Guides to the things visitors ask about before they book anything: where a television town actually is, which island is which, how a football code works, and what the money in your hand is worth.
Every page says where its facts came from, and says so plainly when nobody publishes an answer.
Summer Bay is real, and you can walk it in an afternoon. It is Palm Beach, an hour or so north of Sydney: the surf club, the beach, the boathouse and the lighthouse on the hill, all free, all within a few hundred metres of each other.
The questions people actually ask before booking a Summer Bay trip, answered without the guesswork — including the two that have no answer, and why.
Six islands sit within a morning’s boat ride of Cairns, and they are not variations on one thing. Three are drowned mountaintops, two are sand banks on a reef, and one is a coral cay with a lighthouse on it.
For three weeks each winter Sydney turns its foreshore into an outdoor gallery after dark. Most of what makes Vivid famous costs nothing; most of what sells out does not.
Aussie Rules looks like chaos for about ten minutes and then resolves into one of the most legible games there is. Here is the minimum you need to follow it from a seat.
A cold, clear river running out of the oldest tropical rainforest on earth — and the one piece of practical information most visitors arrive without.
Australian money is polymer, colour-coded by value, and comes with a tax refund most visitors never claim. Here is what is in your hand and what to do with it.
Australia has no single best month. When the Top End is at its clearest the Alps are under snow, and when Sydney’s beaches peak the tropics are deep in the wet. Pick the month first, then the region.