Latest news with #ChrisGuillebeau
Hindustan Times
10-08-2025
- General
- Hindustan Times
Book Box: How to stop calculating time
I need a minute to breathe. I need a minute to make a list of everything I need to do - to pack ten sets of clothes, my laptop, my tablet, my Kindle, each with its own charger for my trip to Manali. I need a minute to help the September baby with her to-do list - buy socks, get foreign exchange, and get a suitcase to replace the old one that has squeaky wheels. I need a minute to get out my saree and mix and match one of my embroidered blouses and to lay this out before I get ready for the shareholders meeting I must attend. I need a minute to gather up the girls' debris, the paper and plastics scattered all over the room as they sit about and try on budget clothes they have ordered from an online store. I need a minute to centre myself - to move mentally away from our weekend trip to the Kochi backwaters to celebrate my mother's 80th birthday. Three days of being with the three generations of our family had amazing moments. There was the afternoon the family got together to put on a show for my mother - there was me reciting family favourite The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, my sister singing a song, my brother doing a standup routine, our children doing skits. All good; but too much emotion is overwhelming. I need a minute to recover. I need a minute to decide which books to take with me to Manali - can I carry Love the House You're In, a book I constantly refer to these days? And can I also take The CIA Book Club, a gift from my friend Shilpi. Can I also take The God of the Woods ? I need a minute to breathe. I need a minute to sit down with the girls and enjoy just being with them, before the September baby goes away to spend the next two years studying, coming back only for tiny holidays in between. I need a minute to slow down. I need a minute to go get coffee. I need another minute and another and another to drink the coffee. I need a minute to read the newspapers lying on the dining table - to read about twenty five percent tariffs and the trade wars and the story of the man arrested at Mumbai airport for smuggling hydroponic weed worth Rs. 14.5 crore. I need a minute to rearrange my books - to collect the books on happiness scattered all over the house and put them together, and those on China for a China shelf. I need a minute to do the things that make me feel sorted. I need a minute to think about how to slow down - to dip into Time Anxiety by Chris Guillebeau (for everyone who worries about not having enough time), to look through How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell. I need a minute to sit down to Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang and The Brain at Rest by Dr. Joseph Jebelli (Why Doing Nothing Can Change Your Life) and The Art of Rest by Julia Hammond (How to find respite in the modern age, go for a good walk, have a nice hot bath) And finally I need a minute for The Pleasures of Leisure, to roam with Robert Dessaix through the world, from the addas of Calcutta to the fishing waters of Tasmania. The Art of Rest. Between it all I steal a minute to listen to the girls' voices from the next room, a minute to remember this moment, before it slips into yesterday. So I close my laptop. I sit on the floor among their clothing chaos. I ask about the weird online store that sells socks in sets of eleven. The September baby shows me a video that makes us all laugh until we're breathless. For five minutes, I stop calculating time and simply exist in it. What about you, dear Reader, what do you need a minute for? (Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya's Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or reading dilemmas, write to her at sonyasbookbox@ The views expressed are personal)
Forbes
03-08-2025
- Business
- Forbes
'Time Anxiety': The Hidden Tax On Success With Chris Guillebeau
I believe wealth management that only accounts for your money is disconnected from reality and may even leave you with a bankrupt calendar or an exhausted soul, regardless of the health of your personal balance sheet or cash flow statement. That's why we regularly refer to wealth in more expansive terms, using the acronym, TIMER, including four additional resources that are often more precious than your mullah. Your true wealth portfolio, therefore, is your: Our Most Valuable Resource And what is the most valuable? I'd suggest it is the one resource that can never be replaced or replenished—the one that expires just as we experience it—our TIME. Thankfully, one of my favorite authors, Chris Guillebeau, known for taking nuanced and even counterintuitive positions in a thoughtful way, has addressed the big problem we have with our scarcest resource and offered us hyper-practical advice in his newest book, Time Anxiety: The Illusion of Urgency and A Better Way To Live. One of the things I love about this project is its title, a phrase that is new to me, yet immediately familiar: time anxiety. So, how does Guillebeau define it? 'One part is the fear of time running out—it's nonrenewable and that's inherently stressful,' Chris told me in our recent discussion. 'The other is the day-to-day question: What do I do next, out of unlimited options?' Existential Anxiety The first part is existential time anxiety, and it is the general reality that we all face that 'time is running out in my life.' This could manifest as a 'heightened sense of pressure to make every moment count' that leads to perpetual underlying stress. Or maybe it's about recurring regrets you have about past decisions you've made that resulted in wasting this precious resource. Maybe it's 'worrying that you'll never find your true calling or purpose,' and the companion fear that you may at some future point look back on a life that feels unfulfilled. Or perhaps it's simply the inherent human challenge of facing the finiteness of life itself. Whether it's persistent and pervasive or beneath the surface, I'd argue that we've all felt some version of this existential time anxiety. Daily Routine Anxiety While this phenomenon tends to play out in our perception of the past and our anticipation of the future, the other variety of time anxiety is very present, involving our daily routine: the realization that 'there's not enough time in the day.' For example: Question: For me, while I recognize the existential variety, I've done a lot of introspective work on that front, and I genuinely feel at peace with my unknown timeline within the cosmos. But I deal with the challenges of daily routine, well, daily. In fact, as I consider the question I posed to you, I realize that it may well be the foremost challenge—and stressor—that I face, both at home and at work. And this is coming from someone who has long been a passionate pursuer of productivity. In 1998, I got my first (of several) physical Stephen Covey planners—remember those? I took the course, bought the CDs, used the Microsoft Outlook overlay, only to realize I was spending more time managing the system than doing the work! I went through a David Allen GTD (Getting Things Done) phase but struggled to update that physical process in our virtual world. I've had much more success with the more minimalist Bullet Journal approach—thank you, Ryder Carroll!—and I've now upgraded that concept from 20+ filled Moleskine journals to the single, sleek Remarkable tablet. I've read everything that Cal Newport has written (and you should, too) about Deep Work, and I'm task batching and calendar blocking. I start every week and day with a vision, plan, and identified MITs (Most Important Tasks), thanks to Daniel Pink. BUT. But I still find myself adding more to-dos most days than I check off. My heart still quickens every time I open my email inbox. When I shut down the day's work, I inevitably feel like there's something I've missed—and when I inevitably do miss something, I'm stricken with guilt for not having lived up to my aspirations to better serve my family, my colleagues, and my clients. Yes, I struggle with time anxiety, and I'm betting you do, too. So, what can we do? For starters, read Guillebeau's book, Time Anxiety. Seriously. This isn't a shameless plug, and I get nothing for endorsing. The big benefit that I can practically guarantee, however, is that your soul will feel nourished simply for the fact that our guide, the author, gets it. He's not just the expert in fixing the issue (although he is), but he's a co-sufferer and co-laborer. And sometimes, that reminder that we're not alone on this journey is precisely what it takes to silence the shaming voice in our heads and muster the strength to take a bold step forward. But in reading, you'll also find numerous simple and practical steps that you can immediately apply in reducing your time anxiety. Here are just a few: This is not a call for the acceptance of mediocrity, nor a manifesto against achievement, accomplishment, or healthy ambition. Quite the opposite, it's about maximizing our time for that which is most deserving. It's about saying No or nothing at all when it's called for, in submission to a bigger Yes. It's about having a better answer than 'Busy!' to the question, 'How's it going?' And I believe it's about reclaiming control over our scarcest and most precious of resources—our time. The activity inherent in life threatens to override a heart of gratitude. Productivity alone isn't the point. Nor are the numbers. Because in the end, no one gets wealthy just by filling their calendar. True wealth, I think we can agree, is measured by how much of your time is truly your own.
Fast Company
24-07-2025
- Fast Company
Time anxiety is ruining your life. It doesn't have to
Chris Guillebeau spent years racing against time, visiting all 193 countries before he turned 35, hosting annual gatherings of thousands, and writing bestsellers like The $100 Startup. But his latest book, Time Anxiety, tackles something different: our collective panic about never having enough hours in the day. The book challenges productivity culture's relentless optimization, offering counterintuitive solutions like embracing 'granny hobbies' and creating 'reverse bucket lists.' For Guillebeau, who admits he's 'very forward-minded' and constantly asking 'What's next?' these insights emerged from his own struggles with time pressure. Fast Company spoke with Guillebeau about why excellence isn't always the goal, what he learned from visiting every country, and how to find meaning when you can't control your legacy. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. You introduce this concept of the 'reverse bucket list.' Why is looking backward as important as looking forward? I am a very forward-minded person. I'm always like, What's next? It's like, Oh, the book is out. What's the next book? And it's like, well, I just spent two years writing this book. Maybe I should live in that zone for a little bit. The reverse bucket list is just like it sounds—what have I done that is interesting or notable, whether to other people or not? I think it's helpful to just celebrate or even observe some of those things. You can do it as a big picture, like a life bucket list, or you can just be like, what's your list of things that you've gotten done today? For those of us who tend to be thinking more about the future, perhaps reflecting on what we've been able to do thus far can actually bring us to a centering point. You visited every country in the world before age 35. What surprised you about that experience? I first got into that idea because I'm kind of compulsive, and I am a list maker. I was an aid worker in West Africa in my early twenties, and I'd been to maybe 70 countries. I was like, how many are there, and what would it take to do that? Some of my favorite discoveries were the Baltics and the Balkans. Places like Lithuania and Montenegro ended up being really peaceful spots where I had great experiences and met interesting people. I definitely wouldn't have gone to either of those places if it wasn't for having this objective. There was something about combining a love of travel with a love of goal setting and list making that made it really work for me. The book mentions someone who flew to different European cities every Wednesday, only to fly right back without visiting. What's the lesson there? This Dutch guy would go to Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam every Wednesday for 20 years and fly somewhere within Europe—Stockholm or Barcelona—spend a couple of hours in the terminal, then fly back. That was his happy place, his Zen. A lot of people are gonna say, 'Oh, that's so dumb. He's doing all this travel without ever traveling anywhere.' But the point is, that's something that made him feel alive. It gave him a little milestone to anchor the rest of his life with. There's some weird thing like that for everybody. The whole point is to figure out what that looks like to you. You advocate for 'granny hobbies' and tactile breaks. Why are these important in our digital age? There's actually research behind having a hobby that's hands-on but 'thumbs-down'—meaning not digital, not scrolling. It could be knitting, baking, gardening. These are things that are really easy to pick up, and you can leave them for a while and come back. The research shows this actually can reduce anxiety and contribute to peace of mind. And it's low pressure. If your knitting project goes awry, oh well. It's not like you forgot to use BCC and emailed a hundred people by mistake. These hobbies get us operating on a different time schedule—you're not racing against a digital deadline, but working more slowly to hand-make something. Your 'three-quarter-ass rule' seems to challenge conventional wisdom about aiming for consistent excellence. Why do we need permission to not do our best? I used to run an event series, and the team would spend forever talking about tiny details. Someone finally said, 'We don't want to half-ass it, but do we really need to put our full ass behind this thing? Can we just three-quarter-ass it?' You can't actually do your best at everything. It's not possible. Life is about choice and selection. You want to maybe pick a couple of things to be excellent at, and for everything else, there are ways of not doing things or doing them adequately. Excellence is not always the standard. Sometimes done is better than perfect, especially for those of us who get stuck because we want things to be perfect and don't even know where to begin. How has writing this book changed your own relationship with time? I used to think a lot about legacy: What do we leave behind? But I've distanced myself from that because legacy is something we can't really control. Most things we do are forgotten. People who leave legacies aren't on some 60-year strategic plan. They're just doing things that ultimately have a positive impact.
CNA
07-06-2025
- General
- CNA
4 ways to stop stressing about your schedule and reclaim your downtime
Sixty per cent of people surveyed by the Pew Research Center said they sometimes felt too busy to enjoy life. We asked experts for some tips on things we can do to feel more in charge of our time. 1. ABANDON THE IDEA OF BEING ALL CAUGHT UP Your to-do list will never end, said Thomas Curran, the author of The Perfection Trap: Embracing The Power Of Good Enough. So build your tolerance for leaving that list unfinished, he said. 'We end our days obsessing over our unchecked boxes instead of celebrating our wins,' said Amantha Imber, the author of Time Wise: Powerful Habits, More Time, Greater Joy. So Dr Imber recommended completing the sentence 'Today I made progress on … ' at each day's end. Researchers call this practise a ' savouring intervention,' and they say that it can improve confidence. 2. THINK ABOUT YOUR SITUATION'S URGENCY Chris Guillebeau, the author of Time Anxiety: The Illusion Of Urgency And A Better Way To Live, said people can sometimes cause you 'time anxiety' by pulling you into something they consider urgent, creating a 'false deadline.' When this happens, he said, ask yourself: Is this actually urgent? Another person's emergency, Guillebeau said, does not have to become yours. If it's possible, you can ask, 'Is this a high priority, or can I finish the other things I'm working on first?' 3. CONSIDER BRINGING YOUR B GAME Do you need to bake cookies for your book club, or will store-bought do? Can that Zoom meeting be a quick phone call instead, while you take a reviving walk? Be alert for those moments when you are needlessly giving it your all and could give, say, 75 per cent instead, Guillebeau recommended. 4. REDEFINE "VALUABLE" TIME Fight the impulse to view downtime as unproductive, Dr Curran said: 'It isn't wasted at all.' He sets an alarm for himself that goes off every day at 5.30pm. It's a recording of his toddler asking to play with him. 'It reminds me that whatever I'm doing, it can probably wait,' Dr Curran said. Often some of your happiest memories will be events that are 'mundane and ordinary,' he said, so make time for them if you can. By Jancee Dunn © The New York Times Company
Sydney Morning Herald
05-06-2025
- Sydney Morning Herald
A restaurant critic's 20 insider tips from a lifetime of travelling
On my first trip overseas, four decades ago, I did everything wrong. I ordered cappuccinos after lunch in Rome, and ate with my left hand in Morocco. On my second trip, I spent three days in France with my watch on English time, turning up an hour early to everything. On my third trip, I nearly died in Tijuana from drinking the local water, and on my fourth, I drank so much ouzo at a Greek wedding in Lindos, that I woke up a day and a half later. But failures convert soon enough into lessons, and it has all been put to good use in a long career of writing about food and reviewing restaurants. You'll be pleased to hear I've refined my travel techniques and developed some useful new strategies since those early days. Here are some of the things I've learned, in case they help. Lesson 1: Eat where you are Never ignore the obvious. Why drive a shonky little hire car from Paris to Domremy-la-Pucelle in Lorraine, the birthplace of Joan of Arc, and then have a burger for lunch? Please, have quiche Lorraine instead. Order pasta bolognese in Bologna and they will bring you the real thing – a plate of tagliatelle with a ragu made from slow-cooked, hand-chopped meat. It's a revelation, whether you go high-end at Ristorante Donatello, or cheap and cheerful at Osteria del Cappello, where waiters wear T-shirts with the hashtag #nospaghettibolognese. Once you have tasted the original, you have a benchmark for all future quiches and spag bols. Lesson 2: Adopt the $10 rule I nicked this one from New York Times best-selling author and professional traveller, Chris Guillebeau. He made a vow that even though he was trying to be frugal, he would always pay $10 or so for something that improved his life while he was on the road. Too many times, he said, he would refuse to pay $10 for a taxi or a bus, then spend an hour walking in the rain to a hotel. Or decide not to eat a sandwich at the airport because it was too expensive, only to end up tired, lethargic and hungry. Trying to save money makes all the sense in the world – until it ruins your day. Lesson 3: It pays to get lost If you don't know where to go in a strange city, then, congratulations, you're about to have an adventure. I once had a spare day in Hong Kong and jumped on the East Rail Line (the old Kowloon-Canton Railway, founded in 1910), and took it to the final stop on the line. I ended up wandering around Sheung Shui for a few hours, not really knowing where I was (in the New Territories, within hailing distance of Shenzhen, apparently). But it was all there – the wet markets, the parks, the street food, the noodles, the dumplings, and the life. See Lesson 4: Avoid the most expensive restaurant in town Because it will be very similar to the most expensive restaurant in the last city you were in. Globalisation, culinary trends, and a focus on luxury instead of local ingredients has resulted in a certain sameness across the upper echelon of dining. You can now eat caviar with blinis in Bologna, Baltimore, and Brisbane, which is wonderful, if that's what you want. But today's most interesting restaurants don't conform to anyone's definitions. In Paris, you can dine at Restaurant Guy Savoy, where the tasting menu is €680 ($1200) a person. Or you can jump on a train to Versailles, and dine at the romantic farm restaurant Le Doyenne, run by Australian chefs James Henry and Shaun Kelly, for €130 ($230) a person. Stay the night in one of their rooms and you'll still have change. See Lesson 5: Adopt a chef Find a chef you like, and follow him or her. On Instagram, sure, but also from restaurant to restaurant. Today's chefs are more fluid than those of yesteryear, and the ambitious chefs move around to learn. An example: Beau Clugston, an Aussie chef from Sawtell, New South Wales, was cooking in Copenhagen with Rene Redzepi at Noma in 2005. Fourteen years later, I ate his food again at his own seafood-focused restaurant, Iluka, in Copenhagen. This year, I caught up with him again at Kiln, where he oversees the menu at the Ace Hotel Sydney. To see the evolution in his style and thinking has been both fascinating and a privilege. And it isn't over yet. See Lesson 6: Do squats and lunges Sitting on a low plastic stool on the streets of Hanoi or Bangkok to dine on local food is no problem at all. Getting up is the problem. Doing daily squats and lunges to strengthen leg muscles will avoid having to ask for assistance (don't you scoff, young people, your time will come). Putting your hands on your knees and spreading your feet wider can also help in getting vertical. Similarly, the Japanese custom of sitting on the floor to dine at low tables is sociable, excellent for digestion, and potentially painful. Ask for a small cushion (zabuton), keep your back straight, and when it comes time to get up, ask people to help – or to look away. I had a trip to Paris planned, with the idea of having my birthday dinner at Yves Camdeborde's Michelin-starred Le Comptoir. Notoriously difficult to get into, it doesn't take reservations. So I booked into the charming Hotel Le Relais de Saint Germain next door, run by his wife. Bingo, hotel guests have priority access to a table, so happy birthday to me. Sometimes, you need to be devious. I've also asked the head waiter at one restaurant to help me get a table at another (trust me, everyone knows everyone else in the hospitality game). One text, and I'm in. Whatever it takes. See Lesson 8: Do not rely on your concierge They will do their very best to send you to the sort of place that their most conservative guests would enjoy. This will be confirmed when you spend all evening surrounded by your fellow hotel guests. Some concierges operate on commission; the great ones do not. But you'll get a better result doing your own homework than you will from a harassed concierge who looks up TripAdvisor. How else are you going to find out that giant lychees, fat cherries or wild asparagus are in season? A bustling food market is a signpost pointing directly to the best local produce and the best local place to eat. I once trailed a chef back to his restaurant in Marseille (Le Miramar) because he bought such great shellfish from the fish stalls on the pier. The butifarra sausages on display at Mercat de Sant Antoni in Barcelona meant I knew what to order for a quick tapas lunch at Maleducat nearby. At the Mercato di Porta Palazzo in Turin, in Northern Italy, there was a huge stall of the highly prized snails from the province of Cherasco, a traditional local specialty. The stall-holder gave me a list of who bought her best snails, and I sallied forth to Tre Galline for some real 'slow food'. See Lesson 10: Forget about food and just do life Some of the best (food) times can come from forgetting all about your stomach and your restaurant bucket list. I skipped dinner in a top New York restaurant to go to a Bruce Springsteen concert in New Jersey, and ended up sharing beers with fellow fans on the train and having one of the best hot dogs of my life. Glory Days. Lesson 11: Some of the best food is in railway stations Especially in Japan. One of the great joys of train travel in Japan is buying exquisitely compartmentalised bento boxes at the station to take on your journey. In Tokyo, the so-called Ramen Street lies beneath the vast Tokyo train station, with eight wall-to-wall noodle shops. (I like Rokurinsha, but so does everybody else in Tokyo at lunchtime). And my favourite yakitori joint is Birdland, underneath Ginza station. You could travel by train around Japan, never leave the stations, and eat supremely well. See Lesson 12: If a restaurant has a life-size chef statue outside, do not enter They may as well stand outside and scream 'tourist trap'. Lesson 13: Embrace the unknown, and then eat it You have to push yourself out of your comfort zone; otherwise breakfast granola will be the high point of your day. Adopting a 'try anything once' approach is how I met my first foul-smelling but ace-tasting andouillette (sausage made from pork intestine) at Aux Crieurs de Vin in Troyes, a magical medieval old town in the Champagne region, famous for its narrow, cobblestone streets and half-timbered houses. It's also why I added blood cakes to my morning pho noodle soup at Pho Hung in Ho Chi Minh City – not just for the rich, velvety texture they bring to the broth, but to give me the internal courage to walk across the streets of beeping, bumper-to-bumper motorcycles. See Lesson 14: Be Australian There have been times I've hidden my Australian accent. But I've had better times, and made more friends, by embracing my inner and outer Australianness: chatting to everyone in sight, shouting people a beer, treating people equally, and generally being up for anything. Lesson 15: There's an app for that Some of us may remember a time when 'there was a book for that'. We clutched heavy tomes on the plane such as Arthur Frommer's pioneering Europe on $5 a day. We tucked small Italian and Greek phrase books into rucksacks, and unfolded giant paper maps wherever we would roam. Now, there are apps that translate languages, map your route, choose a restaurant, book your table, hail a cab for you to get there, and, with more AI up their sleeve, will no doubt eat your meal for you and review it on Instagram. Your phone is all you need, and is already packed with more than you need (and did you know the calculator on your smartphone has a currency exchange function? You learn something every day). Lesson 16: Keep a journal For decades, I've travelled with a notebook. At first I logged everything I ate, and everything I spent. Basically, it was the birth of the listicle. Then my wife and I started really writing about our travels. Where we were, what happened, who we met, and yes, of course, what we ate, and why. Writing it down taught us to capture those fresh, precious insights you get in a new place, when your radar is sharp and everything is exciting. These days, I often record impressions on the phone, but it's not the same. We now have three bookshelves of journals that cover a lifetime of eating and drinking around the world, and it's a joy to pull one out and relive the highlights. My advice: start now. Lesson 17: Go back to the beginning In any field of study, it's important to know your history, to get context and perspective. When in England, that means dining at the oldest restaurant in London, Rules, which opened in 1798. The dining rooms are wood-panelled and velvet-seated, the walls thick with oil paintings, and the menu is practically Dickensian. Steak and kidney pie. Potted shrimp. Treacle tart. And, most famously, roasted grouse, served only after the Glorious 12th, the twelfth day of August, when the strictly enforced red grouse hunting season begins. See Lesson 18: If you have a sense of humour, use it If my wife goes to the same cocktail bar in a strange city two nights in a row (it's not uncommon), she'll sit up on the bar stool and say, 'I'll have the usual, thanks'. If the bar staff are any good at all, they'll get the joke. At Katz's Deli in New York (where Harry met Sally), gentle insults and humour have been part of the service since it opened in 1888. Once, a very old, dour waiter stopped by my table, to ask where I was from. When I said 'Australia', he fished in his pocket for some coins, and slapped them on the table. 'Here's the money,' he said. 'Go back.' See Lesson 19: Don't stay in the hotel for breakfast If you're jet-lagged and tired, then pay the money and stay in. But the next day, go out for breakfast. Wander down the street to a corner cafe in Milan and stand at the bar with a coffee and a cornetto (croissant); find a boulangerie in Paris for a baguette; or a konbini (convenience store) in Japan for an egg sandwich. Suddenly, you're dealing with locals, using the currency, practising the language, and getting a bite of reality. Lesson 20: There will be bad days There will be days when you are ill, miss your flight, have a woeful meal or be wilfully overcharged. You just have to remember that a bad day will always be followed by a good day. The thing that keeps me going, wherever I am, is that the next best meal of my life could be just around the corner. Five things I've learnt travelling Australia Go to the pub You're in outback Queensland? Go to the pub. You're in a trendy inner-city suburb? Go to the pub. You're in a seaside resort town? Go to the pub. Italy has the trattoria, France has the Bar Tabac, Vienna has the coffee house, but we have the local pub. It's where the oldies, kids, locals and blow-ins all come together in a happy mess over a chicken parmigiana, cold beer, and a game on the telly. Loading Have a pie The classic Aussie meat pie and tomato sauce ('dead horse') is quite capable of saving a life. You can measure our highways and byways by our pie ways. I favour the Rolling Pin Bakery in Ocean Grove on the Bellarine Peninsula for its meat pies, but 'Best Pie' in the 2024 Great Aussie Pie Comp went to the chunky beef pie at Melton's Buddy Bakery in Victoria. Go the pies. Don't take Australia for granted These tips for travelling overseas apply in Oz as well. Keep a journal, head to the local market (maybe forget the one about great food being in railway stations). Especially the tip for 'eating where you are'. Australia's native ingredients are uniquely delicious and diverse, and tell stories about who we are, from barramundi and warrigal greens, to marron, mud crab, and macadamias. Drink where you are Australian wine varietals change from region to region. You wouldn't go to Portugal and not have a glass of port. Likewise, don't go to South Australia's Barossa Valley without drinking grenache or shiraz. The Hunter Valley's finest is a zesty semillon, while cabernet is at its best in Coonawarra and Western Australia's Margaret River. Go south, to Victorian peninsulas and Tasmania, for cool-climate pinot noir. Cheers! Loading Never miss a country town They're magical places, country towns; full of history, charm, resilience, agricultural shows and country people. You'll get a more truly Australian experience from a day in a country town than you will in a week in a capital city, whether it's Camperdown in the Western District of Victoria, Ross in Tasmania, or Busselton in WA. Seek out farm stays, markets, bakeries, and the local Chinese restaurant (every good country town has a local Chinese restaurant).
