Things to Do in Australia in December

You descend into the Jamison Valley aboard the Scenic Railway, the steepest incline railway in the world. The clatter of steel wheels against the track gives way to the hush of temperate rainforest below, where tree ferns unfurl fronds the size of café umbrellas and the air drops several degrees cooler, heavy with the mineral smell of wet sandstone. Above, the Scenic Skyway glass-floor gondola crosses the valley at canopy height. On a clear December morning, the Three Sisters sandstone formation glows amber against deep green eucalypt canopy that stretches to the horizon.

You get salt spray, the slap of small harbour chop against your hull, and a vantage point that no ferry deck or shoreline walk can replicate. Your guide launches from a sheltered cove and paddles you past sandstone headlands where fig trees grip the rock with exposed roots, through the wake of passing water taxis, and onto Goat Island itself, a colonial-era gunpowder magazine and convict quarantine station sitting in the middle of one of the world's most photographed waterways. From the island's stone walls you look back at the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House sails catching afternoon light. The whole tableau is framed not by a tourist railing but by the wild fennel and native grasses growing through the old fortifications.

This Blue Mountains day trip pairs the Scenic World rides with a wildlife park visit and finishes with a ferry ride back toward Sydney along the Parramatta River, stitching together mountain escarpments, Australian fauna, and harbour waterway in a single arc. The ferry leg is the quiet revelation. After a day of engineered thrills and curated animal encounters, you settle onto the open rear deck as the boat threads past mangrove-fringed inlets and riverside suburbs where cockatoos wheel in raucous white clouds against the late-afternoon sky. The wildlife park component puts you face-to-face with wombats whose coarse fur feels like a doormat and kangaroos who will eat pellets from a flat palm with surprising gentleness, their breath warm and grassy against your fingers.

December is when the colony swells to peak numbers. Thousands of animals hang in dense clusters from riverside trees, their leathery wings folded like dark umbrellas, the air beneath the roost thick with a sharp, musky odour that announces the colony before you see it. As dusk approaches, the first bats unfurl, stretch wingspans that reach a metre across, and launch into the violet sky in a stream that can take twenty minutes to fully clear the roost. The sound is extraordinary. A constant chatter of high-pitched squabbling overlaid with the soft whoosh of thousands of membrane wings displacing air, nothing like the silent flight of birds.

A private wine tour through McLaren Vale or the Adelaide Hills puts you in the passenger seat of a vehicle winding through some of Australia's most storied wine country, with a designated driver who doubles as a regional interpreter. McLaren Vale sits on the Fleurieu Peninsula south of Adelaide, where the vines run almost to the sea and the maritime influence keeps December temperatures a few degrees cooler than the city. The breeze off Gulf St Vincent carries salt and dried grass, and the light has a particular coastal clarity that makes the green of shiraz canopy almost fluorescent against terracotta soil. The Adelaide Hills alternative trades coast for altitude. Winding roads through towering stringybark forest open onto clearings where cellar doors occupy converted dairies and stone farmhouses, and the air smells of pine resin and fermenting grape must.

A private tour of the Blue Mountains with a dedicated kangaroo and koala experience strips away the conveyor-belt pacing of group excursions and replaces it with unhurried proximity to both landscape and wildlife. Your guide drives you to lookout points where the eucalyptus oil haze, the source of the Blue Mountains' name, gives the valley a soft cerulean tint that deepens with distance, layer upon layer of ridgeline fading into progressively bluer silhouettes until the furthest ranges dissolve into sky. The wildlife component takes you to a sanctuary where koalas doze in the forks of eucalyptus branches close enough to hear them chewing, a rhythmic, wet crunch, and kangaroos rest in shaded clearings, their ears swiveling like satellite dishes tracking every footfall on the gravel path.