Towns

Now an unassuming dairy town nestled 920 metres above sea level in the green winding hills of the Atherton Tableland – 147km south-west of tropical Cairns – Ravenshoe has worn many...

If it hadn't been for some serendipity, the south-western New South Wales town of Temora could have, should have and probably would have gone backwards like many similar mid-sized country towns in...

In the Tasmanian town of Beaconsfield, 40 kilometres north of Launceston, the phrase “sitting on a gold mine” is more than a metaphor. Directly beneath its streets, more than a...

 A visit to Ravenswood, 89 kilometres east of Charters Towers, is like taking a journey back in time. If it wasn’t for the power lines, bitumen and occasional street light you could easily...

  Flip open a map of Tasmania and it can look as though the world has come to visit. There are towns named Bagdad, Grindelwald, Interlaken, Mangalore and Swansea, a national park named Walls...

Country towns are drawn to emphasise their association with historical characters. Gulgong, NSW, relishes its link with literary figure Henry Lawson; Glenrowan, Vic, is famous as the site of...

The stainless steel sculptures, tall and slim and glinting in the sunlight, are easily recognisable. There’s a fettler, a shunter and a fireman, a signalman, a gatekeeper and a flag lady and...

When Tom Riseley, Mick Toomey and their Aboriginal helper “Wheelbarrow” were looking for gold in the back blocks beyond Perth in 1888, they were told of a find some distance away to the east....

To many tourists travelling northwards to Queensland’s sandstone belt, the town of Injune is the last fuel stop on their way to the popular Carnarvon Gorge. But to the locals and a proportion...

NESTLED within a protective cover of river-red gums lining the Murray River, the meandering border between New South Wales and Victoria, is the historic town of Corowa – so named by the...

Imagine living in a cavity in a creek bank. You eat, sleep and do everything else in this tiny single ‘room’, not even high enough to stand upright in. There are no sanitary provisions,...

Tasmania has its fair share of ghost towns. Many were established with a single goal in mind, such as the search for gold or other mineral wealth, the housing of labour for great industrial projects...

Beth Walton stood on the verandah of the Sandstone Primary School and laid a hand on the old brick walls. “I went to school here,” she says. “It seems a long time ago and it is, but...