How to travel the world without leaving Australia…
Germany
Where: Adelaide Hills, South Australia
To put this in perspective, if the Adelaide Hills were part of a reciprocal mutual stereotyping pact with a particularly Australian area in Germany, the entertainers in the pub would be wearing cork hats, riding kangaroos and playing didgeridoos.
Hahndorf, and the surrounding towns perched above the South Australian capital, were invaded in the mid 19th century by East German and Prussian immigrants fleeing religious persecution, and the Teutonic theme has steadfastly stayed.
To scratch the theme park-esque surface, it’s worth nipping into the German Immigration Museum at the Hahndorf Academy on Main Street. For a one or two dollar donation, you can discover about the early years of settlement and how, ironically, the town was named after a Dane.
However, people don’t really come to Hahndorf for genuine education about immigrants – they come to eat schnitzels, drink Weißbier and see people wearing funny hats. For that, it’s difficult to look past the Old Mill (home of the oompah bands on the last Sunday of every month) or the German Arms Hotel.
Spain
Where: New Norcia, WA
Given their dubiously minimalist fashion sense, it’s something of a surprise to find that monks can have a real flair for design. New Norcia, about an hour and a half’s drive north east of Perth, is a case in point. It is Australia’s only monastic town, and no less than 27 of the town’s buildings are protected by the National Trust.
New Norcia came into being in 1846 when Dom Rosendo Salvado, a Spanish Benedictine monk, and ever since then, it has continued functioning as a quiet community completely detached from the rest of the world.
The strong Spanish theme runs through the town, from the architecture to the menu at the local pub. It is, needless to say, nothing like the brown pastures and wheatbelt towns that surround it.
Saharan North Africa
Where: Stockton Bight, near Newcastle, NSW
Lawrence of Arabia probably didn’t have to deal with hundreds of overgrown kids whizzing around in their souped-up toy cars… The Bight is a popular spot for many groups – fishermen, horse riders, masochistic joggers – but the most noticeable are the petrolheads dune-riding in their Toorak tractors or chugging along on their quad bikes.
However you do take on the massive dunes – and as the biggest moving landmass in the Southern Hemisphere, the beach goes for miles – the feeling that you’re conquering the great desert is inescapable.
Flanders
Where: North East Tasmania
It’s all kept a bit hush, hush, but almost half of the world’s legal cultivation of opium poppies takes place in Tassie. Understandably, given the fairly bad reputation of these colourful flowers, they’re not emblazoned over the tourist brochures, but this is a little unfair.
For a start, when they stretch as far as the eye can see, they are undeniably beautiful, and the view definitely bears comparison with the more famous fields of Flanders in Southern Belgium. Whilst not as red or as poignant as those covering the infamous World War I battlegrounds, the fields along the North East Trail from the northern centre of Launceston add an extra dimension to what is already a classic scenic drive.
The South Pacific
Where: The Whitsundays, Queensland
It’s not unknown for movie directors to indulge in utter charlatanism, but when Philip Noyce filmed Dead Calm in 1989, subbing in islands off the Queensland coast for the South Pacific, surely it was taking things a bit far?
In the plot of the early Nicole Kidman vehicle, Nic and Sam Neill had taken a yacht out to the remote southern seas to get over the death of their son. In reality, they were just jaunting around the Whitsunday Islands.
Whilst the filmmakers made a remarkably good job of passing the area off as somewhere around Fiji or Tonga without hundreds of tour boats creeping into the back of the shot, in truth, the Whitsundays are a very passable substitute.
The Netherlands
Where: Coffs Harbour, NSW
If the British hadn’t made a more forceful claim, Australia could well be Dutch – the first explorers named the continent New Holland, after all.
Dutchman Tom Hartsuyker is claiming a little piece of it back though. Clearly deciding that there weren’t nearly enough tulips, windmills and dykes in Coffs he has taken matters into his own hands.
After scouring the countryside for a suitably flat piece of land, he has religiously set about creating a 1/20 scale model of a stereotypical Dutch village. In stupefyingly pointless detail.
There’s also a clog barn attached for those who like traditional Dutch footwear…
Asia
Where: Broome, WA
Broome was pretty much founded by Japanese, Chinese and Malay pearl divers. To get an idea of the influence, Chinatown here isn’t some tucked away assortment of back streets – it’s the main commercial and business district.
To go back to the town’s pioneering days, though, you can hop aboard one of the old pearling luggers. You’ll be taken around by a pearl diver, who’ll take you through the equipment, explain what the work was like, and show you a documentary of conditions in days gone by.
This article was originally written for Ninemsn.com.au.
By David Whitley
