For over 150 years, the Hunter Valley has been a wine region of great renown. With famous names such as Maurice O’Shea, Len Evans and James Halliday having made some tremendous wines there it remains an iconic Australian wine region. In fact, today more than ever before it is a fabulous place to travel through […]

When New York’s 82 year-old Gramercy Park Hotel re-opened in 2006 following a $200 million makeover, renowned hotelier Ian Schrager insisted it wasn’t just another “art hotel”.   He was referring to the surge of hotel chains that had begun to adorn their walls with big-name art in an attempt to gain credibility. Far be […]

Rocking gently in a boat off the west coast of Scotland, the Island of Islay sits off in the distance. On approach it is a relatively bare and desolate landscape; just rolling hills with only the odd group of hunched over trees in sight. Small groups of houses huddle around some of the bays, almost […]

Who can forget the polo scene in the iconic 1990 film Pretty Woman where handsome eligible bachelor Edward (Richard Gere) and the ‘escort’ Vivian (Julia Roberts) frolic flirtatiously during the divot stomp? Having removed her shoes, Vivian, a vision in brown and white polka dots, leans on Edward’s arm, flashes him her toothy smile and […]

“This is the top venue on the Gold Coast,” the driver told me as we approached the Palazzo Versace. “If you don’t like this, don’t come back.” Straight off the plane from Sydney, I, a brunette, dressed in sombre black had clearly been labelled an out-of-towner. Pulling into the heavily mosaic tiled driveway of the […]

They worked day and night; prospectors scratching at the dry, dusty ground in search of precious gold. It was the 1860s and Victoria was consumed by a gold rush, the likes of which it had never seen before, nor since. When the ore was finally exhausted, the miners departed as quickly as they had first […]

When an invitation to lunch arrives to celebrate the “world’s hottest new secret wine varietal”, it’s hard to remain suitably nonchalant. To my mind, the words ‘secret’ and ‘wine’ are seldom used together enough so it was with piqued interest I showed up to Kiwi chef Justin North’s Clarence Street restaurant, Etch (a dressed-down sibling […]