Australia is a huge country, and with a similarly huge variety of places to go and things to see when visiting as a tourist (pictured left is the wonderful Skyrail attraction in the Cairns area).
Unless you’re unusually blessed with both lots of spare time and lots of spare money, you’ll have to make some difficult decisions and what to see and where to go, and, as a flip side, about what to miss and where to leave out.
While it is unreasonable to expect to be able to see all of Australia in a single visit (you don’t expect to see all of any other country when visiting it a single time, do you), it is reasonable to want to make the best use of your precious time and money while traveling downunder.
As the next installment of my new series on visiting Australia, and to help you make the right choices when planning what and where to visit in Australia, here are three pages that detail what I recommend as the ‘A’ list destinations in Australia, together with B, C and D list destinations as well. Still to come – E list destinations, and, ahem, some not so recommended places too.
David
This is farce and a tragedy. I am incensed as you are by this stupidity.
Arrogance and hubris are the symptoms of an empire in decline. The US empire is way past its zenith and nobody even knows that we are already well into the process of decline. The situation is so bad that one can’t even say that the US is “in denial”. To be in denial you need to acknowledge that there is a problem that needs to be denied and I don’t see any responsible person in power who remotely acknowledges all the various 3000 pound gorillas in the room.
Is there any way you can document this story from China? Can you get copies of visa applications and rejections, etc? This story should be in all the newspapers and on all the television stations.
Enough is enough. I am sick of this rubbish
Steven.
Hi, Steven
Thanks for your strong comments. Obviously we’re in complete agreement with each other. But – and I know this from regular personal experience in the past, especially when involved with Russian tourism issues, and more recently when trying to get involved in Chinese inbound tourism too (before seeing the impossibility of trying to bring Chinese people to the US and giving up), there’s little or nothing that can be done, and the underlying legislation and regulations were originally written to ‘protect visa issuing officers from political pressure or interference with their duties’ – a high minded concept that has been distorted into the nonsense that it is now where these tiny despots can capriciously say yes and no as they wish with no-one to second guess them.
Any attempt to shine a light on these types of cases brings a predictable series of responses :
* We refuse to discuss individual cases due to protecting the privacy of the individuals involved (This is invariably offered, even when the individuals are keen to waive any/all privacy rights they may have)
* An increasing number of visas are being issued to the citizens of (this country) and all bona fide applicants have no difficulty in getting visas whenever they wish
* We are required by law to treat all visa applicants as suspicious and they have to prove positively to us that they won’t overstay
* Anyone who is refused a visa is welcome to resubmit their application in the future with additional information to support their request
* National security, blah blah blah
I’m fully serious when I suggest that the easy – and immediate – solution is for President Obama to call for an immediate moratorium on visa refusals on anything other than national security grounds. This could be done overnight, and would immediately reverse our appalling image everywhere else in the world.
It is an easily done thing and would be immediately beneficial to our economy and our standing in the world.