architects and property developers are turning to data and science to envision the type of office people would be happy to leave their homes for.

Photography by Jean Philippe Delberghe

On-demand layouts

The future office is a modular, adaptable space that can be reconfigured depending on needs and team size. This means a potentially smaller footprint and greater control for teams over their physical environment, says Max Navius of architecture, engineering and planning firm HDR. “There’s been a longstanding paradigm that rooms are mostly fixed and designed for permanence,” says the senior interior designer. “But conditions change. We talk a lot about ‘fixed to fluid’.”

How these spaces adapt is where experts diverge. Navius brings up mobile whiteboards, freestanding screens, ceiling electrical points and furniture on castors.

Wellbeing and inclusion

Commercial buildings’ growing interest in designing for the neurodiverse – through reducing noise, sensitive lighting and high-backed seating –still has a long way to go, says Riberti. “But we are finally understanding that if you design for neurodiversity, you are designing for everyone.”

For the London-based forecaster, wellbeing extends beyond some potted plants. “People’s needs change over the day, from concentration to interaction; they can also change after a family phone call. Design has to encourage movement between spaces.”

She sees a return to personalisation – even in a hot-desking environment, where no photos hang, there are innovations that mean people can log into desks and chairs for presets – and the comeback of the office locker. “It’s the silly things like being able to leave a notebook when you come in two days.” Younger millennials and gen Z are less anchored to the physical place, she says, but want a sense of belonging nonetheless. “Companies will need to convey a welcoming feeling of ‘this is your workspace’, no matter how shared or sectioned.”

Gemma Riberti, head of interiors at trends forecasting company WGSN, champions modularity, which “empowers people to shift furniture around and do what works for them”.

Dan Sullivan, Kova’s vice president of R&D, sees it differently. “The idea of being able to evolve your space on a minute-tominute basis seems attractive but in practice, workers see it as a high-friction exercise. If they need to move a wall to have a meeting, they’ll go and sit outside.”

San-Francisco based Sullivan, the former head of design for Google R+D Lab for the Built Environment, is observing a shift to flexible, prefabricated partitions over metal or wood stud and drywall partitions so that, as workplace needs change over months or years, businesses can just move walls and change the finishes. “You don’t need to throw everything away. People seem to be really satisfied with that level of reconfigurability.”

Tech-enabled modularity

According to EY’s Asia Pacific digital leader and partner, Will Duckworth, an evolution in office management platforms will happen alongside the rise of open-template offices. “There are loads of social reasons to return to the office but in terms of meaningful work, that means teams.” He says collaborative tools will advance to include scheduling teams. Hybrid workers on multiple projects would then come into the office at the most effective times, with spaces configured to suit team needs on any given day.

But companies aren’t going to give up the widened talent pool that a distributed workforce offers. Duckworth is also working with clients who are developing large LED wall panels that allow remote and onsite workers to sit “together” and turn to each other for a chat.

Taking a stand

The workplace has well and truly changed. Companies are going beyond the customary fruit baskets and beanbags, encouraging their staff back into the office with zen gardens and themed meeting rooms. And the humble desk is having a renaissance of its own.

“Futurologists say the desk is a ‘dying species’ but we know that people will be working from desks many years from now,” says Christoph Messing, managing director of LINAK® GmbH. The Danish company is at the forefront of technological change, working with leading manufacturers to advance the workspace environment. “Technical innovations have changed office furniture design and this evolution is enabling the survival of the desk.”

LINAK changed the game in the late ’90s when it invented the first electronically heightadjustable system for desks and it’s been refining them ever since. In 2015, in response to the numerous negative health impacts of sedentary work, Denmark made it law that office workers have “sit-stand” desks. Now height-adjustable workstations are becoming the norm, with the rest of the world catching on and realising their benefits, including the relief of back pain and an improvement in circulation.

However, employees are no longer confined to the office. With hybrid working exploding in popularity, lines are blurring between the two spaces and forcing the desk to change. “We are seeing more people want desks made with new materials that are sustainably produced without harmful substances. The demand for smaller tabletops is also increasing due to limited space

in the home office but also as a result of the changes in how we work.”

The workplace is about to get smarter, too, with intelligent desks geared to handle the ergonomics of hot-desking. New developments in artificial intelligence mean an incoming team member’s physical profile will be matched to their booked desk. “The assigned desk automatically adjusts to their optimal sitting and standing height and regularly reminds them to stand. All of this requires intelligent technology in the desk controls.”

LINAK is ensuring that the humble desk lives on by continuing to refine its DESKLINE® flexible actuator systems, intelligent control boxes and

Desk Control App, which helps workers build a healthy routine into their workday.

“The desk will have its place in offices in the future but it may just be that it looks different, transforms itself and integrates with other functionalities and services.”

To find out more about the innovative range from LINAK, visit linak.com.au/DESKLINE

The way we work is evolving and our desks are no exception, with artificial intelligence promoting a healthier office.

Designing with neuroscience

Perhaps the pandemic’s harsh glare on mental health explains architects’ widening embrace of neuroaesthetics, a science-based approach to the impact of visual and spatial stimuli on human beings. “When we enter a space, we have a biological and psychological response in

A neighbourhood feel with a hotel aesthetic

The pandemic forced many to carve out a corner of home for work and many wanted to stay there. Still, Harvard-led research shows the ideal amount of time for hybrid workers to come into the office is up to 40 per cent of their hours – two or three days a week – and Amy Nadaskay, strategic advisor to owners of branded properties, quotes her company Monogram’s research that’s found people who never come in feel they lose an ability to socialise and collaborate.

London futurist Riberti says there’s much discussion about viewing the office as a neighbourhood, with hubs and various ways to meet. “You design spaces that give people a reason to come in,” she says. “The cost of living has an impact – commuting is expensive and colleagues are discussing making their lunch versus buying it.” She’s seeing continuing attention to finishes, art and the upholstery of everything, even storage. “There’s a lot more investment into making people feel like they’re in a space that cares about itself and therefore cares about them.”

our bodies,” says Kova’s Dan Sullivan, who uses neuroaesthetics to make design decisions to, for example, subdue areas for quiet work or activate collaborative spaces. He measures visual or acoustic distractions and the impact of colours, nature, light intensity and temperature; hard versus soft edges; enriched or austere surroundings; level of enclosure and vantage point. (On that last point: neuroscience supports the wisdom that you should never have your back to a room.)

The International Arts + Mind Lab at Maryland’s Johns Hopkins University is

developing testing protocols for neuroaesthetics. “It’s not simple and it’s not all neurological,” says Sullivan of the emerging field. “It’s predicated on who we are as a person, whether or not we’ve had coffee, where we were born. But neuroaesthetics makes a valiant attempt to define these reactions through science.” He says tech companies have the appetite for risk and every motivation to use such strategies to build in micro-differentiations. “Providing the highest-quality focus space, the highest-level collaboration space, tends to give them a competitive advantage.”

Better air

From the earliest iterations, the Australian founders of TaskPod believed cleanliness would be top-of-mind for individuals working inside their one- and four-person office cubes. Each pod – there are 15 in Australian shopping centres, transport hubs and airports – has up to three high-speed fans continuously turning. The startup partnered with VBreathe to include a HEPA filter and sanitising mechanism. “Ventilation is important,” says TaskPod co-founder Tyson Gundersen. “And hygiene.”

Yet “there’s no standard of indoor air quality in Australia whatsoever,” says physicist and aerosol scientist Lidia Morawska. The director of the International Laboratory for Air Quality & Health at Queensland University of Technology is advocating for national indoor air quality (IAQ) standards, just as drinking water is regulated. Professor Morawska says she’s encountering “huge interest” from building engineers in monitoring offices’ IAQ; while buildings would require multiple sensors embedded inside their operating systems, the price of a single sensor is in the tens of dollars at most. “But like in any sector, voluntary approaches on important matters of public health don’t work; it has to be mandated.”

The “retailification” of co-working spaces

Will Kinnear, founder/director of flexible workspace consultancy Hewn, says he’s watching the same “flight to quality” in the co-working sector, too. “This is not an office anymore or real estate. This is service and hospitality.” Balder Tol, WeWork’s general manager for Australia and South-East Asia, similarly talks about needing to “blur the line between ‘corporate’ and hospitality” and focus on providing “commute-worthy” office spaces.

Co-working has had some rollercoaster years, from the lows of WeWork’s failed IPO to the reinvigoration of the industry as businesses jumped on short-term leases for newly hybrid – and sometimes fluctuating – workforces. Kinnear, who is based in the United Kingdom, has an eye on what he calls the “retailification” of the sector, saying people will choose from a spread of brands in the way shoppers in his town opt for Harrods or Primark. But unlike the heavy branding that accompanied WeWork’s emergence as a spectacular cultural moment, “people will be drawn towards a brand but not necessarily the signage. They’ll go to the space they feel represents them.” In the UK, he notes, flexible workspace provider x+why has strong environmental credentials through B-Corp certification.

Kinnear has toured some “wacky” co-working spaces in recent years; he’s seen slides, a garden shed and a darkened “Narnia” room with fake snow. “These have their place,” he says. “You have to listen to the occupiers. When you look at retail, top-end works and bottom-end works. Middle tiers get squeezed so you must offer something different.”

Data-driven design

Sensors, smart furniture and facility analysis are being used to study offices in real time. At the extreme end of data-driven design – beyond devices monitoring noise, light and temperature – are cameras that track staff over time to identify which locations they most use and like, and optimise spaces accordingly.

For HDR (which does not track employees), “D3” is about quickly testing “what-ifs” with data analytics and simulations. “Adjacency, timetable, occupancy metrics,” lists Navius. “You convert that into a lightweight 3D interactive digital model to visualise how spaces could be distributed and allocated, better utilised or reorganised in relation to current and future needs.”

The shared office building

HDR’s sustainability leader, Simon Dormer, believes that in the future, we’ll re-examine the office floor plan through the lens of needs outside the building’s original use. “During the pandemic, parts of the residential space became commercial space, in the form of the at-home office,” he says. “This could be reversed, subject to regulatory approval, with remote working freeing up commercial space to become residential.”

Sydney-based Monogram founder Nadaskay works with landlords to also think about available “non-office” space in the building – the rooftops, basements and entries (where, she points out “there’s so much same-same – a decent café operator and a vanilla lobby”). She asks instead: “How can you use those spaces to foster collaboration in the city, to have day-night use so the city becomes more vibrant?” Wherever CBDs are struggling, she says, the office building has a larger role to play.

The next steps in sustainability

A KPMG survey released this year found that one in five respondents, across all age groups, had turned down a job because the organisation’s ESG strategy did not meet their expectations. KPMG calls this “climate quitting”.

Embodied carbon, the emissions from manufacturing, construction, maintenance and demolition, can account for up to 75 per cent of a building’s carbon footprint. (The buildings and construction sector contributes 37 per cent of all carbon emissions, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.) Some owners are looking at ways to reuse and repurpose existing buildings and their furnishings. In the ANZ London office, most of the chairs, tables and desks for collaborative work have been remanufactured with used metal parts and a new powder coating; the seating’s reupholstery uses recycled materials.

HDR’s Dormer says his firm’s short-term focus includes biophilic design (connecting the built environment with nature) and “design for disassembly”, which starts with furniture and fittings that are more durable, easier to fix or are under product stewardship – the provider is responsible for taking them back for reprocessing. From there, “materials will be increasingly Cradle to Cradle Certified, meaning they’re safe, circular and responsibly made”.

Dormer says we’re likely to see a rise in the use of mass timber and an increase in products as a service, such as lighting. This model moves away from ownership to leasing, which compels the manufacture of longer-lasting products.

On board

Premiere movies, hit TV shows and absorbing audiobooks

Movies

There’s something for everyone in this selection of new films.

I Wanna Dance With Somebody

A life as large and as tragic as Whitney Houston’s almost commands multiple on-screen interpretations, which is probably why, after two documentaries exploring her abusive childhood, drug addiction and an alleged romantic relationship with her best friend, Robyn, audiences are still thirsty for more. This biopic stars Naomi Ackie as the iconic singer and Stanley Tucci (above, with Ackie) as record executive Clive Davis, the man who shaped Houston’s raw talent into a highly polished, tightly controlled machine. Rated M

Oscar-winning director Steven Spielberg turns his blockbusting lens on the past in this coming-of-age biopic based on his own family. Co-written by playwright Tony Kushner (Angels in America), who Spielberg also collaborated with to pen Lincoln and Munich, The Fabelmans hits all the right notes, arriving perfectly between raw drama and feel-good family nostalgia (hey, he is the most celebrated filmmaker of our time).

Gabriel LaBelle stands in as a young Spielberg, named Sammy Fabelman, who discovers the magic of film as a boy growing up in post-World War II Arizona, and, later, Los Angeles. Given a small camera by his mum when he’s young – and supported by his computer engineer father (played by Paul Dano, above, left) – Sammy begins filming

everything he sees and is soon directing intricate scenes with his friends. LaBelle captures Spielberg’s sensitive affability without coming off as corny and it’s fascinating to see the genesis of so many of the director’s real films in Sammy’s childhood experiences (E.T. and Saving Private Ryan, for instance).

But it’s Michelle Williams (above, right), as Mitzi, Sammy’s mother, who steals the spotlight. A former concert pianist, Mitzi is determined not to go quietly into the life of a traditional homemaker, preferring instead to shimmy and pirouette through her children’s lives, encouraging Sammy to follow his dream of movie-making. Until, that is, he uncovers her secret – one that Spielberg says he kept until both of his parents had died. Rated M

Living

The normally nonchalant Bill Nighy (above, right), best known for his role as an ageing rock star in Love Actually, transforms himself in this film into a buttoned-up bureaucrat, Rodney Williams, in 1950s London. When Williams learns that he hasn’t got long to live, a stark realisation hits him: his entire existence has lacked joy and spontaneity. Armed with this understanding, Williams decides to shrug off his uptight nature and dive into the small and large moments that light the path to happiness. Rated M

Words by Natalie Reilly

The Fabelmans

Tár Cate Blanchett (right) stars as an acclaimed composer, Lydia Tár, in what is arguably the greatest performance of her career. Ruthlessly ambitious, Tár has long enjoyed the spoils of elite artistry. Arriving as she has at the very top of her profession and surrounded by an equally pretentious cohort and sycophantic assistants, Tár is cocooned from ordinary consequences. But the suicide of one of her protégés begins to chip away at Tár’s towering sanctum of entitlement, threatening to expose not just her darker dealings within the orchestral community but her wider reputation, too. Writer and director Todd Field (critically acclaimed Little Children) – who created the character especially for Blanchett – pulls off the seemingly impossible, making a movie about the #MeToo movement (and the perpetrators) without so much as whispering those two words. The result is a subtly devastating masterpiece. The film co-stars Nina Hoss, Noémie Merlant and Sophie Kauer. Rated M

Brendan Fraser (left) stars as a morbidly obese widower, desperate to connect with his estranged daughter (Stranger Things star Sadie Sink) before it’s too late, in this shadowy melodrama from director Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan). Written by Samuel D. Hunter and based on his 2012 play of the same name, The Whale is unabashedly theatrical. Hunter, who attended a Christian school and is gay, explores tensions between the church and the LGBTQIA+ community by introducing a missionary (Ty Simpkins) who is determined to “save” Charlie. Fraser has been lauded for his sympathetic portrayal of Charlie, an optimistic recluse who teaches English online. But it’s the performance of Hong Chau (The Menu) as his nurse that shines as the most impressive and authentic in the movie. Rated M

The Whale

Television

Whatever your mood, there’s a show to match.

Romantic Getaway

Deacon (Romesh Ranganathan) and Alison (Katherine Ryan, below), want to have a baby but lacking the immense amount of money for IVF treatments, they decide to fleece their fraudulent boss (Johnny Vegas) of the �50,000 they need. It’s a fail-safe plan – until Deacon gets cocky. Rated M

Titans

This action-adventure from the DC Universe is based on the comic Teen Titans Go!, in which a band of young, fiercely attractive heroes band together to take on the bad guys. Starring Anna Diop (below). Rated MA15+

Atlanta

What began in 2016 as a comedy about music and relationships from creator Donald Glover (above), who stars as Earnest “Earn” Marks, became, in the last couple of seasons, a multilayered surrealist allegory about what it means to be Black in America. The transformation of the show into a sort of radicalised Twin Peaks has left some viewers disorientated but the acting from Brian Tyree Henry (Causeway), LaKeith Stanfield (Get Out) and Zazie Beetz (The Joker) remains unmatched by any other performers on television. Rated MA15+

Mayor of Kingstown

From Taylor Sheridan, creator of Yellowstone, comes the second season of this dynastic series about crime gangs. Jeremy Renner (left) plays Mike McLusky, who’s become the unofficial “mayor” of the Michigan town. Also featuring Aidan Gillen and Dianne Wiest. Rated MA15+

Sam Smith Live at the Royal Albert Hall

After the release of their award-winning single, Unholy, Sam Smith (below) plays two concerts at London’s Royal Albert Hall in front of a celebratory audience, with special guest Áine Deane. Rated PG

Audiobooks

Tune into these compelling stories.

The Art of Growing Up

In an increasingly complex world, how do parents nurture and guide their children into adulthood? Bringing everything he’s learnt from decades of working with and writing for young people, bestselling author and educator John Marsden presents his manifesto on parenting and childhood in the 21st century. He offers insights into a range of topics, from the role and importance of education to what he defines as a “problem parent” and a “problem child”.

The Happiest Man on Earth

How do you survive unimaginable suffering and not be defined by it? In 1938, Eddie Jaku, a German Jew, was arrested and spent seven years enduring the horrors of Buchenwald and Auschwitz concentration camps then a death march. In this memoir, Jaku, who died in 2021, tells how the Holocaust robbed him of family, friends and country but never his belief in humanity. His story is proof that the pursuit of happiness is the most effective rebuke to hate.

Allegra in Three Parts

Young Allegra is surrounded by people who love her –grandmothers Joy and Matilde and father Rick – yet these same people don’t love each other. They all live in their own worlds, divided from each other by a tragedy that refuses to remain silently in the past. In her award-winning comingof-age debut novel set in 1970s Australia, writer Suzanne Daniel makes the conflicted Allegra the lens through which her splintered family is viewed.

Connect to Qantas

Free Wi-Fi and Entertainment App

Once onboard, connect your own device to Qantas Free Wi-Fi on domestic flights in three simple steps to access the internet and Qantas Entertainment App.

STEP 1

Enable Aeroplane Mode and select the “Qantas Free Wi-Fi” network in your Wi-Fi settings.

STEP 2

Follow the prompts on the “Welcome Onboard” screen to connect.

STEP 3

Once you’re connected, you’re now ready to access the internet and the Qantas Entertainment App.

News

Enjoy unlimited access to theaustralian.com.au, afr.com.au and themonthly.com.au when you are connected to Qantas Wi-Fi onboard and in Qantas lounges.

Having trouble connecting? Make sure you are connected to the “Qantas Free Wi-Fi” network and go to wifi.qantas.com in your preferred browser to start exploring. Inflight entertainment varies by route and aircraft. Voice calls are not permitted inflight.

Inflight workout

These exercises are designed to provide a safe way to stretch and enjoy movement in certain muscle groups that can become stiff as a result of long periods of sitting. They may be effective at increasing the body’s blood circulation and massaging the muscles. We recommend you do these exercises for three or four minutes every hour and occasionally leave your seat to walk down the aisles. Each exercise should be done with minimal disturbance to other passengers. None of these exercises should be performed if they cause pain or cannot be done with ease.

Foot pumps (foot motion is in three stages)

Ankle circles

Lift feet. Draw a circle with toes, moving one foot clockwise and the other counterclockwise at the same time. Reverse circles. Rotate in each direction for 15 seconds. Repeat if desired.

In the air

Knee lifts

Lift leg with knee bent while contracting your thigh muscle. Alternate legs. Repeat 20 to 30 times for each leg.

Neck roll

With shoulders relaxed, drop your ear to your shoulder and gently roll your neck forward and back, holding each position for about five seconds. Repeat five times.

01

Start with both heels on the floor and point feet upwards as high as you can.

02

Put both feet flat on the floor. Lift heels high, keeping the balls of the feet on the floor.

03

Repeat these three stages in a continuous motion and at 30-second intervals.

Knee to chest

Bend forward slightly. Clasp hands around left knee and hug it to your chest. Hold for 15 seconds. Keeping hands around the knee, slowly let it down. Alternate legs. Repeat 10 times.

Forward flex

With both feet on the floor and stomach held in, slowly bend forward and walk your hands down the front of your legs towards your ankles. Hold for 15 seconds and slowly sit back up.

Shoulder roll

Hunch shoulders forwards then upwards, backwards and downwards in a gentle circular motion.

Mobile phones and electronic equipment: All transmitting electronic devices, including mobile phones, tablets and laptop computers, must be switched to flight mode* prior to departure. Smaller devices such as mobile phones, e-readers, electronic games, MP3 players, iPads and other small tablets may be held in your hands or stowed in a seat pocket. Unless otherwise directed by the captain, these devices may remain switched on and used in flight mode during take-off, cruise and landing. Larger electronic equipment such as laptop computers may only be used from when the aircraft seatbelt sign is extinguished after take-off until the top of descent. After landing, the cabin crew will advise when flight mode may be switched off.

Headsets: Do not use a personal single-pin audio headset in the Qantas inflight entertainment system unless it is supported by a two-pin airline headset adaptor. Personal headsets that connect via a cable

to a handheld device can be used at any time from boarding until arrival. Headsets and other devices that connect via Bluetooth must be switched off for take-off and landing but can be used during cruise.

*Flight mode enables you to operate basic functions of your mobile phone or personal electronic device while its transmitting function is switched off, meaning you cannot make phone calls or send an SMS.

Fly Well

Your wellbeing is our priority. Our Fly Well program brings together a number of measures to give you peace of mind during your flight.

Cabin air: Our aircraft air conditioning systems are fitted with hospital-grade HEPA filters, which remove 99.9% of all particles including viruses. The air inside the cabin is refreshed every few minutes, ensuring the highest possible air quality.

Inflight: The aircraft configuration, including the seats and galley, act as a natural barrier, and people are not seated face to face. The direction of inflight airflow is ceiling to floor.

Enhanced cleaning: Our aircraft are cleaned with a disinfectant effective against coronaviruses, with a focus on the high contact areas of seats, seatbelts, overhead lockers, air vents and toilets. Our people are trained in the latest hygiene protocols.

Face masks: Some destinations require you to wear a mask during your flight or at the airport. Ensure you check the latest government requirements before you travel. Your face mask needs to cover your mouth and nose, fit securely and must be worn unless you’re under 12 years of age or have a medical exemption.

Your inflight health: When flying, passengers can be seated and inactive for long periods of time. The environment can be low in humidity and the

cabin pressure equivalent to an altitude of 2440 metres above sea level. The following advice helps you stay healthy during your journey.

The importance of inflight blood circulation and muscle relaxation: When walking, the leg muscle action helps return venous blood to the heart. Sitting in the same position for a long period of time can slow this process and, in some people, leads to swelling in the feet. Some studies have shown that immobility associated with travel of longer than four hours (by air, car or rail) can also lead to an increased risk of deep vein thrombosis (DVT), or clotting in the legs. Personal factors that increase the risk of DVT include:

Age over 40 years

Personal or family history of DVT or pulmonary embolus

Recent surgery or injury, especially to the lower limbs, pelvis or abdomen

Cancer

Inherited or other blood disorders leading to clotting tendency

Pregnancy

Oestrogen therapy (oral contraceptive pill or hormone replacement therapy).

There are a number of ways to help reduce the possibility of DVT, including the following:

Avoid leg-crossing while seated

Ensure adequate hydration

Minimise alcohol and caffeine intake before and during your flight

Wear comfortable, loose-fitting clothes

During your flight, move your legs and feet for three to four minutes per hour while seated and move about the cabin occasionally

Do the light exercises we recommend here (see above) and through the inflight entertainment system.

If you have concerns about your health and flying, or you feel that you may be at risk of DVT, Qantas recommends that you talk to your doctor before travelling. Additional measures such as well-fitted compression stockings or anti-clotting medication may be recommended for high-risk individuals.

Jet lag: Unlike other forms of transport, air travel allows for rapid movement across many time zones, which can disrupt the body’s biological clock. This is commonly known as jet lag. This disruption can affect various body rhythms such as the sleepwake cycle and the digestive system, leading to symptoms such as tiredness and lack of energy and appetite. In general, the more time zones crossed, the more disruption of the body clock and the more symptoms experienced after the journey. We recommend the following to minimise the effects of jet lag.

Before your flight:

Get a good night’s rest

During your flight:

Eat light meals

Wear loose, comfortable clothing and sleep when you can

Stay hydrated – drink plenty of water and avoid excess tea, coffee and alcohol

At your destination:

If possible, give yourself a day or two after arrival to adjust to the new time zone

Go out in the daylight and do some light exercise

Try to eat meals and do other social activities at appropriate destination times to adjust to the new time zone

Cabin humidity and hydration: Humidity levels of less than 25 per cent are common in the cabin, as the outside air that supplies the cabin is very dry. The low humidity can cause drying of the surfaces of the nose, throat and eyes and it can irritate contact lenses. If normal fluid intake is maintained during the flight, dehydration will not occur.

We recommend:

Drink water and juices frequently during the flight

Drink coffee, tea and alcohol in moderation

Remove contact lenses and wear glasses if your eyes are irritated

Use a skin moisturiser to refresh the skin

Cabin pressurisation: During flight, aircraft cabin pressure is maintained to a sufficient density for your comfort and health. As the aircraft climbs, the cabin may reach the same air pressure as at an elevation of 2440 metres above sea level. Cabin pressure does not pose a problem for most passengers. However, if you suffer from obstructive pulmonary diseases, anaemias or certain cardiovascular conditions, you could experience discomfort at these altitudes. These passengers should seek medical advice before flying, as some may require supplementary oxygen. Qantas can arrange this but requires at least seven days’ notice before travelling. The rate of change in cabin pressure during climb and descent is also carefully maintained and does not usually cause discomfort. However, children and infants, and adults who have sinus or nasal congestion, may experience some discomfort because of pressure changes during climb and particularly descent. Those suffering from nasal or sinus congestion because of a cold or allergies may need to delay travel. The following advice may assist:

To “clear” your ears, try swallowing, yawning or pinching your nose closed and gently blowing against it. These actions help open the Eustachian tubes, equalising pressure between the middle ear chamber and throat. If flying with an infant, feed or give your baby a dummy during descent. Sucking and swallowing help equalise pressure in an infant’s ears. Give children something to drink or chew during descent. Consider using medication such as nasal sprays, decongestants and antihistamines 30 minutes prior to descent to help open up your ear and sinus passages.

Motion sickness: Air travel, especially if turbulence is experienced, can cause motion sickness, as it leads to a conflict between the body’s sense of vision and its sense of equilibrium. Maintaining good visual cues (keeping your eyes fixed on a non-moving object) helps prevent motion sickness. When the weather is clear, you should look out at the ground, sea or horizon. If the horizon can’t be seen, closing your eyes and keeping your head movements to a minimum will help. While over-thecounter medications are available, we recommend

you consult your doctor about the appropriate medications. More information can be found: At qantas.com.au/info/flying/intheair/ yourhealthinflight

Through the onboard entertainment system

On our information leaflet available from Qantas or your travel agent

Smoking: Government regulations prohibit smoking on all flights operated by Australian-registered aircraft. The use and charging of all e-cigarettes and other personal vaporisers are not permitted on board an aircraft. There are smoke detectors in all toilets and penalties for regulation breaches.

Travelling with children: Please ask cabin crew for help if required. Baby food and nappies (diapers) are available on most flights, while some washrooms are fitted with baby change tables. Please dispose of nappies etc. in the waste bins.

When you land

Leaving flights: On international flights, the cabin crew will distribute the necessary Customs and Immigration forms. If you are stopping en route, you will need your boarding pass to re-board the aircraft. If you’re travelling as a domestic passenger on an international flight within Australia, retain your boarding card with the large D sticker. This will be required to clear Customs at your destination.

Transferring from Australian domestic flights numbered QF400 and above to international flights: At check-in you will be issued with your international boarding pass. Your international boarding pass and baggage will be tagged through to your final destination. There is no need to claim your baggage or attend check-in at the transfer airport. Follow the signs for international transfers passengers to the complimentary transfer bus (not necessary in Melbourne and Darwin).

Transferring from international to domestic flights numbered QF400 and above: On arrival at your Australian transfer port, go through Immigration and collect your luggage. Proceed through Customs and follow the signs to the domestic transfer area to re-check your luggage. A complimentary transfer bus (not necessary in Melbourne, Adelaide and Darwin) departs at regular intervals for the domestic terminal for your connecting Qantas flight within Australia. If your connecting domestic flight is numbered QF1-QF399, there is no need to clear Customs and Immigration. These flights depart from the international terminals. Customs and Immigration clearance will be completed at your final destination.

Transferring to a Jetstar domestic flight: If your next flight is with Jetstar (JQ) or a Qantas codeshare flight operated by Jetstar (QF5400-QF5999), you will need to collect your baggage and follow the signs to the Jetstar counter to check in for your flight and re-check your baggage.

What you need to know

about

your onboard security, safety and health

Qantas security policy

The Qantas Group has a strict policy of denying boarding, or offloading any passenger who makes inappropriate comments or behaves inappropriately inflight or on the ground. Qantas will not accept any inappropriate comments as “jokes”. It will also seek to recover all costs incurred, including diversions as a result of security incidents, from those involved.

Group-wide security

Security screening is subject to the laws and regulations of the country of operation. The Qantas Group ensures that its passengers, staff and aircraft are safe and secure through an outcome-focused, risk-based approach to security management. Qantas security standards apply across the business, including QantasLink and Jetstar. A dedicated operations centre monitors global security events 24 hours a day.

Security advice

Pack your own luggage

Do not carry any items for another person Carry valuables, approved medication and keys in your carry-on baggage

All knives, sharp objects or cutting implements must be in checked baggage

Security measures can include random frisk search after consent is obtained. Passengers may request privacy and must be searched by a screener of the same gender

Important note: Security screening is subject to the laws and regulations of the country of operation.

Restrictions on powders and liquids, aerosols and gels (LAGs)

On all international flights to and from Australia: Each container of LAGs in your carry-on baggage must be 100ml or less

All 100ml containers must be placed in a single transparent one-litre plastic bag

Plastic bags containing LAGs are to be screened separately from other carry-on baggage

All powders must be screened separately with restrictions on the carriage of inorganic powders over 350ml (350g)

Passengers may still carry prescription medicines or baby products sufficient for the flight

If departing, transiting or transferring on an international flight at an Australian

international gateway airport, duty-free powders and LAGs must be sealed, with receipt, in a security tamper-evident bag issued at the time of purchase

Full-body scanners

The Australian federal government has introduced full-body scanners at international gateway airports: Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane, Cairns, Darwin, Perth, Melbourne and the Gold Coast

The Australian Federal Government has commenced introducing full-body scanners at major domestic airports: Adelaide, Brisbane, Cairns, Canberra, Darwin, Gold Coast, Hobart, Launceston, Melbourne, Newcastle, Perth, Sunshine Coast, Sydney and Townsville

At international gateway airports passengers refusing to pass through the scanner will be banned from entering the sterile area or boarding an aircraft for 24 hours

Exemptions apply for people with serious medical conditions, infants and small children, and people in wheelchairs

As per advice, the energy exposure is comparable to that from a mobile phone several metres away

There are no known safety concerns for people with pacemakers and metal implants or for pregnant women

Dangerous goods

Common items used every day may seem harmless but on an aircraft they may become dangerous. When the aircraft changes altitude, variations in temperature and pressure may cause items to leak, create fumes or catch fire.

Items that are forbidden on aircraft or have carriage restrictions include lithium batteries, other battery types, camping stoves, fuels, oils, compressed gases, aerosols, household cleaners, matches, lighters, paints, explosives (including flares, fireworks, sparklers and bonbons), emergency position-indicating radio beacons, radioactive material, biological and infectious substances and fuel-powered equipment. This list is not exhaustive so please carefully consider what items you pack for your next flight.

If you’re unsure about an item in your baggage, ask a member of our friendly cabin crew.

For further information, go to qantas.com or email dg@qantas.com.au.

Travel advice

Qantas is a partner in the Australian government’s Charter for Safe Travel. Travellers may obtain the latest travel advice for their destination by visiting smartraveller.gov.au.

Automated immigration clearance

Several countries are introducing automated immigration clearance procedures to cope with growing air-travel numbers. The goal is to provide a faster, smoother immigration experience to eligible passengers without compromising border security. Please note that some automated clearance options may not be available due to COVID. Countries providing facilities across our network:

Australia SmartGate: e-passport holders of Australia, Canada, China, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Japan, Korea, Macau, New Zealand, Singapore, Sweden, Switzerland, UK and US

China e-Channel: citizens of China

Hong Kong e-Channel Residents: citizens and residents of Hong Kong

Hong Kong e-Channel Visitors: frequent visitors that are visa-exempt, including Australians

Indonesia Autogate passport gates: citizens of Indonesia

Japan Speedy Immigration: citizens and foreign nationals with re-entry and special re-entry permits

New Zealand SmartGate Plus: e-passport holders of Australia, New Zealand, UK and US

Singapore enhanced-Immigration Automated Clearance System (eIACS): citizens, permanent residents, work permit holders and APEC cardholders

UAE eGate: UAE citizens and residents

UK ePassport gates: e-passport holders of UK, Switzerland and European Economic Area (EEA)

USA Global Entry system: US citizens and permanent residents, Dutch citizens, South Korean citizens and Mexican nationals. Canadian citizens and residents with NEXUS membership

USA Automated Passport Control: for US, Canadian and Visa Waiver Program passport holders

Fee applies

Pre-enrolment required

Byron Bay, Freycinet, a glass of wine in Adelaide

ONLY QANTAS CAN TAKE YOU TO 65 DESTINATIONS ACROSS AUSTRALIA

Quick clues

Across

10. Job (10)

11. Comic verse (8)

13. Masonic leaders (5,7)

14. Short priced (favourite) (4,2)

16. Applied author’s protection (11)

18. Jelly accompaniment (7)

20. Small child (7)

22. Dilemma (11)

23. King’s daughter (8)

26. Images printed from carved designs (8)

30. Removal from abroad by warrant (11)

31. Ultraviolet light source (7)

34. Type of covered writing table (4,3)

35. Polygraph (3,8)

36. Apprehend (6)

38. Interpreted wrongly (12)

41. Racketeer (8)

42. Children’s game (3’1,6)

Cryptic clues

Across

10. Military control of career (10)

11. Hound Chicago actor to start listening to bad poetry (8)

13. Great dog owners make outstanding chess players (12)

14. Most likely to be included in Todd’s one-liner (4,2)

16. Secured patent on variety of Egypt orchid (11)

18. Copper star dipped first in sweet sauce (7)

20. Tiny tot takes on unexpected role involving DDT (7)

22. Used false name to get inside – predict difficult situation arising (11)

23. Media gathers around in local centre to see Royal (8)

26. Apply acid to repair sign engravings (8)

30. Deportation based on letter being removed from extra edition (11)

31. Solar rays damaged palm in tanning device (7)

34. Desk where teacher starts reading class list? (4,3)

35. It has a measure of truth to it (3,8)

36. Take into custody for a breather, say (6)

38. Misunderstood domestics run off (12)

41. Gets Gran to rehabilitate thug (8)

42. Pet’s bed cleverly made with string? (3’1,6)

Down

01. Draft version of film shows jagged laceration (5,3)

02. Had a minor quarrel over being dumped (8)

03. Raced off using gas pedal (4)

04. Street patrol officer is someone unfamiliar (8)

05. Sounds heard while walking around set of pots (9)

06. Timid coyote has toe missing (3)

Down

01. Unedited movie (5,3)

02. Discarded (8)

03. Went quickly (4)

04. More peculiar (8)

05. Follow in dad’s ... (9)

06. Bashful (3)

07. Matured (4)

08. Marine arthropod (10)

09. Romantic outings sight unseen (5,5)

12. Equestrian harnesses (7)

15. Screenplay (6)

17. Unwilling (9)

19. Profound transformation (3,6)

21. Seekers hit, A World Of ... Own (3)

23. Prepare before time (10)

24. Unwilling to accept differences (10)

25. Meagre (6)

27. Adhesive (3)

28. Scoundrel (7)

29. First layer of paint (9)

31. Strictest (8)

32. Amazes (8)

33. Lampoons (8)

37. Mediocre (2,2)

39. Thatcher’s political party (4)

40. Traveller’s fatigue, ... lag (3)

07. Semi-packaged – good for wine, not milk (4)

08. Hard shell makes little difference to ocean crayfish, for example (10)

09. When a Venetian or Roman has appointments with people they don’t know? (5,5)

12. Brides left inside in restraining straps (7)

15. Handwriting that actors have to learn (6)

17. Not keen about cattle run (9)

19. Lifestyle shift caused by tide? (3,6)

21. 60 Minutes report belonging to us (3)

23. Organise in advance to quietly bring up product line (10)

24. Ten on trial appear hopelessly narrow-minded (10)

25. Secret agent covers Kim but it’s hardly adequate (6)

27. Sticky substance taken by presiding umpire (3)

28. In going under Italian country house, found criminal (7)

29. Where a shirt is worn according to primer? (9)

31. Troubled streets admit first news is most grim (8)

32. Mixed nuts and soda causes astonishment (8)

33. Rough road covered with pies for takeoffs (8)

37. Only fair that some of zoo’s ostriches are returned (2,2)

39. Conservative member goes down in history with his departure (4)

40. Water fountain made of black stone (3)

© Lovatts Puzzles

Sudoku

Tough puzzle, simple rules: each row, column and 3x3 box must contain the numbers 1-9.

Wheel of words

Create as many words of four letters or more as you can using the given letters once only but always including the central letter. Don’t use proper nouns or plurals ending with “s”. See if you can find the nine-letter word using all letters.

9 Good

13

Very good

17+ Excellent

Match-ups – Westerns

Complete the names of these Western-genre movies and find the missing words hidden in the box of letters. The letters left over will spell out the title of a classic film starring Clint Eastwood.

F U

L D

E N

F

U R

3:10 TO A FISTFUL OF A MILLION WAYS TO DIE

AMERICAN BONE AND THE SUNDANCE KID

DANCES

DJANGO DOWN IN THE LONE & MRS MILLER

MEEK’S RANGE

DAWN

FALLS

TEXAS

THE ASSASSINATION OF BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD

THE EIGHT RANGER

THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY

THE THE OF MELQUIADES ESTRADA

THE OF THE SIERRA

MADRE

THE WILD

Spot the difference

Can you spot the seven differences between these two images? Circle what’s changed on the image below.

Quiz

By Hazel Flynn

01. What city was home to Australia’s federal parliament from 1901 to 1927?

02. How many players are on a netball team?

03. Fragmentation, stun, smoke and incendiary are types of what?

04. By what name is the vegetable mangetout better known in Australia?

05. What 1972 Neil Diamond album stayed in Australia’s top 20 chart until 1976?

06. What world capital’s name is Malay for “muddy confluence”?

07. Do female walruses have tusks?

08. In what country were the Lazy Susan, chop suey and fortune cookies created?

09. Approximately how often does Halley’s Comet pass near earth?

10. What flowering plant takes its name from the Latin for “small sword”?

11. What African dictator’s self-appointed titles included “King of Scotland”?

12. Who is the co-creator and host of TV’s Drag Race franchise?

13. What science fiction author created the Three Laws of Robotics?

14. What artist is honoured in the full name of Rome’s Fiumicino Airport?

15. Olympic rowing events are held over what distance?

16. In gaming, what does D&D stand for?

17. The Noble Eightfold Path is a teaching in what religion?

18. Who are the only two people to have won both an Oscar and a Nobel Prize?

19. Russian thistle is a trope in movie Westerns under what name?

20. What is the world’s third-longest navigable river?

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Solutions

If you’ve filled in the answers, please take the magazine with you so the cabin crew know to replace it with a new copy.

Wheel of words

Fend, Fern, Feud, Fled, Flue, Fuel, Fund, Furl, Ruff, Unfed, Duffel, Duffer, Funder, Furled, Refund, Rueful, Ruffle, Unfurl, Ruffled, Unfurled. Nine-letter word: Unruffled

Spot the difference

3:10 To Yuma, A Fistful Of Dollars, A Million Ways To Die In The West, American Outlaws, Bone Tomahawk, Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid, Dances With Wolves, Django Unchained, Down In The Valley, Lone Star, McCabe & Mrs Miller, Meek’s Cutoff, Open Range, September Dawn, Seraphim Falls, Texas Rangers, The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, The Hateful Eight, The Lone Ranger, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, The Missing, The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre, The Wild Bunch, True Grit

Solution: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

Quiz

01. Melbourne 02. Seven 03. Grenades

04. Snow pea 05. Hot August Night 06. Kuala Lumpur 07. Yes 08. The United States 09. Every 76 years 10. Gladiolus 11. Idi Amin 12. RuPaul

13. Isaac Asimov 14. Leonardo da Vinci

15. 2000 metres 16. Dungeons & Dragons

17. Buddhism 18. George Bernard Shaw and Bob Dylan 19. Tumbleweed 20. The River Murray

Lachlan Dodds Watson (Parrtjima)