Treasures and Pleasures of Australia

Description

ISBN: 1-57023-060-9

By Ron and Caryl Krannich, Ph.Ds

“I would like to say how much I enjoy your…series. I have been an avid shopper and traveller for many years and it has often been difficult finding even a decent chapter on shopping, let alone an entire book. Your guides are a wonderful contribution to the industry.”
-Reader, U.S.

#1948  The treasures and pleasures of Australia are truly unique. Primarily an urban country with a sparsely populated but colorful outback and miles and miles of appealing beaches, Australia surprises many visitors who are unprepared for appealing cities offering terrific shopping opportunities, great restaurants, numerous attractions, and an exceptionally friendly people.

Exploring terrific shopping treasures and sightseeing and the dining pleasures throughout Australia, this trail-blazing book offers a very different perspective on this unique country. From the chic boutiques of Sydney’s Double Bay, Melbourne’s Toorak Road, the pearls of Broome and Darwin, and Australia’s craft towns and Outback shops comes a travel-shopping adventure of a lifetime.

Includes everything from pre-trip planning to shipping purchases home. The authors discuss how to purchase gems and jewelry, aboriginal art, and nine basic rules for successful shopping. Gives contact information for the “best of the best” in shopping, hotels, dining, and sightseeing. Another volume in our highly acclaimed Impact Guides series. 376 pages. 2000.

CLICK HERE TO READ AN EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK!

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1 – Welcome to Exciting Australia

PART I: Smart Traveling and Shopping
Chapter 2 – Know Before You Go
Chapter 3 – The Treasures and the Rules

PART II: Great Destinations (click on the city below to read an excerpt about it from the book)
Chapter 4 – Sydney
Chapter 5 – Brisbane
Chapter 6 – Cairns
Chapter 7 – Darwin
Chapter 8 – Broome
Chapter 9 – Perth and Fremantle
Chapter 10 – Alice Springs
Chapter 11 – Adelaide
Chapter 12 – Melbourne

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER I: A Continent of Unique Cities

Australia is primarily an urban nation clinging to the ocean and nearby hills with two very large cities – Sydney and Melbourne – and several intermediate cities, and numerous small towns that dot Australia’s colorful coastlines, hills, and Outback.

Shopping opportunities abound throughout this vast country of talented artists, craftsmen, and designers consisting of an amalgam of local-born whites, European and Asian immigrants, and Australia’s original inhabitants, the black Aboriginals.

Visit the shopping centers, hotel shopping arcades, department stores, boutiques, small city shops, and factory outlets to indulge your shopping fancies, but don’t forget to also venture into markets, small craft towns, and a few Aboriginal communities.

There you will have an opportunity to meet artists and craftsmen as well as discover products closely tied to the cultures and lifestyles of urban artists, eccentric craftsmen dwelling in the hills, and intriguing Aboriginals representing their Dreamtime culture in abstract designs on bark, canvas, and wood.

Australia’s cities and towns are surprising centers for acquiring some of the world’s most interesting and high quality arts, crafts, and fashionable clothes. Each city and area has its own unique character and a range of shopping strengths that differ from other cities and areas in Australia.

To shop Australia properly, you must visit its many cities and towns as well as have an appreciation for a broad range of unique Australian and imported products, from designer clothes, accessories, and souvenirs to antiques, arts, crafts, artifacts, and home decorative items produced by Australians, Aboriginals, tribal peoples of Papua New Guinea, Asians, and Europeans.

Indeed, Australia is a shoppers’ paradise for a fascinating range of excellent quality products.

Sydney, the country’s largest and most cosmopolitan city, is a wonderful place to visit and shop. Nestled along the charming Port Jackson harbor, Sydney boasts a dynamic central business district, adventuresome architecture, fine hotels and restaurants, charming neighborhoods with sidewalk cafes, and numerous cultural, entertainment, and recreational opportunities.

Sunny Sydney is a brash, enterprising, fast-paced city which offers some of the best shopping opportunities in all of Australia. It has the country’s most interesting shopping centers (Strand Arcade and Queen Victoria Building) and its most exclusive department store (David Jones) and suburban shopping area (Double Bay).

The shopping emphasis here is on clothes, accessories, jewelry, opals, souvenirs, art, crafts, and imported antiques (England) of special interest to Sydney’s cosmopolitan and up-market population as well as to the millions of tourists who come to discover this extremely livable city.

Sydney has something for everyone, from duty-free shopping and imported Italian and French designer clothes and accessories for Japanese tourists to jewelry and fine Australian, Aboriginal, and European art for collectors.

Melbourne, the country’s second largest city and elegant competitor to Sydney, is the most European of Australia’s cities. It retains much of its old world charm.

Its quaint streetcars, European architecture, parks, riverfront, museums, churches, immigrant communities, ethnic restaurants, markets, and shopping centers set this city apart from other places in Australia.

The fashion center of Australia, conservative Melbourne is a shoppers’ paradise for clothes and accessories. Here you will find the latest in Australian designer clothes in downtown and suburban boutiques, department stores, and factory outlets.

The arts and crafts are particularly well and alive in Melbourne. Antique and art lovers find many treasures in Melbourne’s numerous antique shops, galleries, and markets.

The city is also one of the major centers for Aboriginal art. Indeed, some of Australia’s best Aboriginal art galleries are found in Melbourne.

Brisbane, capital of the East Coast state of Queensland, surprises many visitors who expected a small and provincial city. This is one of Australia’s largest and most cosmopolitan, enterprising, and friendly cities which boasts great weather, a fine performing arts and cultural center, a strong crafts tradition, and the ability to attract millions of visitors to its downtown, suburban, hill, and coastal areas.

Walk through its downtown pedestrian mall, explore its colorful suburban communities and you will quickly discover a Brisbane which offers a wide range of resortwear, designer clothes, antiques, arts, crafts, and Aboriginal art and artifacts.

Adelaide is a pleasant surprise to many visitors who normally end their visit to Australia in Sydney and Melbourne or on the beaches of Queensland. A charming and festive city of beautiful architecture, spacious parks, and an inviting countryside, this is one of Australia’s major arts and crafts centers.

Shop here and you will surely leave with some lovely handcrafted items from South Australia.

Alice Springs is Australia’s true Outback, a vast, harsh land of sand, heat, and pesky flies. Situated in the Red Centre of the country, Alice Springs is a small but surprising frontier city which plays a major role in opening the Outback of Ayers Rock, desert, wilderness, and Australia’s fascinating Aboriginals to thousands of visitors each year.

Here the fashionable clothes, antiques, arts, and crafts of Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide disappear as a whole new shopping experience emerges relating to the Outback environment and culture.

Shopping in Alice Springs takes on a different character altogether as you are introduced to the culture of Australia’s original inhabitants, the desert Aboriginals, who create some of the world’s most unusual art – acrylic sand paintings representing elements of Aboriginal Dreamtime stories, woodcarvings, and silk screen fabrics.

Cairns, Australia’s gateway city to Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific, offers surprising shopping opportunities for visitors who primarily come here to soak up the sun, explore the Great Barrier Reef, and go sport fishing.

A rapidly developing city similar in size to Darwin, the once sleepy Cairns has awakened to the realities of becoming a major tropical resort destination for over one million visitors each year.

Boasting new resort hotels, shopping centers, a bustling downtown shopping mall, and nearby craft and resort towns, Cairns is a great place to shop for tribal art from Papua New Guinea, resortwear, contemporary art, and unique handcrafted items.

Darwin, a small and somewhat isolated tropical city at the Top End of the Northern Territory, is a friendly and delightful place to visit. A relatively new city since being destroyed by devastating Cyclone Tracy in 1974, Darwin is famous for its wonderful hinterland that includes the great Kakadu National Park and the Tiwi Islands.

Darwin also has a lot to offer shoppers who are interested in Aboriginal art, local crafts, and jewelry. This is also the working headquarters for the world-famous and pioneering pearl farming family and exquisite jewelers, the Paspaleys.

A city of delightful restaurants, water sports, and a major museum, Darwin also is Australia’s gateway city to Southeast Asia.

Broome is another world altogether, an exotic town with a romantic and flamboyant past centered on the fascinating development of Australia’s unique pearling industry.

It’s the stuff of adventure novels – pearl divers, shipwrecks, quirky artists, and camels and crocodiles on the beach. If it weren’t so real, someone would probably have invented this place with its colorful personalities and local adventures.

Indeed, at times isolated Broome doesn’t seem to belong to the rest of Australia. Known for its pearling industry and unique ethnic communities, balmy Broome is one of those great travel discoveries you occasionally stumble upon while on the way to somewhere else.

A gateway city to Western Australia and the nearby Kimberley region with its vast, empty, and fascinating territory, Broome is a thoroughly seductive place. Spend a couple days here exploring its beautiful beaches, fascinating pearl farms, and rugged Outback and you’ll wish you had scheduled another week in Broome.

But the real surprise in Broome is shopping. For such a small town, Broome is a shoppers’ paradise.

Even if you are not a dedicated shopper, you are likely to have a wonderful time exploring Broome’s many jewelry stores that offer pearls and Argyle Diamonds as well as visit several interesting art galleries that display some of Australia’s most interesting Outback art, especially Aboriginal and contemporary paintings.

Perth and Fremantle dominate Western Australia with their population of over 1.2 million in a state of 1.8 million. Boasting a wonderful climate for year-round sports, these are outdoor and active communities.

Friendly and inviting and lacking the congestion of other large Australian cities, Perth is a great place to spend a few days exploring the city and nearby towns to the south and east.

Shoppers discover a good range of arts, crafts, and jewelry in Perth and its surrounding suburban communities. It also offers excellent restaurants and entertainment venues for all types of travelers.

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