Dance As Art / High, On Life / Trips Start Online / Bid For A Getaway / Wooden Boat Fleet

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday January 10, 2009

KAY O'SULLIVAN

Crowds flock to see ballet

Barely a month after opening, the National Gallery of Australia's latest exhibition looks set to break the venue's previous attendance records.

Degas: Master Of French Art will be on show in Canberra until March 22 but already numbers have exceeded expectations, with an average of 2000 visitors a day.

The advice is to book online to avoid queues, especially if you intend visiting in the remaining weeks of the school holidays or at weekends.

If you have children and fancy some peace and quiet while you peruse, it's worth considering depositing the littlies in the NGA's family room. In honour of Edgar Degas' love of ballet, the room is set up like a theatre with a stage and there are costumes for budding ballerinas and principals to play dress-up. (Almost half of Degas' output featured ballet dancers and the NGA has devoted two rooms to his ballet paintings. His famous sculpture The Little Dancer Aged Fourteen is a fitting and grand finale to the exhibition.) Children from three to 10 are welcome, as are their carers, though the staff are trained child-care workers.

The family room is open from 10.15am to 2.45pm daily and hour-long visits can be reserved at the NGA front desk.

Exhibition tickets are available at nga.gov.au/degas or see ticketek.com.au.

Ski, shop, achieve

Speaking of attention-commanding females, it's a week for divas at Aspen.

No, there are no more than the usual slew of famous faces at the chi chi resort; Aspen Divas Week is the name given to Aspen's women-only ski program.

Women-only ski groups are nothing new - Australian snowfields host a number of similar programs each year - but what is different about the Aspen version is the off-piste activity.

Of course, you get all the usual options - drinking, eating, spa treatments and, because it's Aspen, plenty of shopping - but divas can also avail themselves of the services of life coaches.

Experts will lead the participants to their own summit and help them achieve their personal best, whether that means skiing a double black or getting the bank balance into the black.

I'm tempted to say only in America but perhaps it's more a case of only in Aspen.

Adventure online

While there is much uncertainty in the world of travel, one thing to bank on is the growth of the internet in 2009. The only question is: how much will it grow?

Google's head of travel for Australia and New Zealand, Claire Hatton, says research commissioned by Google found 79 per cent of Australians use a search engine when researching travel and 70 per cent say the internet is crucial in the decision as to where and when they will go.

Australia still lags behind the US in online bookings (more than 50 per cent there compared with 35 per cent here) but there are indications it is only a matter of time before online bookings become most popular.

"An online presence is crucial for tourist operators and service providers if they want to be considered," Hatton says.

She is also predicting an increasing role for videos in travel-destination research. Already, she says, YouTube, owned by Google, has more than 374,000 travel videos online.

Going, going, gone on holiday

STA Travel, the company that started life in the 1970s as a student-only organisation but is now part of the mainstream, seems to agree the future of travel lies in cyberspace.

It has launched an auction site on which trips, tours, accommodation and flights are available to the highest bidder. There is no minimum reserve on any of the items.

A recent survey of the site found 18 auctions, with items ranging from seven nights in a mixed dorm in the Bohemia Resort in Cairns to one return airfare to Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong flight on Cathay Pacific was sold for $990, well below the retail value of $1444.95, and the Bohemia Resort stay sold for $200. The flight attracted 27 bids over three days and the Cairns accommodation attracted 16 bids, also over three days.

Generally, the more expensive items have a longer bidding period but the site also rolls out quick specials on some big-ticket items. All bidders need to register and the company notifies winners.

See statravel.com.au.

Wooden boats in Hobart

The Sydney-to-Hobart yachts have come and gone but within a month Hobart harbour will be bustling again during the Australian Wooden Boat Festival.

They will come in all shapes and sizes, from model size to full rigs, including 15-year-old wooden surf boats.

More than 500 wooden boats and 50,000 visitors are expected in Hobart on February 6-9 for the festival, which is one of Tasmania's oldest.

See australianwoodenboatfestival.com.au.

Send news items to smarttraveller@fairfax.com.au.

© 2009 Sydney Morning Herald

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