While many towns may consider street art to be a public nuisance or at best a civic experiment, street art actually saved the town of Sheffield, Tasmania. Sheffield is located about fourteen miles inland of Tasmania’s northwest coast.

Sheffield was a thriving little town while several hydroelectric plants were being built in northwest Tasmania. By the mid-1980s though, the construction had finished, and the town shared in the area’s general decline. The town’s leaders looked for inspiration to the other side of the world, in Canada, in a small town on Vancouver Island called Chemainus.

Also facing an economic decline, Chemainus had begun painting murals on its buildings, which drew visitors and revenue. The citizens of Chemainus credited the murals with saving the town.

Sheffield decided to give murals a try too. In 1986, John Lendis painted the first mural, and Sheffield rebranded itself as the Town of Murals. 

​Sheffield encouraged artists, commissioning and creating murals for the town's buildings.  Many of the murals depict the area’s history and life in the town’s early days. The emphasis on having an enormous outdoor art gallery of more than 100 murals worked, and now Sheffield is a tourist destination.

The town now hosts a yearly International Mural Fest, where nine artists paint works based on one theme. The winning murals are then displayed in Mural Park for the next twelve months, ensuring that returning visitors can see new artwork.

Sheffield offers more information about each mural on a website, and the Visitor Information Center has both a map and a self-guided audio tour.

What a wonderful way to spend a morning—looking at the paintings that saved a town. 

Thirty minutes away from Canberra, at the top of a hill in Sutton, New South Wales, is an astonishing sight: a stone circle reminiscent of Stonehenge.

Unlike many people, when Robbie Wallace saw a pile of boulders, his first thought was to build Stonehenge on his own property. Robbie, who has an earth-moving business, was tasked by a local sheep farmer to get rid of the large rocks sticking up in his paddocks. The columns of blue granite reminded Wallace of Stonehenge, so he called his wife Tracey and asked her to find him a map of the site. When Tracey came home, she found the stones Robbie had hauled away, one of which weighs about 17 tons, in a line at the top of the hill. When asked how she felt about creating their own circle of stones, her response was, “What a great idea!” Over the next few weeks, they planned their “Henge,” drawing from plans of Stonehenge and their own imaginations. The result is magical on a cold, foggy morning, about a week before the winter solstice.​​

The Wallaces are passionate about their stone circle, and Robbie takes photographs in every type of weather and light. Those pictures are featured on their website’s photo gallery and Twitter feed. ​

While the Henge wasn't built to be a tourist attraction, people have wanted to see it. The circle of stones draws a wide range of visitors who come for book launches, Halloween parties, photography tutorials,  ghost tours, weddings (including one where all the participants were cosplayers), and druid ceremonies. Everyone finds something different in the circle of stones, and Tracey Wallace explains, "We let them take from it what they want."

Anyone interested in visiting the Henge can contact the Wallaces via email and make an appointment.

In the National Automobile Museum of Tasmania is a green 1974 Holden Monaro HQ GTS in completely original condition. Even though I know nothing about cars, it didn’t take long for me to recognize how special this one is.

To understand why, imagine a foggy night in early January 1975 on the Tasman Bridge in Hobart. In the Derwent River below, a bulk ore carrier, called Lake Illawarra, collided with several pylons of the Tasman Bridge. A large section of the bridge deck collapsed, falling into the river and onto the ship. The ship sank, and seven of its crew died. Four cars failed to stop in time, plunging into the river, killing five occupants.
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The green Holden Monaro was balancing precariously on what was left of the bridge.

Frank Manley was the driver of that new car. His wife Sylvia was with him, along with their daughter and her uncle in the back seat. As Frank later recollected, the lights had gone out on the bridge, so they thought there had been an accident. His wife realized the bridge was gone when the road’s white line disappeared. She yelled for Frank to stop, and he hit the brakes. 

“Next thing,” Frank remembered, “we dropped over, and the wife said, ‘Put her in reverse!’ And I said, ‘Bugger reverse, get out!’” Frank explained later, “The back wheels were off the concrete, off the bridge, and if I had put her in reverse, I think the vibration would have sent us the rest of the way off the bridge.”

Frank and his family escaped the car. Since the bridge collision had happened on a Sunday night, there was very little traffic, with few cars on the bridge. The disaster had cut the main artery to Hobart’s eastern suburbs, causing major disruption.​

The repairs to the bridge took nearly three years. It reopened in October 1977. Frank Manley continued to drive his Holden Monaro.
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Every museum is filled with objects that defied the odds, that lasted long enough to make it to a museum. This car, however, feels like a particularly lucky survivor.

The power of water does weird and wonderful things to the southern coast of Tasmania. Strong winds from the southwest create pounding waves that attack the rockface and erode the coastline. In addition to the Tesselated Pavement, three other sites on the Tasman Peninsula illustrate the remarkable power of water: The Blowhole, Tasman Arch, and Devils Kitchen.

Before looking at The Blowhole, here’s a primer on how water forms caves. Imagine the sea as it crashes against the base of cliffs. The waves carry sand and rock debris, which act like a big horizontal piece of sandpaper, cutting a notch into the vertical rockface until a crack or joint is reached. Compressed water and air wedge in the crack, forcing the rock apart. Continued erosion makes a cave longer and wider.

The Blowhole was a sea cave and tunnel until the roof at the back of the tunnel collapsed. The result was a broad arch with a blowhole behind it.

Eventually, the water will cause the rest of the arch to collapse as well so that it looks more like the next formation.

Devils Kitchen was likely a sea cave and then a tunnel. The waves over many thousands of years have eroded the rock, causing the roof to completely collapse. The water follows its inexorable path, cracking joints to create new caves in the rockface.

The Kemal Ataturk Memorial recalls the heroism and sacrifices made by soldiers on both sides. Rather than demeaning adversaries or seeing them somehow as less than human, it asks us to instead acknowledge our shared humanity—a worthwhile thing to do on ANZAC day.

Yarralumla is a southern suburb of Canberra, located around 3.5 kilometers (2.2 miles) away from the city. Although the formal suburb was established in 1928, the land has been known as Yarralumla for a much longer time, at least since 1834, when the area owned by Sydney merchant Henry Donnison was given the name in a land survey. The word “Yarralumla” comes from an aboriginal word meaning “echo.”

The streets in Yarralumla have the names of governors and botanists, such as Hopetoun Circuit, named for Australia’s first governor-general, and McGillivray Street, named for botanist Donald McGillivray.

Yarralumla stretches along the southwest bank of Lake Burley Griffin. The lake was created in the early 1960s by blocking the Molonglo River with a dam. Many Canberrans are drawn to the lake, to enjoy the outdoors and have some fun. On a recent visit, I was struck by the sunny yellows all around me.

Like the Canberra suburb of O’Malley, Yarralumla is home to more than 30 embassies and high commissions. Eight of the countries represented in Yarralumla feature yellow in their flags.   

We ended the day’s beach odyssey with Glenelg, located on Holdfast Bay, only 20 minutes from Adelaide’s central business district. This beach is the busiest, with something for everyone. People can enjoy snorkelling, scuba, and boating. A Ferris wheel is only one of many kid-friendly spaces. Others include a splash park, pedal cars, water slides, trampolines, and climbing activities. Cinemas, restaurants, and shops line the historic streets. Established in 1836, Glenelg is the oldest European settlement on mainland South Australia.