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The Guardian - Back to homeThe Guardian

Anywhere but the beach

Australia in summer is usually all about the beach. In this series writers take us through their summer days spent in the suburbs, country, and towns away from the shore

20 January 2024

  • Composite image of the Brisbane River and its banks, including a river ferry and someone hugging a tree

    I fulfil Wiradyuri tradition by tree-hugging with purpose. Each hug aims to leave some love behind

    Anita Heiss
    I discovered the Roma Street parkland as a place to run. It’s a wondrous oasis. Tip: there’s quite a bit of my love left along Banyan Lawn

12 January 2024

  • A composite picture of children playing, the Blue Mountains in the background and a snake curled up beside a tree.

    ‘Snakes on bush paths, pool dinners and storms – summers in the mountains are glorious’

    In the mountains, when it’s too hot to cook and too hot to be in the house, we’d loll on the grass and feel the cool of the evening start to steal in

9 January 2024

  • Marrickville Terminus<br>Composite for James Bradley on the Inner West

    James Bradley’s summer: fig trees, cicadas and the warm possibility of night

    In Sydney’s densely developed inner west, this season has as much to do with the rhythms of urban life as it does with weather

5 January 2024

  • A composite image of a vampire, Australian native plants, bats and two figures in a kayak

    ‘We’d come here to get away from bickering about screens but had plunged back further: to the Eocene’

    Chloe Hooper
    Other families have spread on to the finest beaches – but how often do you travel an inner-city waterway and happen upon ‘bats, bats, bats, and more bats’?

2 January 2024

  • A composite illustration of a cricketer, an old car and lightning over the Brisbane skyline

    The empty streets of my town in summer give way to a wild reckoning in February

    Robert Forster
    To remain in hot Brisbane is to have a holiday in reverse. We may not have surf and sea breeze but we do have the city to ourselves

29 December 2023

  • Sara M Saleh: ‘There’s one castle and we can take no risks. Undercover picnic real estate is fiercely competitive.’

    Sara M Saleh’s summer: ‘Our afternoon is spent in a smog of smoke, kebabs and kafta rolls’

    Sara M Saleh
    Extended family gatherings are a summer staple in Sydney’s west. But it is also a time of a great emptying

26 December 2023

  • Historic farmhouse at Carisbrooke Station near Winton, Queensland Outback, Australia<br>Composite for James McKenzie Watson on Orange and the central west

    James McKenzie Watson’s summer: heat that could roast a chook and wombats hogging the fan

    When Dubbo records its sixth 40C day in a row, here’s what we do: we keep our commitments, then we go inside. And we don’t. Come. Out
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