Photo: Firebird Tours
The advent of the jet airliner in the 1960s brought a major change to how people travelled around the globe. No longer did it have to take weeks to travel from point A to B - now you could fly to just about anywhere in the world in a day or less. But anyone who had travelled by sea knew that something was missing - the ability to lounge in a deckchair, mingle with fellow travellers, be pampered, dine with elegant sufficiency - what was missing was the romance of sea travel. This goes a long way to explaining the popularity of cruising - but instead of the voyage at sea being the means to get to one's holiday destination, the voyage itself has become the holiday destination.
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The Murray River is to Australia what the Nile River is to Egypt: a great and ancient river system that has shaped the past and the present and will continue into the future as a national icon. For several decades late in the nineteenth century, between about 1860 and 1890, the rivers of the Murray-Darling were important trade routes carrying wool for export from thriving pastoral properties and returning with supplies for these stations.
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A look at two millenia of journeys and expedition in search of what the ancients referred to as Terra Australis Incognita. Dutchman Willem Janz is the man history credits as having made the first confirmed, recorded encounter of the Australian coastline by Europeans in the Duyfken, but there is evidence there many before him.
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Flying boats were used in the 1930s to pioneer the concept of international air travel. Qantas flying boats ushered in an era of stately and pleasurable flying - and they were built for comfort and safety rather than speed. Only 16 passengers could be accommodated during flights with overnight legs, but they enjoyed "the most luxurious saloons ever prepared in an aircraft" spread over a series of tiered cabins including a smoking room and bunk-like sleeping berths.
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The First Fleet was a fleet of 11 ships that brought the first European and African settlers to Australia. It was made up of two Royal Navy vessels, three store ships and six convict transports. On 13 May 1787 the fleet under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, with over 1400 people (convicts, marines, sailors, civil officers and free settlers), left from Portsmouth, England and took a journey of over 24,000 kilometres (15,000 mi) and over 250 days to eventually arrive in Botany Bay, New South Wales, where a penal colony would become the first European settlement in Australia.
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Over the centuries, there have been hundreds of voyages to and from Australia that have ended in disaster. Some ships were seized by munineers, others just disappeared without trace, often to be found years later in a watery grave.
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