A mini Britain (but more interesting), this island’s a bucket-list spot

Most visitors to Stanley in the Falkland Islands arrive by cruise ship after sailing east for a day and night from Ushuaia in Argentina, or two days and nights west from South Georgia. It’s nearly always a bumpy ride across a grey swell of sub-Antarctic ocean under the gimlet eyes of drifting albatross.

The islands appear as low, scraped-bare lumps of grey-green rock that could be the Scottish Highlands if it weren’t for the penguins. You sail into the protective embrace of a wide bay in East Falkland and then – if your ship is dainty enough, like those of Aurora Expeditions – anchor in a compact inner harbour.

The Falklands’ capital, Stanley, and its harbour.

You still have another short ride by Zodiac to reach Stanley, one of the world’s most isolated settlements. Yet as soon as you step ashore and see a security guard in an anorak sipping tea from a flask – just as beachgoers do at the far-distant Cliffs of Dover – you get the odd feeling you’ve arrived in Britain.

Terrace houses with red roofs in neat rows overlook the harbour. They’re fronted by gardens of moss and uncertain bushes, and flanked by garden sheds and conservatories. Land Rovers are parked in driveways.

Stanley has tearooms and pubs, a fish-and-chip shop and a large Victorian-era church. Guesthouses sport net curtains and green doors just like the B&Bs of Margate or Brighton. You can buy soft-serve ice creams, although it would take a brave soul to eat ice cream in the frigid Falklands.

You could be in a coastal town in Argyle, under a similar sky that glimmers as the debilitated sun tries to escape the clouds. Stanley isn’t a town, however. Although Stanley has a population of just 3500, it was granted city status by Queen Elizabeth II in 2022. And unlike other places this size, Stanley has a hospital, radio station and police station, airport and Government House.

They still have red phone boxes, along with fish and chips.Credit: Adobe

Then you notice more subtle differences. This is a Britain that doesn’t exist elsewhere anymore. Stanley has the red telephone booths now being removed in British cities. George VI’s initials are still engraved on the red post-box outside the post office. The town hall doubles as a dance hall.

Locals are slow and friendly, as if they’ve stepped out of the Famous Five age. They have the soft accent of a bygone rural England and, to judge from the souvenir shops, spend most of their time knitting woollen hats.

White clapboard houses with bright roofs will remind you of Norway.Credit: Adobe

The excellent Falkland Islands Museum on the waterfront is keen to emphasise Stanley’s domesticated Britishness. It displays ruffled Edwardian dresses and top hats, a rocking horse called Freckles, silver teapots and Wedgwood cups, a hip bath and Aga stove.

But what’s wonderful about Stanley is the way its British ordinariness clashes with its wild history and wilder location. The museum does an equally good job presenting the islands’ strategic involvement in several conflicts, which gives it more grittiness than Stanley’s prim appearance might suggest.

Christ Church Cathedral in Stanley and its striking entrance. Credit: Getty Images

The town too has a frontier quality that makes you realise this isn’t just Little Britain but somewhere more interesting. Machinery rusts in fields, shipping containers are repurposed, and the architecture is uncertain. White clapboard houses will remind you of Norway.

The rusting shipwreck of a three-masted freighter tilts in the harbour, where it has been since 1936. In the churchyard, the giant jawbones of two blue whales create a memorial arch.

Aurora’s ship the Greg Mortimer at the Falkland Islands.

Walk a couple of kilometres along the harbour and Stanley quickly gives way to ragged coast where sea lions snort and penguins waddle. Smug houses vanish and you see only scurvy grass and ankle-high plants battered by wind. You definitely aren’t in Britain now, which is what makes Stanley so wonderful. This city is defiantly its own place, and unlike anywhere else on Earth.

The details

Cruise
Aurora Expeditions visits Stanley on several different itineraries that also take in South Georgia and the Antarctic Peninsula. For example, a 23-day Antarctica Complete journey, which next departs on December 20, 2025 and December 17, 2026, costs from $US29,756 a person ($46,640) including all shore excursions and Zodiac cruises. See auroraexpeditions.com.au

More
See falklandislands.com

The writer was a guest of Aurora Expeditions.