Discover Hobart's hidden gem where Matisse meets modern luxury
The history of the Islington and the land on which it stands crackles with characters, both dubious and upstanding. Its first European owner in 1806 was a "dangerous and troublesome" person; after the Regency-style house was built in 1847, its procession of residents included a distinguished parliamentarian who was Tasmania's premier for a time. Fast-forward to the early noughties and an enterprising, art-collecting couple transformed the house into a world-class luxury boutique hotel, its modern signature a soaring sandstone and glass atrium that today is as speccy as ever. La Vie Hotels & Resorts took over the property in 2022, unveiling a makeover late last year.
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News.com.au
12 hours ago
- News.com.au
‘What do you mean?': Half-naked trend you are allowed to be intimidated by
'What do you mean we're not wearing pants anymore?' It was a sentence uttered to me by a friend over a $35 breakfast. He was wearing a puffer jacket, because it was a Saturday, and he is a white man, and he was also beginning his journey into the five stages of Millennial fashion grief — starting with denial. While trying not to dip my boxy blazer sleeve into my smashed avocado, I had to gently tell him that this was the new world order. He then swiftly moved into anger, 'Well, that's ridiculous,' and then onto bargaining, 'Are you sure it isn't just shorter shorts?' Then he sadly spiralled straight into depression, 'I'm getting too old for these trends, and who can pull it off?' Then, eventually, he got to acceptance, 'Maybe with a trench, it'd look cool, or will I just look like a creep?' I'd just dropped quite the bombshell on him by solemnly delivering the news that pants, much like flavoured lip-gloss and berets, unless you're in Paris, not just because you've watched Emily in Paris — are out. It was better he heard it from me than discover it at the local shopping centre, in a few months. There's nothing more confronting than discovering what is cool by what the Cotton On mannequins are dressed in. It's how so many discovered the return of the mico-mini skirt. It is downright embarrassing to learn what is trendy again in the unflattering lighting of a shopping centre. It can make anyone feel like a sad middle-aged woman, no matter how young and hot they are! Not that I would know, of course. I've been grappling with the no-pants news for the last fortnight, but it has been brewing for a while. I've been treating it like an electricity bill and ignoring it, but at this point, I'm going to accept it because celebs are going everywhere without pants! They're at dinners, on Instagram, swanning around fashion events, and heading to red-carpet events. I can't stress enough that they're doing all this without pants! Hailey Bieber was seen rocking a trench without pants, and Kristen Stewart has been doing the no-pants dance. Dakota Johnson was seen ditching pants just after her reported break-up with the man Gwyneth Paltrow consciously uncoupled from, Chris Martin. Oh yeah, and he is in Coldplay too. Even Charli XCX has been known to leave her pants at home, and we all know whatever she's doing is cool; this is the woman who managed to reference her birth control in a song, and it wasn't cringe. We should have seen it coming when Sabrina Carpenter, under the instruction of Pharrell Williams, wore no pants to the Met Gala. Pants much like a footballer's career after a knee injury are over. I don't have any problem with celebrities not wearing pants, like they're celebrities, if they're being weird, I'm more entertained, so go for it, but I know what happens when a trend goes mainstream. It goes from something you see looking edgy on red carpets to something you see looking wrong on someone at Kmart. While my friend may have reached acceptance. I think I'm still in the bargaining phase. 'Okay fine no pants are in, but can we just please not see anyone wearing them at the supermarket?' Everyone's got a line, mine is drawn at no pants in the frozen section.
The Advertiser
a day ago
- The Advertiser
First whales return to Hunter waters as Humpback migrations begins again
To sail down the coast, just far enough off the shoreline to see the breakers curl away from you and throw a mist in their wake, as the houses recede into a pattern of specks, is to feel somehow out of time. A Ulyssean sea gradually clears as the muddy brown of the Hunter River after the flood drains into the unfathomable volume of the ocean. It is an awesome scene. Even on a blustery and clear-cold day on the water, as the Coast XP tour boat throws the occasional mist as it rode along on the swell, there is a sense of escaping to a natural panorama. Then, it happens. A massive whale crests the surface and blows a spout of breath and water into the air before sliding back into the deep, trailing a broad and prehistoric tail encrusted with barnacles. The humpbacks are travelling north again. Some 45,000 whales are expected to make the long swim north, passing the Hunter in what is colloquially termed the Humpback Highway, on their annual migration to warmer waters to calf and breed. Commercial whaling, which began in Australia shortly after European colonisation and continued until 1978, had devastated whale numbers after southern right and blue whales became scarce and hunters began targeting humpbacks on the east coast killing thousands. A permanent ban on whaling was introduced at the end of the 1970s and, scientists posit, favourable environmental conditions resulted in an abundance of food, whale numbers have been growing over the past few decades. The whales swim almost 10,000 kilometres in the annual migration, the sight of which injects around $53 million into the Hunter's tourism economy annually. To sail down the coast, just far enough off the shoreline to see the breakers curl away from you and throw a mist in their wake, as the houses recede into a pattern of specks, is to feel somehow out of time. A Ulyssean sea gradually clears as the muddy brown of the Hunter River after the flood drains into the unfathomable volume of the ocean. It is an awesome scene. Even on a blustery and clear-cold day on the water, as the Coast XP tour boat throws the occasional mist as it rode along on the swell, there is a sense of escaping to a natural panorama. Then, it happens. A massive whale crests the surface and blows a spout of breath and water into the air before sliding back into the deep, trailing a broad and prehistoric tail encrusted with barnacles. The humpbacks are travelling north again. Some 45,000 whales are expected to make the long swim north, passing the Hunter in what is colloquially termed the Humpback Highway, on their annual migration to warmer waters to calf and breed. Commercial whaling, which began in Australia shortly after European colonisation and continued until 1978, had devastated whale numbers after southern right and blue whales became scarce and hunters began targeting humpbacks on the east coast killing thousands. A permanent ban on whaling was introduced at the end of the 1970s and, scientists posit, favourable environmental conditions resulted in an abundance of food, whale numbers have been growing over the past few decades. The whales swim almost 10,000 kilometres in the annual migration, the sight of which injects around $53 million into the Hunter's tourism economy annually. To sail down the coast, just far enough off the shoreline to see the breakers curl away from you and throw a mist in their wake, as the houses recede into a pattern of specks, is to feel somehow out of time. A Ulyssean sea gradually clears as the muddy brown of the Hunter River after the flood drains into the unfathomable volume of the ocean. It is an awesome scene. Even on a blustery and clear-cold day on the water, as the Coast XP tour boat throws the occasional mist as it rode along on the swell, there is a sense of escaping to a natural panorama. Then, it happens. A massive whale crests the surface and blows a spout of breath and water into the air before sliding back into the deep, trailing a broad and prehistoric tail encrusted with barnacles. The humpbacks are travelling north again. Some 45,000 whales are expected to make the long swim north, passing the Hunter in what is colloquially termed the Humpback Highway, on their annual migration to warmer waters to calf and breed. Commercial whaling, which began in Australia shortly after European colonisation and continued until 1978, had devastated whale numbers after southern right and blue whales became scarce and hunters began targeting humpbacks on the east coast killing thousands. A permanent ban on whaling was introduced at the end of the 1970s and, scientists posit, favourable environmental conditions resulted in an abundance of food, whale numbers have been growing over the past few decades. The whales swim almost 10,000 kilometres in the annual migration, the sight of which injects around $53 million into the Hunter's tourism economy annually. To sail down the coast, just far enough off the shoreline to see the breakers curl away from you and throw a mist in their wake, as the houses recede into a pattern of specks, is to feel somehow out of time. A Ulyssean sea gradually clears as the muddy brown of the Hunter River after the flood drains into the unfathomable volume of the ocean. It is an awesome scene. Even on a blustery and clear-cold day on the water, as the Coast XP tour boat throws the occasional mist as it rode along on the swell, there is a sense of escaping to a natural panorama. Then, it happens. A massive whale crests the surface and blows a spout of breath and water into the air before sliding back into the deep, trailing a broad and prehistoric tail encrusted with barnacles. The humpbacks are travelling north again. Some 45,000 whales are expected to make the long swim north, passing the Hunter in what is colloquially termed the Humpback Highway, on their annual migration to warmer waters to calf and breed. Commercial whaling, which began in Australia shortly after European colonisation and continued until 1978, had devastated whale numbers after southern right and blue whales became scarce and hunters began targeting humpbacks on the east coast killing thousands. A permanent ban on whaling was introduced at the end of the 1970s and, scientists posit, favourable environmental conditions resulted in an abundance of food, whale numbers have been growing over the past few decades. The whales swim almost 10,000 kilometres in the annual migration, the sight of which injects around $53 million into the Hunter's tourism economy annually.
Sydney Morning Herald
a day ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
The last 800m to one of Australia's most historic spots is the toughest part of the trek
This story is part of the June 8 edition of Sunday Life. See all 14 stories. The final 30-odd kilometres of unsealed road to Cape York are perhaps its roughest. Starting from Bamaga, one of five Indigenous communities strung out across the Northern Peninsula Area, a single-lane track plagued with potholes and bulldust cuts through tangled rainforests inhabited by one of the last remaining cassowary populations in Queensland. The turn-back point for the less determined is at The Croc Tent, a roadside souvenir store stocking anything and everything related to the region, including crocodile snow domes and 'Snappers', a kind of male g-string that comes in one size only: XXL. Especially popular are garish, fishing-themed polo shirts that have been adopted as an unofficial uniform in this isolated part of the world. Following a tricky creek crossing further along the track, motorists travelling almost exclusively in four-wheel-drives must pass the decaying remains of the Cape York Wilderness Lodge, which closed for renovations in 2002 and never reopened. From there, the end of the road is in sight. Our final stop is a gravel clearing beside the sweeping sands of Frangipani Bay, just 800 metres from continental Australia's northernmost tip. It has taken our Outback Spirit tour group nine days to reach this point after starting our journey in Cairns, more than 1000 kilometres south. But from here, we must continue on foot. To make it this far, we'd travelled up the coast to Cooktown before turning inland across the Great Dividing Range. After departing the dripping wet Daintree rainforests, the remainder of our journey traversed savannah woodlands bordered by sandstone escarpments and crocodile-infested wetlands. While we were able to ride out the bumps and corrugations in the comfort of our rugged coach, thoughts were spared for those who preceded us. Loading The first European overland attempt to reach Cape York, an area inhabited by Indigenous people for tens of thousands of years, was led by Englishman Edmund Kennedy. Kennedy's 13-strong expedition party left Rockingham Bay in 1848, aiming to establish a route to the tip so that a port could be developed for trade with the East Indies. All but three of the group perished and the expedition failed. A further 17 years passed before two brothers, Frank and Alexander Jardine, made it all the way to the tip, opening a corridor for a telegraph line that would connect Laura, west of Cooktown, with Thursday Island, in the Torres Strait. After four years of toil and hardship, it was completed in 1887. In 1928, two New Zealanders followed the telegraph line to reach the cape in an Austin 7 car. It took them 38 days, with quicksand, forest fires and an average of 25 punctures a day slowing them down. At night, the two slept in the open on a bed of gum leaves, wrapped inside a mosquito net.
