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Melbourne’s secret rooftop terrace

With an address on Exploration Lane it’s no surprise Fraser Place Melbourne makes for a choice home base while you delve into Melbourne’s finest wares. After all, sampling expertly roasted coffee in Degraves Street, lining for Chin Chin’s exquisite sashimi and clinking icy beers at Rooftop Bar – all a short stroll away through the city’s famous laneways – make for time very well spent.

So you might be surprised if someone suggested you grab a bottle of plonk and hole up at said serviced apartments instead.

But that’s exactly what you should do.

Gracing the top floor of one of Fraser Place’s two high-rise towers is a rooftop terrace that no one seems to have noticed. Not even Melburnians, who love nothing more than to hangout on the summits of buildings before anyone else beats them there. Especially if the entrance is down an alleyway.

Decked out with tables and comfy chairs, potted succulents and planters flush with fresh herbs, this terrace offers prime cityscape viewing reserved solely for apartment guests. And with its orientation – poised on the structure’s western-facing front – it’s just where you want to be when sunset spills between the skyscrapers, sending golden light to dance upon the glass, giving off tones of peach, silver and aquamarine.

From here, it doesn’t take much navigating to find the Queen Victoria Market, less than a 20-minute walk away. Stock up on fresh fruit, vegetables and fine cuts of meat to prepare in the apartment’s kitchen. But you’ll find the market’s real treasure trove is the Art Deco deli hall. You should emerge with parcels of spicy salami, garlic-laced olives, a Tasmanian cheddar or a Gippsland blue – the makings of a superb terrace picnic.

For the accompanying wine, though, there’s nothing better than buying a bottle direct from the source. And some of Victoria’s best grapes ripen on vines in the Yarra Valley, just an hour’s drive away. So Fraser Place has teamed up with Autopia Tours to transport guests wishing to indulge in some of life’s finest pastimes (read: imbibing wine, feasting on exquisite cuisine and savouring morsels of silky chocolate) out to this picturesque region.

On this small group day trip you’ll watch the city awaken yet still be sipping Yarra Valley strawberry liqueur by 9.30am over platters of cheese and relish. You’ll let loose on wines at three vineyards, as well as a cider house and brewery, try your hand at pétanque (winner takes home a bottle) and sample bite after bite of rocky road at a chocolaterie, where flavours range from maple candy bacon and Golden Gaytime to ginger and lemon myrtle and matcha tea.

This is the type of destination that shows off each season, so be sure to peer beyond your glass throughout the wine-soaked journey. In autumn the leaves turn brilliant merlot-red and egg-yolk yellow and mobs of kangaroos thump around the vines. Winter brings mist to cloak the valley, while roaring wood fires in tasting rooms warm chilly limbs and glasses of award-winning pinot take care of mouths and bellies. Spring promises sprightly new leaves. And in summer: endless blue skies.

After unearthing a bounty of liquid gold, your pioneering team will return you to Fraser Place Melbourne, just in time for a sunset drink on your very own VIP terrace.

The Art of Travel

The sight is breathtaking. Never, anywhere in Australia, have I seen such a density and diversity of Aboriginal art on the one rock wall. Tens of thousands of years of history’s pages have been laid on top of each other. Each tells stories of lives lived and game hunted, rituals and spirit figures, strange visitors and the arrival of guns in Australia. There are faint purple ochres, reds and yellows, more recent white-ochre paintings and, most recently of all, blue paintings using Reckitt’s Blue soap – a sort of washing powder that came with the Christian missionaries. The layers of subject matter could form an encyclopedia.

There is a magpie goose drawn X-ray style with a yabby in its stomach. There are barramundi, dugong, sawfish, Macassan traders, stingrays, a man smoking a pipe, two rifles and enough handprints to form a deafening round of applause.

But it is silent. It is a privilege just stepping on this hallowed ground, let alone witnessing this majestic spectacle, and our small party is suitably reverential. On the floor of this protected cave are circular grooves where people over thousands of years have ground ochre. In the corner, stashed into a crevice, is an ancient skeleton, now a bundle of sticks and bleached bones.

Injalak Hill in Arnhem Land is one of the richest Aboriginal art sites in the world.
Click to view gallery

We’re near Mt Borradaile, in a special area of north-west Arnhem Land, where visitors are welcomed and introduced to its splendour. More than 30 years ago, a buffalo hunter called Max Davidson stumbled upon the incredible art of the area and over time he was given permission to run a tourism venture here. The multi-award-winning Davidson’s Arnhemland Safaris has now been running for 31 years, introducing about 700 people each year to Arnhem Land’s beauty, rich wildlife and culture.

And as Max knows, the 700 square kilometres of land he cares for is extraordinary.

“There’s so much art here, some I’ve never even been back to,” he says. “We find some stuff that is so remote you can be assured that no white person has ever seen it before. We find ceremonial areas; we find artefacts – it’s really mind blowing.”

Clare Wallwork, Davidson’s Arnhemland Safaris guide, walks us through the catacombs.
Click to view gallery

As a special treat for repeat guests, Max and his capable crew sometimes organise special off-track exploratory trips, where they go looking for more hidden treasures.

Even the campsite here is a bit of a hidden treasure. It has an inviting pool, deluxe cabins, tented cabins with ensuites and a swish new bar and lounge. It’s about an hour’s flight from Darwin, though it’s more fun to drive a 4WD through Kakadu and then into Arnhem Land. Either way, you’ll need a permit to explore Arnhem Land’s secrets, but Max will take care of all of that for you.

We make sure to include on our permit a stop at the Injalak art centre at Oenpelli, so we can see today’s painters and screen printers at work. We also take the time to do the Injalak Hill tour to get an introduction to the wealth of rock art.

Once at Davidson’s camp, all tours, food and accommodation are included, so you only have to pay for alcohol; don’t be tempted to BYO, as it’s illegal to bring alcohol into Arnhem Land.

We meet our tour guide, the tough-as-nails Clare Wallwork, a long-term outback guide whose safari singlet top reveals arms rubbed raw from mozzie bites. We accelerate through the savanna of woollybutts, stringybarks, livistonia palms and pandanus in a 35-year-old 4WD, which is missing its windscreen and various other bits. “I’ll just turn up the aircon a bit,” jokes Clare.

Suddenly she pulls to a halt beside a massive termite mound. “The soil here is really rich in iron, which is why some of the termite mounds are so red. When the women were menstruating they used to grab chunks of the termite mounds and eat it.”

Clare then points out a billy goat plum, with small green fruits the size of an olive. “These plums are said to have 50 times more vitamin C than an orange,” she says. “A lot of early explorers and white settlers would be sitting under a billy goat plum, dying of scurvy, but they wouldn’t touch it because it was supposedly the food of savages.”

Next Clare introduces us to soap bush, quinine trees and flowering turkey bushes. “They are used for aching joints,” she says, rubbing the leaves and purpley pink flowers together to make a pungent lemony scent. It even smells medicinal.

Later, on a walking tour, we pass a paperbark swamp with frog-mouth lilies and flowering wattles, to an area of carved out dark catacombs with hidden rock pools and microbats flitting around. Rock figs stretch up and around the entrance to the catacombs. More art adorns the walls, including simple figures standing in a line holding hands as if they were dancing.

In one secret little hidey-hole is a cache of artefacts, which show the eons and clash of cultures here – a ball of beeswax, wooden spear points, balls of ochre, fire sticks, a stone adze, a tin matchbox and a hand-carved rosewood domino. “This was found exactly like this,” Clare says.

After a much-needed dip in a stunning pandanus and paperbark-lined waterhole, we cruise on to a three-kilometre lily-covered billabong, surrounded by thousands of waterbirds.

The sun sets and paints the sky and water gold, orange and yellow. Whiskered terns fly over the water. Darters, pied cormorants and comb-crested jacanas are everywhere. Not to mention rainbow bee-eaters, spoonbill, green pygmy geese and night herons among the freshwater mangroves, brolgas, jabirus and dragonflies.

As the last colours of sunset disappear, the egrets become thick in the trees, and magpie geese form lines in the sky, weaving the ongoing story of Arnhem Land into the ancient tapestry of the landscape itself.

Binge on seafood at Aitutaki’s best cafe

If eating dinner in the extension of a stranger’s living room sounds unappealing then Tupuna’s might not be the restaurant for you. But if the prospect of devouring home-cooked fare with your feet in the sand lights your fire then read on.

The only independent restaurant on the island to offer fine dining, Tupuna’s is a masterclass in casual culinary decadence. The chilli lime fish – an updated take on local classic ika mata – is a house special. Chunks of lime-doused raw fish fill a coconut shell, adorned with a side of the Cooks’ ubiquitous arrowroot fries – dense, nutty shards with crisp edges and rich, buttery centres.

Fish is always the flavour of the day in this tropical archipelago, and the plump fillets of freshly grilled wahoo and tuna (the catch of the day), served with a medley of charred, caramelised and slightly bitter root vegetables, won’t disappoint.

There’s a cosy country kitchen vibe, with a colour palette of creamy yellows and cool orange, and a warm clutter of bits and pieces: pans dangle from the ceiling; paintings of idyllic seascapes line the walls, illuminated by tea lights; glasses and teapots knock shoulders on shelves next to cookbooks and a blackboard scrawled with specials.

If the portions prove too huge to handle then three-legged Soda, the resident moggy, will likely lend a helping paw.

Sleep in a beachside treehouse

Glamping doesn’t get much more glamorous than sinking into a four-poster bed and listening to the waves of the South Pacific. Set just metres from the ocean, the two canvas abodes at Hidden Cove Eco Retreat make opulence eco-friendly on Vanuatu’s largest island. Timber floors, French doors and a tub for two add an eau de Europe in the Tented Pool Villa, while the second tent sits pretty on a platform in the treetops. The dining pavilion is well-stocked with staples and a barbecue to help make self-catering a breeze, although the option of a candle-lit, in-room, degustation dinner may prove too tempting to forego.

By day, pass your plunge pool and scurry down the ladder into tropical water where coral grows a short paddle away, or kayak the coast and spot turtles and dugongs gliding through the water. The more adventurous can jump on an electric bike and explore the local surrounds, or make like a rom-com protagonist with a sunset horse ride on the beach, while lazy days call for a massage on the deck. By night, hunker down in a kava bar in Luganville or wander the empty beaches and admire the stars.

Dip into outback eco-luxury

Picture this: 16 spacious wilderness tents just metres from white, sugar-soft sands, spectacular coral and rugged limestone ranges. Hidden in the sand dunes of WA’s Cape Range National Park, at a rather enviable spot where bush and sea brush shoulders, Sal Salis offers all the creature comforts of a five-star stay. There’s a springy bed, 100% organic cotton linen, fluffy bath towels, an  ensuite bathroom, a bar and top-notch grub – but at minimal impact to the environment. Almost 100 per cent of the camp’s power comes from solar energy, the toiletries provided are all eco-friendly and the toilets are waterless and composting.

This exclusive camp invites total back to basics relaxation, though the surrounds yell “come explore”. From slipping into the cerulean waters to stare wide-eyed at pods of humpbacks and whale sharks, to scrambling across the red earth and scrubland of the vast Mandu Mandu Gorge, Mother Nature has produced some sterling work in this corner of the world.

Come eye to eye with humpback whales

“Now! Now! Now!” yells Nat, her voice an excited, high-pitched squeal. “Here he comes!” We’re sitting on the back of our boat, Wave Rider, fins on but struggling to get our masks over our faces. “Go,” yells Murray, the captain, from the boat’s fly bridge as he points to a spot in the distance. Nat is in before all of us and wildly waving and pointing to where she wants us to go. There is a frenzy of flailing arms and fins as five of us swim toward her. “Heads in,” she implores, and I’m under, staring into the blue. The water is crystal clear, but the depth makes it almost inky. Then a shape appears ahead of us, gliding gracefully towards our group.

He comes so close I can see the barnacles on his chin and, I’m sure, a glint in his eye as he rolls to flash his massive, white-ribbed belly. Time stands still as he disappears into the distance, and it is almost silent but for the faint songs of his migrating mates. There is a sense of peace I cannot describe. But it is the sheer size of him – he’s like a submarine and so, so close – that makes the moment seem unreal. I feel so insignificant and, in a way, I am.

If you’re heading to the South Pacific and are looking for a point of difference from the obligatory beach view paradise, why not stay on a volcano? The island of Tanna, a 50-minute flight south of the capital Port Vila, is home to one of the world’s most accessible active volcanos, Yasur.

White Grass Ocean Resort is located on the coastline of Tanna island and features villa style luxury in classic Pacific Island style with private balconies, natural thatching, and local timbers positioned amidst stunning tropical gardens. It is also home to one to the most accessible volcanos in the world, Mt Yasur and you can get up close and personal by walking up to the crater of the rim.

Take a 4wd out to the volcano, snorkel around the pristine reefs and blue holes or chill at the resort with a professional trained masseuse using Tanna’s own virgin coconut oil and volcanic products.