Tassie tigers on the road to Nowhere Else

I’m kind of in love with north-west Tasmania. My first taste was a whistle-stop tour of the area with my partner and her mother, when we whipped through in a rental car on the way to Cradle Mountain, guided by a GPS with a New Zealand voice which urged us on with the promise of “a mean steak and cheese pie”.

At Confectionery Capers, it’s not about the candy. Bendigo, Victoria

Located about 10 minutes’ drive outside Bendigo in a large Colorbond shed, this remarkable attraction would appeal to kids, big kids, dad joke aficionados, engineering enthusiasts, and anyone who is interested in a psychedelic drug experience without all that pesky business of illegally buying and taking them.

Whiskey, alchemy and a ginger hammer: Belgrove Distillery, Kempton, Tasmania

Peter’s un-aged rye is a bit like a smoky moonshine. My friend Scott Fraser warned me that after he drank some he spent an hour wandering around in a daze, repeating over and over to his partner: “That tasted like a knife fight in Tijuana”

Glow worms on the Great Ocean Road OR How I learned to stop worrying and hate humanity

A short story about how I went looking for a little bit of magic in a quiet pocket of the Great Ocean Road and ended up like Grandpa Simpson, shaking my fist at the world and telling the rest of humanity to get off my goddamned lawn.

Lost Trades Fair, Kyneton, Victoria

Thousands made the trek to Victoria’s Lost Trades Fair over the weekend to see some olde world crafts in their natural habitat.

Penny farthing makers, calligraphers, kayak builders and cordwainers breathed new life into traditional wares, and the crowds lapped it up. Check out all the action in this special report from Far Out Australia.

Turnip-o-lantern carving, Halloween

Pumpkins are Halloween’s rock star vegetable, so you might be surprised to learn that smaller root vegetables such as the humble turnip have been carved into jack-o-lanterns for much longer. So Halloween seemed like an opportunity to dig in to a bit of ancient culture while making some questionable puns about root vegetables.