Behind the Scenes…of our Australian Travel Book!

As you can imagine, as such avid travellers every time we go to a party or a backyard barbie, someone inevitably asks the question. “Where are your favourite places to go in Australia?” (How long have you got to listen about Australian travel? As the answer may take a while!)

So when we started thinking about writing our book ‘Australia’s Top 100 Places To Go – The Ultimate Bucket List’, we took on the challenge with great responsibility and passion! It was hard to know where to start. Our minds were spinning and visions of big red rocks, roaring rivers, underwater worlds and pristine beach paradises flooded our heads.

The process of putting this book together over the last six or so months has been wonderfully nostalgic and and rather emotional. Here at HQ we argued, we remembered, we cried and we laughed. That’s what Australian travel does. It gets into your soul and sometimes you become so passionate about the experience and the memories, that you defend them with all your power.

And we are not the only ones. The Bucket List competition we ran throughout our last series testified to the fact that you are all out there experiencing the best of this country too. Thousands of entries told us about countless gems we needed to include on the list. Some we had never heard of. Some we agreed with wholeheartedly. And some we argued about.

We have been travelling this great big country filming for Places We Go for five years now, and been travellers within it for many more years than that. Of course the most epic journey was our 4-month long Great Aussie Drive, when we filmed an entire series from start to finish, driving right around the country. And it only cemented our love affair with this big red and brown (and yellow and blue and green) land. The landscapes. The people. The animals. The air. The smells. The sounds.

We have tried to capture the essence of these incredible places in our book. Perhaps it will trigger your own memories if you have been to any of the places and hopefully it will inspire you to make your own way to others.

Finally, we know that our final 100 places in the book might spark some debate. It certainly did amongst us. We could have argued for years really. But in the end, the decisions needed to be made and we actually hope that it does create a good-natured discussion, because then perhaps we will be asked to create a 2nd Australian travel book, with 100 more destinations!

‘Australia’s Top 100 Places to Go: The Ultimate Bucket List’ will be out in bookstores in time for Christmas.