Our growing collection of the places and moments that make a nature lover's heart sing: swimming spots we trust, bushwalks we love, gatherings that connect people who care about the wild, and travel ideas worth dreaming on. Curated with care, growing with every edition.
Calm bays, ocean pools and clear water. The places where getting in is the whole point, and more spots join with every edition.
Parsley Bay
Hyams Beach
Clovelly
Bondi
Julian Rocks
A quiet, leafy harbour bay with a netted swimming area, gentle water and a lovely little suspension bridge. A favourite of our founder, and where our About page photo was taken.
A heritage tidal ocean pool built in 1907, where you swim with the sea sloshing in over the edges and the whole Pacific as your view.
A protected aquatic reserve where snorkellers drift over groupers, wobbegongs and schools of fish just metres from the sand. No fishing, all life.
A sheltered lagoon behind the beach where fresh water meets salt, ringed by bush. A swim here feels like a secret even on a busy day.
Famously white sand and gin clear water on the edge of a marine park. Dolphins are regular visitors and the swimming is gentle.
The most photographed ocean pool in the world, and it earns it. Waves crash over the wall while you swim your laps in the middle of the postcard.
A golden crescent just inside South Head where the harbour is at its clearest. Snorkellers work the rocks at the southern end while swimmers drift in water like glass.
A pocket of sand below Strickland House with the whole harbour laid out in front of you, Shark Island in the middle distance and hardly a soul on a weekday.
A grand old harbour beach with a netted swimming enclosure, an island joined by a little stone bridge, and a promenade made for slow mornings.
A long, narrow bay walled by rock platforms that keep the water calm and glass clear, home to the best snorkelling on the eastern beaches. Friendly blue gropers cruise the drop off like they own the place, because they do.
A marine reserve rising from the sea a short boat ride off Byron, where turtles, rays and gentle leopard sharks share the water with you. Snorkelling here belongs at the top of any list, and it sits at the top of ours.
A tiny rocky cove with its own aquatic reserve, where clear water drops away to boulders and beautiful grey nurse sharks glide calmly by. Hallowed ground for snorkellers and divers, barely ninety minutes south of Sydney.
Tracks through forest, along clifftops and beside waterfalls, from Sydney's backyard to walks across Australia and the wide world. Take water, take your time, leave only footprints.
Bondi to Coogee
Spit to Manly
Blue Mountains
Wentworth Falls
Royal Coast Track
Six kilometres of clifftop path linking beach after beach, with whale sightings in season and an ocean pool waiting at nearly every stop.
Ten kilometres of harbour bushland, quiet coves and lookouts, finishing with a well earned swim at Manly. It is hard to believe a city is behind you.
A loop that drops you into a green slot canyon of tree ferns, mossy walls and creek crossings. Cool on hot days and cathedral quiet.
Sandstone country above Pittwater with wildflowers, ancient rock engravings and one of the finest lookouts in the state at the end.
A short, steady climb to a sandstone lighthouse with the ocean on one side and Pittwater on the other. Sunset up here is a small ceremony.
An elevated boardwalk through subtropical rainforest alive with lyrebirds, ending at a waterfall walk. Gentle, accessible and utterly green.
A hundred year old track carved into the cliff face halfway between the valley floor and the sky, passing under waterfalls on its way. One of the great engineered walks of the world.
Twenty six kilometres of sea cliffs, hidden beaches and heathland between Bundeena and Otford. Walk it over two days, or taste it in day sized pieces and save the rest.
An easy wander over heathland at the harbour's front door, with echidnas and bandicoots in residence, memorial gardens, and clifftops where the Pacific opens out beneath you.
Boardwalks over orange sandstone, whales offshore in season, and Maitland Bay waiting at the bottom of the hill like a reward. The Central Coast's quiet masterpiece.
Cradle Mountain
Great Ocean Walk
Flinders Ranges
Ormiston Gorge
Cape to Cape
The gentle sibling of the Overland: a six kilometre loop beneath the mountain's spires, through the mossy Ballroom Forest and along mirror still water.
From Apollo Bay to the Twelve Apostles: koala forests, wild beaches and clifftops for 104 kilometres, happily walked one day sized piece at a time.
Canberra's quiet secret: a gentle climb through snow gum forest to a granite platform with the whole Orroral Valley spread out below.
White sandstone cliffs, palm filled side gorges and rock art galleries tens of thousands of years old. Watch the creek at dawn and you may meet a platypus.
Thirty two kilometres down a wild island of rainforest, waterfalls and beaches you will likely have to yourself. Walker numbers are capped, which is exactly why it stays magic.
A vast amphitheatre of mountains rising from the desert plains, with walks from gentle creekside strolls to the big day up St Marys Peak.
223 kilometres along the spine of the ranges west of Alice Springs, walked whole or one glorious day section at a time. Ormiston Pound is a favourite.
Between two lighthouses run 123 kilometres of sea cliffs, karri forest and surf beaches, with whales offshore in season and wildflowers underfoot in spring.
Tour du Mont Blanc
West Highland Way
Nakasendo, Japan
Cinque Terre
The Dolomites
A week and a half around the great white mountain, village to village and refuge to refuge, with three countries' worth of pastries along the way.
154 kilometres from the edge of Glasgow to Fort William, along Loch Lomond and across the wide silence of Rannoch Moor. Moody, beautiful and very Scottish.
The old post road between Kyoto and Tokyo, where the Magome to Tsumago section winds eight easy kilometres through forest, past teahouses and postcard villages.
The blue path linking five villages stacked above the Ligurian Sea, through vineyards and lemon groves, with a swim and a gelato waiting at either end.
A ten kilometre loop around three of the most dramatic rock towers in the Alps, on good paths between mountain huts, with marmots whistling from the scree.
The gatherings, counts and celebrations where people who love the wild find each other.
Renee Mouritz
River Red Gum, NSW
Young birdwatchers
Rainbow lorikeets
Greta Beach cleanupRenee Mouritz
Green tree frog
Communities plant hundreds of thousands of native trees and shrubs in a single weekend. Digging holes with strangers is a surprisingly good way to make friends, and this year is the 30th anniversary.
A whole week celebrating the volunteers who care for Australia's land, creeks and coasts, with local events, plantings and open days everywhere. This year's theme is Experience Landcare, an open invitation to come and try it.
Thousands of events across the country, and the nature ones are the loveliest: guided spotlight walks, rockpool rambles, citizen science nights and talks by people who love what they study.
One week each spring, hundreds of thousands of people spend twenty minutes counting the birds around them. Science, done from your favourite chair outside.
There are more beach cleanups happening than anyone could list, so here are the doors that always know the nearest one. Adopt a Beach lets you take a stretch of coast under your wing and care for it visit after visit, logging what you clear. Clean Up Australia's map runs all year round. Take 3 for the Sea needs no event at all: three pieces in your pocket on the way off the sand, done. And Tangaroa Blue's event calendar lists the cleanups that turn every piece collected into data.
One family has been on Green Mountains since 1926, and the whole of this year marks the hundredth. In the rainforest above the Gold Coast you can walk Australia’s first treetop walkway, nine suspension bridges strung sixteen metres up in Gondwana forest, then come down to a timeline of a century on the mountain. Billy tea and damper on the guest house lawn every weekend morning, and free, which is a lovely way to end a walk.
Three markets, all run by the Byron Community Centre, which is a not for profit, so what you spend stays in the town. Thursday mornings are for the farmers, straight from the growers at Railway Park. The first Sunday of the month brings the big Community Market to Main Beach, three hundred stalls of makers, growers and small local labels. And from October the Twilight Market takes over Railway Park on Saturday evenings, which is the one for anybody who likes meeting the person who made the thing.
Photograph a fish, a fungus or a flower and add it to the world's living database. Every record helps science see nature a little more clearly, and bioblitz events make it a party.
Most councils run volunteer mornings restoring local bushland, a couple of hours of weeding and planting with people who love the same patch you do, tea provided.
Record thirty seconds of croaking with the Australian Museum's free app and experts identify every frog in the chorus. Australia's frogs are counted one damp evening at a time, and your backyard counts.
Ideas worth dreaming on, for trips where nature is the whole itinerary.
Tasmania's kelp
Valdez, AlaskaZachery Sheldon
Christmas Island
The Daintree
A far flung atoll of lagoons and coral where our founder floated over the most pristine reef she has ever seen. When the tide is right, The Rip at Direction Island is the snorkel of a lifetime.
A 262 kilometre loop out of Portland and back, cut by hand by Year 10 students in 1981 and looked after by volunteers ever since. Tall forest, the Glenelg River gorge, fifty five kilometres of empty white sand, then the blowholes and sea cliffs of Cape Bridgewater. Walk the lot in a fortnight or pick one of 31 shorter walks.
A green volcanic island where the road signs ask you to slow down for crabs, the jungle drops straight into 28 degree water, and the snorkelling off Flying Fish Cove starts at the wharf ladder. Robber crabs the size of dinner plates, seabird colonies, and the red crab migration that carpets the island each wet season. Our founder went to clear its beaches and fell for the place entirely.
Five wild islands an hour from Los Angeles, reached only by boat, where golden kelp forests glow underwater and a tiny fox lives nowhere else on Earth.
A world heritage island that caps its visitors so the place stays wild: coral in the lagoon, seabirds overhead, and a mountain rising straight from the sea.
A fringing reef you can swim to from the beach, famous for gentle whale sharks in autumn and winter and manta rays year round.
A car free island national park where wombats graze the lawns, Cape Barren geese patrol the camp and the painted cliffs glow at sunset. Bring a bike and stay a night.
The largest inland native forest in New South Wales, more than 500,000 hectares of cypress pine, ironbark and eucalypt rolling unbroken to the horizon. Climb a fire tower and the canopy simply never ends. Koalas, barking owls and glossy black cockatoos call it home, and Eric Rolls wrote in A Million Wild Acres that "there is no other forest like it."
The largest sand island on Earth, where rainforest grows straight out of the dunes, perched lakes hold water clearer than air, and dingoes trot the beach highways at dawn.
A third of the island is protected, and it shows: sea lions dozing on the sand at Seal Bay, echidnas crossing the road, and the sculpted Remarkable Rocks glowing at dusk.
The oldest living rainforest on the planet meets the reef at Cape Tribulation, two world heritage wonders touching. Cassowaries stalk the ferns and the forest hums like a living thing.
Glaciers calve into a sound alive with sea otters, seals and whales, and up the valley you can walk on blue ice beneath the Chugach Mountains. A place that resets your sense of scale.
Half national park, ringed by fringing coral, and criss crossed by granite trails where koalas doze above the path. The Forts Walk earns its fame, and the snorkelling over the bays' corals matches it. The kind of island that hands your soul back to you.
Good news travels when people pass it on. Get our stories free twice a week, send this page to someone who needs it. And if these stories made your morning, you can buy us a coffee. It helps keep these good news stories travelling across the globe.
Subscribe free Send to a friend Shout us a coffee