Best Australian Family Vacation Ideas

Australia is a spectacular country where you’ll be spoilt for choice with plenty of family friendly tourist attractions and activities. You’ll be amazed by the wide open spaces, different cultures and exciting cities that this great land has to offer. Here are some amazing travelling experiences to offer in each state and territory.

Sydney

Australia’s premier city, Sydney, is well known for its much-photographed Harbour Bridge and Opera House, which are located near serviced apartments in Sydney.

The Harbour Bridge provides an amazingly magnificent backdrop among the city landscape. Around the harbour, you can catch a ferry to the lovely Manly Beach or to the beautifully located Taronga Zoo to see a variety of fascinating international and native animals like koalas and kangaroos.  For the more adventurous families with kids over 10 years old, the most ideal Sydney activity is the Harbour Bridge Climb, a guided track to the top of the Harbour Bridge where you’ll ultimately experience the Sydney views and feel on top of the world.

Melbourne

Melbourne has the most European vibe out of all of the Australian cities. The city is lined with trams travelling along city beaches, excellent restaurants and great fashion stores. The most popular attraction is Federation Square located on the banks of the Yarra River. It’s Melbourne’s most modern architecture.

Another fun location is Phillip Island, which is situated 90 minutes from Melbourne CBD. The island is known for its Penguin Parade where many little penguins leave the sea to rest on Summerland Beach.

Gold Coast

The Gold Coast is a coastal city located in South East Queensland. You can stay at Gold Coast apartments and explore some of the most beautiful beaches in Australia with ultimate surf breaks including Surfers Paradise, Main Beach and Broadbeach.

There are also theme parks that kids will love. Dream World is Australia’s largest theme park with some of the tallest and fastest rides ever. Movie World is known as Hollywood on the Gold Coast with movie related rides and entertainment. Sea World has marine wildlife and water rides. Wet ‘n’ Wild is full of adventurous and laid-back water rides and attractions.

Canberra

Also known as Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Canberra is home to some great national attractions. The Parliament House has impressive architecture and is the place for federal government. The War Memorial pays tribute to Australians who served at war and is a place to pay your respects and reflect. Questacon is known as the National Science and Technology Centre where you can watch a lightning bolt, free fall down a six metre vertical slide and be shaken by an earthquake. Here, kids can learn a lot about the significance of science in daily life.

Kangaroo Island, South Australia

Kangaroo Island is a naturally beautiful location with stunning scenery of dramatic cliffs, idyllic beaches, untouched bushland and amazing wildlife. It’s a short flight from Adelaide or a ferry ride from Cape Jervis. Family friendly spots include Seal Bay, Hope Cottage Folk Museum, Clifford’s Honey Farm, Parndana Wildlife Park and Flinders Chase. There are also eco tours and boat trips.

Kings Park and Botanic Garden, Western Australia

This location is possibly the most underrated place in Perth and has spectacular views. The area overlooks the Swan River and Darling Range, highlighting the best in Western Australia flora. Attractions include the DNA Tower, Lotterywest Federation Walkway and Family Area for playground enjoyment and picnics.

Northern Territory

The steamy far north of Australia is famous for Alice Springs Desert Park where you can see desert wildlife including bilbies, rock wallabies, emus, kangaroos, birds and reptiles.

The state is also home to Uluru (previously known as Ayers Rock), a large sandstone rock that is a unique and natural wonder. Each sunrise and sunset can magnificently change its colours from brown to orange, red and grey. A guided tour will give you information on local flora and fauna and the spiritual Aboriginal Dreamtime stories of the area.

Hobart, Tasmania

Hobart offers fascinating historical influenced landscapes, as well as contemporary art and culture. Salamanca Place is a great meeting spot with cafes, restaurants, shops, markets, art studios and galleries. Elsewhere, kids can learn about 1820s Hobart at the Old Hobart Town Historical Model Village and sample tasty fare at Sweets & Treats, a vintage lolly shop.

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Planning a Fancy Dress Party

Everyone loves a fancy dress party because they provide a great opportunity for people to haul out their best evening wear from the back of the closet, shine up their dress shoes and get themselves looking fantastic. As the host, however, you have the special duty to maintain the classy feel of the party with your decorating, food, drinks and conversation. The following ideas will help you plan for a successful fancy party that your friends will be talking about for ages.

Invite the Right People

The first step to making sure your party stays fancy and classy is inviting the right people. Out of all your friends and co-workers, choose people who you think could really get in the spirit of a fancy party. Remember that if one person shows up in torn jeans and a t-shirt, they could throw off the whole vibe. Once you have your guest list finalised, make up some gold embossed invitations and deliver them personally to your guests. The invitation should clearly state the level of formality of the party so that no one comes under or overdressed.

Clean and Decorate

The only way you can pull off a fancy dress party is by making your home look the part; otherwise people will feel like they are pretending. Clean and scrub everything in your home until it sparkles, clear out frumpy and raggedy furniture, and collect clutter and move it into your closet or basement. You can even get fancy furniture for the night from a party furniture hire store to really impress your guests. Party supplies should also have an element of class, and decorations should be clean and elegant, such as a bouquet of freshly cut flowers.

Fancy Food

If you are serving dinner, it’s good to remember that fancy meals are generally served in courses. Make it easier on yourself by hiring a caterer to do this, otherwise you might end up spending all your time bringing out and clearing away dishes. Mussels, clams, oysters, bruschetta and spinach dip are great examples of fancy appetisers that you can start off with. Follow the appetisers with a couple of courses of salad and soup before delving into the main course. Deserts should also be kept small, delicate and simple such as sorbet, an assortment of tiny cakes, macaroons or fruit with cream.

Designer Drinks

When it comes to beverages, you will have to pull out all the stops to keep up with the high-class nature of your party. An open bar is the best way to please the people, and there are plenty of party stores that offer bar table hire. Although you should have a good selection of wine and beer, cocktails are the ultimate drinks for a fancy party. At the very least, your bar should have the ingredients for a martini (gin, vodka, dry vermouth, green olives), a margarita (tequila, Cointreau, Grand marnier, limes), a daquiri (rum and sour mix), as well as tonic water and club soda. Fit out your bar with a shaker, cocktail glasses and a few tumblers along with ice. Spirits, champagne and port are also great to have on hand for a fancy party.

Entertainment

Having some entertainment can take the classiness of your party up many notches, so ask around in your group of friends to find someone who would be willing to sing a number or recite a piano piece.

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Let Your Child Discover the Morals behind Every Fairy and Witch Tale

A never founded fantasy world, humble heroes who kill the demons and witches, never ever lose any battle, wins the kingdom and marry a beautiful princess living a traumatic full of sufferings until then. Does that sound familiar to you? Were you able to put together all the events and remember a particular story or stories?

Everyone of us have been brought up by listening to stories of fantasy world featuring a charming prince, princess, witches, elves, goblins, dwarfs, mermaids etc. These characters not only made our life colourful and beautiful, but also taught us to see life in various forms. However, short stories mostly involve superficial and imaginative, and do not contain any references of the legends and religious epics. They are purely fictitious which aims at entertaining children and sustaining their innocence.  But, as it should be all the tales begin with a fixed scenario, “once upon a time...” and have happy endings that goes like, “and they lived happily ever after”.

These short stories are commonly referred to as Fairy tales, i.e small or short stories of fairies. The characters of these tales are simple and imaginative and are not only associated with children, but also approach adults in various ways. Initially, such tales were intended for the entertainment purpose of adults, but since 20th century they became associated with children's literature. They were altered and brought together in such a manner that children could also read them. The sexual references, violent acts, greedy witches etc were eliminated from the version written by children.  The tale of two brothers is considered to be an oldest known written tale of ancient times.

Other short stories that direct towards religion and legends involving actual times, place and with actual people are not considered as FairyTales for Children. They are basically written down with an aim to develop the morals and actual understanding of life. Folktales are found in various forms and are available in all languages in the world.  These are also available in the form of short films such as The snow white and the seven dwarf was the first movie to be released in 1937 based on the folktales with special effects and animations that mesmerized everyone.

List of most popular authors and their works

Many authors have brought about relevant changes and modification in the stories that already existed from ancient times to make them suitable for children and compiled them in a book of different version, Every author has its own version of tales. Some of the great works have been listed below:

1.    Book of British Tales by Alan Garner

2.    Fairy Tales by E. E. Cummings

3.    Grimm's Fairy Tales

4.    Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino

5.    Madame d'Aulnoy

6.    Norwegian Folktales by Peter Christen and Jorgen Moe

7.    Narodnye russkie skazki by Alexander Afanasyev

8.    Charles Perrault

9.    Panchatantra (India, 3rd century BCE)

10.  Popular Tales of the West Highlands by John Francis Campbell

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Options for Protecting Your Family's Wealth

Wealth is probably one of the most important elements of an enjoyable life in the Western World. It is sad to say but there is no doubt that financial standing opens doors to experiences and opportunities which those without wealth are unable to obtain. For this reason, protecting your wealth is a hugely important element of every life. There are many ways to protect wealth and this article considers the most important ones.

Insurance

Insurance is possibly the best way to protect yourself from any loss of wealth. Life insurance will ensure that even a death will not threaten finances, health insurance will help to pay the bills in emergencies, and income protection insurance will ensure that the money keeps coming in. Additional types of insurance like auto insurance, home insurance and pet insurance can practically cover you from every eventuality.

Investment

The best way to protect wealth is to make it grow. Money sitting in a bank account is money largely wasted. Investing your money does, of course, come with risks, so clever money management is required. Spending your savings, however, is not a good way to protect your reserves of wealth at all. There are numerous ways to invest and all investments will take both commitment and research to achieve successfully, but investing is certainly the best way to improve financial standing.

Diversification of Income and Wealth

Investing is all well and good, but events like the Global Financial Crash have taught us that putting all of your eggs in one basket, so to speak, is not a wise move. To protect your wealth it is important to diversify your income so that you may benefit from the security of multiple ventures. Having a diverse array of investments means that even if one investment fails, there will still be others from which to recuperate any losses.

Frugal Living

Those who maintain their level of wealth most effectively are those who live within their means. Excessive spending on luxury items is perhaps the quickest way to squander wealth. Even those from low socio-economic backgrounds can vastly improve their standing by saving and investing wisely. The aim should forever be for the amount of wealth that you have to grow on a weekly to monthly basis. Only through this style of living is it possible to maintain wealth and improve your standing.

Clever Accounting

Whilst accountancy fraud is perhaps the fastest way to loss of wealth and standing, clever manoeuvring within the law is potentially vastly beneficial. If you run a company, for example, there is little doubt that there are expenses which can be put on hold or made in order to benefit from tax breaks or rebates. There will also always be allowable expenses, which you can claim back from taxes if you position yourself correctly within the market. Manipulating your expenses and your investments to fit into the most beneficial framework of tax breaks is entirely legal and it will ensure that your wealth continues to grow healthily over time.

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How to Prepare Yourself and Your Family for a Hiking Trip

Holidays are about having fun and spending time doing the things you love to do. We all keep postponing anything we like to do onto our vacations. I am not talking about children here. They can always find time to carry out their hobbies and interests in free time. I am talking about the youngsters and married couples, who are always pre-occupied with one work or another.

Holidays work as a great stress-buster for such busy-bees.

 

We all must lead an active lifestyle but in reality we are leading a sedentary one. People who sit for nine hours at their workplace on an everyday basis, must plan a holiday that involves physical exercise. You don't know how bad can sitting at the office or in a car or truck all day really be. This continuous sitting is deteriorating our physical health. You would love to go camping with your family, or a hiking trip would be great, if you are going with my friends.

Now the question arises how to make preparations for a hiking trip. Just like any other trip, hiking and backpacking requires a lot of planning. And do not confine your planning to decide hiking routes, camping site, food and destination. Hiking preparations totally depend upon the kid of hiking plans you have. If you want to go on an 8-hour hike in the nearby woods, that won't require a lot of preparations. But you would need to make a lot of preparations if you are planning to go on a four-day hiking trip or more. A hiking or backpacking trip can be the best vacation you can ever have.

Get into shape

Hiking or backpacking is full of challenges which puts your physical vigor and strength to test. You must increase your overall fitness level by following a routine exercise. Prepare yourself physically and mentally for the challenges that lie ahead. If you are looking forward to a multi-day hiking adventure, you must train yourself slowly but steadily. Set measurable walking goals and try to achieve them.

Acclimatize to high altitudes

Each of us has different physical stamina and endurance capacity. The need to acclimatize to higher altitudes would vary from person to person. Try walking on lower altitudes and then gradually proceed to the higher ones. This will help your body to get used to the outer climate and adverse situations.

Hiking is a refreshing experience and proper arrangements and planning will make it more memorable. Hiking offers you that much needed "me time", that you fail to get in your routine life. Enjoy a safe hiking trip!

Author-bio: Sudha Thakur is a content curator who has been writing articles, blogs, news releases, case studies on a wide variety of topics like video sharing apps, VoIP technology, relocation, storing, traveling, storing, shipping and a lot more. Presently she is providing content for torontosuites.com- a website that helps you choose the right furnished apartment anywhere in Canada. 

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Top 5 Security Tips Your Kids Need to Know

There is nothing more important than your family’s safety, which is why educating your children about how to look after themselves is such an important issue. From stranger danger to how to cross the road safely, it seems that most of our lives are spent trying to keep our precious little ones safe and sound—even long after they’re little ones, in most cases! Part of having a good home security system in place is making sure the whole family understands how to stay safe.

Unfortunately, thieves and other dangerous criminals will take advantage of the most innocent and helpless in society, which includes children. A child at home alone, or unsupervised in the backyard can be the weakest link in your home security chain, or worse, can be vulnerable to an attack themselves. Here are 5 tips your kids need to know to help keep themselves and your home safe:

Ask First, Don’t Open

When it comes to answering the door, there are various schools of thought among parents about how old their children should be before being allowed to do it themselves. Whatever you decide, the important thing is ensuring that your child understands how to do it without risking their safety.

Make sure you have a security screen door, so that your child can speak to the person on the other side without having to grant them access to the house. Ensure that if the person is someone they don’t know, they understand never to let them in until a parent lets them know it’s ok.

Don’t Give Anything Away on the Phone

A common trick among thieves is to ‘cold call’ a home to check whether anyone is there. If your child answers and tells them that they are home by themselves, it could endanger them and your home to burglars. Instruct them that anyone who calls should be politely asked to identify themselves, and never to say that their parents aren’t home—only that they can’t come to the phone right now and they’ll phone whoever it is back.

Stay Alert

While you don’t want to scare your kids or make them distrustful of everyone, the sad fact is that in this day and age kids need to be able to spot someone who is up to no good. Encouraging them to stay alert and watch for signs that something isn’t right is a great way to help them be more security-conscious. A few things they can look out for are:

·      People that seem to be hanging around the house

·      Unfamiliar cars in the street

·      People asking questions of them

·      People that make them feel unsafe for any reason.

Make sure your kids know that there is no incident too trivial to let you know about, and that they can call you at any time to let you know about something they think isn’t right.

As well as a secure home and a good home insurance policy, all members of a household need to understand how to stay safe. Educating your kids about the risks is not the most pleasant thing to have to talk about, but it could save a life.

/image: bcsss.ca/

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My Blue Hand Reflexology Ball

I bought this ball -months ago- at a book store. It’s small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. I’ve ever once browsed to find out more its benefits.  I read that the regular basis usage will generally improve one’s health.  It’s perfect to use during/after working hours or long study times, as it can help to relieve your tiredness and stress.

You can squeeze the ball anytime. I admit that I don’t use it frequently. I usually squeeze the ball while watching TV or blogging. Interested to try it? My left hand is squeezing the ball right now :)

Blue Monday

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