albatross a Ă©crit :
Si j'écris ce post c'est un peu pour repartir en croisade et militer pour l'Australie de l'Ouest, la région de Perth ainsi que des coins moins connus tels que Ballarat.
Je ne comprends pas pourquoi tout le monde est tellement fasciné par Sydney ou Melbourne!
.....juste un constat un peu désolé que la plupart des gens occultent la plus grande partie du territoire australien.
Albatross
Salut Albatross, good work.
Of course, I agree with your Croisade (now that I've learned what Croisade means
!)
There are so many forgotten little corners of Australia, many in every state. Some of them really amaze me: I go there and I think: "this place is so great...how come it hasn't been discovered by hoards of tourists?" (by the way, 'hoardes' to an Australian still isn't a big crowd, compared to European standards
)
Mt Gambier in South Australia is one of these fantastic places with a lot going for it, yet for internationals doesn't seem to have been put on the map. There's Coober Pedy in outback S.A., one of the most fascinating towns I've seen in my whole life, yet you hardly ever hear of it outside S.A.
I guess the progression is first that the locals find it, then the interstate visitors, then somewhere late along the line, the internationals come.
There's also Victor Harbour, just 1 hour south of Adelaide, with a penguin colony so good that I'd never bother to visit the one at Phillip Island in a million years.... only a couple of years ago when we were last at Victor Harbour, we had the whole penguin parade practically to ourselves. Formidable!
Then there are the great little places for up close wildlife watching dans la nature that don't make it into the guide magazines, maybe because they don't want everybody to go there and some disturb the peace and the animals...but it is there for people to enjoy, so why shouldn't they be allowed to find them? I make a point of putting all these on my website.
Then there are those regions that don't spend as much money on Tourism Promotion as others, (which could be why Victoria is leading the way at the moment with the highest increase in visitor numbers over any other state, because it has this strong $$$ commitment to Tourism).
In some small places it is even left for groups of volunteers to make some of the tourist brochures of their town, and this all takes time....
as I'll find when I start my tourism business soon and start writing my own brochures.
And as for having brochures in more than one language....in most places this just doesn't happen, unfortunately. In the middle of the outback, a couple of pages in some of the capital cities, but nothing substantial. C'est dommage.
Perhaps some of this explains why some of the most unheard of places can actually be among the best to see....
And why everybody comes to Sydney and Melbourne - because all the information is 'out there' and so much easier to get.
Keep up the good work Albatross
Kate