The 13 Best Things to Do in Australia

Turquoise water meeting white sand at the edge of nowhere, Wharton Beach sits in the Duke of Orleans Bay area of Western Australia's southern coast, remote enough that even on a flawless summer day you may have the whole stretch to yourself. Dolphins work the break while surfers do the same. It ranked third on the World's 50 Best Beaches list in 2026, which should tell you something about the drive.

A drift snorkel off a desert beach where the current does the work, carrying you along the Ningaloo Reef while fish go about their day around you. Turquoise Bay sits inside Cape Range National Park with no development in sight, scrubland meeting white sand meeting that genuinely improbable water color. Ranked fifteenth on the World's 50 Best Beaches list, it draws fewer visitors than the name deserves, which is the whole point of coming this far.

The Hill of Grace vineyard was planted by a Silesian settler over 150 years ago, named for the Lutheran church peering down at its twisted old vines. This Eden Valley winery has been in the same family for six generations, and tastings are personally hosted by them, portraits of ancestors watching from the walls. Henschke holds a spot on the World's 50 Best Vineyards list, which feels about right for a place still farming the ground its great-great-grandparents cleared.

A family-owned winery in Margaret River with an art gallery on the grounds and a restaurant that earns its own visit. The estate runs seasonal jazz evenings and arts dinners, so checking the calendar before you go is less optional than it sounds. Perth is an hour away by air, which the kind of people who plan ahead tend to take literally. A 50 Discovery from The 50 list.

An urban winery visit where the highlight is a dimly lit underground cellar and a story involving corporate sabotage. In the 1950s, the winemaker Max Schubert was ordered to stop his experiments; he kept going anyway, hiding bottles in these very cellars. That wine, Grange, later became Australia's priciest bottle ever sold at auction. The tour opens at the founders' original cottage before moving underground, where the contraband legacy of one stubborn winemaker is very much the point.

An old-school Hunter Valley estate that has been shaping Australian Semillon longer than most wineries have existed, Tyrrell's offers structured tastings from a casual introduction to the range all the way up to vertical deep-dives on their flagship VAT 1. The Sacred Sites experience takes you through the actual vineyard blocks before you taste what came out of them. Bookings are essential, and the family occasionally shows up, which is either charming or slightly terrifying depending on your threshold.