Shock Australian destination included in New York Times' '52 Places To Go in 2024'

If you reckon the first one is a little contentious, wait till you see the second.

Are Tassie and Brissie listworthy?

I love a travel hot list. I mean, the publication you’re reading right now puts them out regularly. Top 27 Secret Beaches You’ve Never Heard Of. Best Under-The-Radar Food Destinations For 2024. The 16 Coolest Cities In Mongolia. Who among us doesn’t read them, share them and save them neatly into an iPhone notes list to reference when we’re making our next travel plans?

One of the most anticipated every year is the New York Times’ 52 Places To Go This Year, which was just released (you can read the whole thing here).  The list is reliably curious and covetable. There will always be at least one or two places you’d never considered travelling to before. In fact there’ll almost certainly be one or two places listed you’ve never heard of. And the citizens of countries everywhere wait breathlessly to see if their hometown or state has made the list.

This year, two Australian destinations earned a spot: Tasmania and Brisbane. Both excellent dots on the map – but listworthy?

Apparently Americans see Tassie as a forager's playground.

To find your way onto these lists, a destination generally needs to be offering something new and fresh. There has to be an angle. That’s why you’ll never see “Aspen – for the skiing!” or “Italy – for the pasta!” Got those covered, thanks.

The hook with Tasmania (“Where foraging for ingredients is part of the local flavour,” says The Times) this year appears to be the fact that one of our most famous food finders, Chef Analiese Gregory, is opening a new restaurant in Tassie “early this year”. In fact, a check with Gregory says the tiny 10-seater restaurant she’s planning to run from the shed on her own property in the Huon Valley is more likely to swing open its doors in the middle of the year but the premise is sound. Tasmania is pristine. It has some of the most exquisite produce anywhere in the country. Gregory is internationally beloved. Sustained.

The NYT is ga-ga over the Queensland capital.

Brisbane is a trickier proposition. Not because it doesn’t have a lot to offer – the article cites the sumptuous Calile Hotel as a drawcard, an assertion backed up by its inclusion as the only Australian entry on the 2023 World’s 50 Best Hotels list. The excellent fire-fuelled Agnes restaurant also rightly gets a nod, though I’m less convinced by the drawcard of Vertigo, a restaurant where you dangle precipitously from a harness four storeys over the ground. But overall, the hook for Brisbane seems a smidge premature. “Food, art, vertiginous views [ugh] in a city gearing up for its Olympic moment,” declares The Times. Bearing in mind Brisbane isn’t hosting the Olympics until 2032. The Queensland capital still has a fair old chunk of gearing up to do. Settle, Times.

In my view, there were a few other Australian destinations that deserved more of a nod. “The South Australian islands” would have been a cracker. The exquisite Southern Ocean Lodge has just reopened on Kangaroo Island, a glorious good news story after the original venue burnt down in the ruinous 2020 bushfires. A few bays over, Louth Island has just launched the first of its two-part opening for its immersive wellness retreat, Rumi on Louth, with the main part of the stay opening in 2025.

So the new Southern Ocean Lodge on Kangaroo Island didn't get a look in?

The Kimberley is also having an amped-up moment in 2024, with several cruise companies including Seabourn and Scenic, debuting new ships in this quintessentially Australian wilderness region this year.

I’m nitpicking of course. Part of the fun with these lists is that everyone has a better opinion than the writers. If you look at the comments on the NYT, people are livid with disapproval about many of the entries. Ecuador is too unstable, they insist. The monarch butterfly reserve in Mexico is in a crime stronghold plus the poor old butterflies don’t want to be trampled on. And “There’s only one entry in South East Asia!”, thundered someone (actually I counted three). 

Overall, ‘best new’ lists are a lot of fun but they’re always best viewed with a sceptical eye.  After all, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a good pasta in Italy.

Originally published as Shock Australian destination included in New York Times' '52 Places To Go in 2024'