The Rialto Reloaded

Hotel review originally appeared in Australian Traveller magazine, June 2009

Justin Wastnage inspects the long-awaited renovation of this Collins Street masterpiece that has artfully enclosed a classic Melbourne laneway, capturing it within a vast atrium of cool glass and warm steel.




Melbourne likes to think of itself as a bit cool. A bit European. And more than a bit above Sydney with its brash megabars and shiny temples to consumerism. So it was with some trepidation that I booked a room in the recently renovated Rialto hotel on Collins Street for a romantic weekend with my wife.

The publicity around the Joseph Pang-designed $60m overhaul, which saw the hotel close for 16 months as it swapped management from Le Méridien to InterContinental Hotels, talked of expanses of glass and steel; all very Sydney. Worryingly so. The charm of the Rialto lay in its quintessentially Melbourne laneway feel, chiefly because the communal spaces were situated in Collins Lane, which served as access way between the Melbourne Wool Stores and its office building. Yet it is the glass itself that absolutely makes the Rialto; the vast atrium that spans the laneway has been preserved largely intact as part of the renovations. The refurb has made better use of the openness and vertical space that a ten-storey glass ceiling affords. Natural light during the day is replaced by cool blue at night. Clean lines accentuate the long, narrow dimensions of the bar and restaurant area.

In truth, InterCon couldn’t have tampered with the atrium even if it wanted to. The two buildings that make up the present-day hotel were considered masterpieces even when the renowned St Kilda architect William Pitt finished them in 1891. The Federal Coffee Palace that completed Pitt’s Collins Street trio was the city’s tallest building and a showcase for the neo-gothic style that became known as Marvellous Melbourne.

As the city tore down some of Pitt’s other works (including the Coffee Palace to make way eventually for Melbourne’s new tallest building, the Rialto Tower), the National Trust slapped a preservation order on the hotel and its faux-Venetian façades.

The grandeur of the building adds to a sense of style as we arrive, fresh from one of Melbourne’s modern architectural triumphs, Southern Cross Station on Spencer Street. Yet once inside, you could almost be forgiven for thinking you were in a boutique hotel. The hotel lobby, such that it is, is tucked away inside the Winfield Building that was once the wool board’s office complex. Here ceilings are low, the concierge and check-in counters manned by effusive staff in smart uniforms.

Read the full review on the Australian Traveller website by clicking here.

Lights Out - The International Year of Astronomy is opening up the skies to star-struck travellers

The following article originally appeared in the New Scientist Travel Guide for Australian and New Zealand readers

The International Year of Astronomy is opening up the skies to star-struck travellers writes Justin Wastnage

Lava is slippery when wet, as I found
out attempting to walk on the edges
of the flow of Mauna Loa on Hawaii’s
Big Island.

Hilo, the city at the foot of this active but
benign volcano, is officially the rainiest city
in the US and most days is swathed in a
perma-drizzle more commonly associated
with the north of England.

While most visitors head to the other,
more idyllic islands of the state, Hilo does
attract tourists, with the volcano its major
drawcard. But for many, Hilo is synonymous
with astronomy.

The Mauna Loa’s sister peak, Mauna Kea,
houses some of the finest observatories
on earth and they are open to the public,
although only on organised tours.

This year is International Year of
Astronomy and to mark the event
observatories around Australia are also
opening their doors, with unprecedented
access to a number of telescopes and
historical sites.

Australia’s first observatory was built in
1858 on Sydney’s highest peak, Millers Point,
long before light pollution was an issue.
Although no longer operational, its tours
are among the most popular, with the
public drawn by its proximity to the CBD,
its heritage-listed sandstone building and
three-dimensional theatre, which recreates
the perfect night sky. Similar 3-D displays
are available at planetaria around the
country.

For a more serious look at the heavens,
it’s necessary to travel as far from the cities
as possible.

Coonabarabran, on the edge of the
Warrumbungle National Park in western
New South Wales, bills itself as the
astronomy capital of Australia. The country
town is home to Siding Spring Observatory,
Australia’s largest optical observatory since
its sister site, Mount Stromlo Observatory,
was irreparably damaged in the 2003
Canberra bushfires.

Visitors to Siding Spring (who usually
combine the observatory with a visit to
the national park) are drawn by the Anglo-
Australian Telescope, whose 4-metre wide lens
has discovered three new extra-solar planets.
Australia’s most famous observatory
has no lens. The 64-metre radio telescope
outside Parkes, operated by Australia's
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial
Research Organisation (CSIRO), was the
crucial southern link in the US Apollo 11
manned mission to the moon.

The events of July 20, 1969, were
dramatised in the movie The Dish, which
has led to an average of 100,000 visitors to
Parkes Observatory each year.

Not only can visitors not play cricket
on the massive dish, as in the film, but
usually there is not even a tour, such is the
sensitive work going on inside. But this
year Parkes has two open days, 18 and 19
July, when visitors can go inside or take a
hot-air balloon or helicopter over the site.
More fun perhaps is the Leaning Tower
of Gingin, a 40-metre modern-day version
of the Pisa original at the Cosmology
Gallery of the Australian Interferometric
Gravitational Observatory, north of Perth.
The tower will be used to deliver handson
understanding of gravity science from
free fall, impact craters and the basic laws
of physics for kids. The centre also has
open days in September.

Amateur astronomers should take note
of the best conditions to view the night sky.
The time of a barely visible new moon is
better to observe faint objects than a full
moon, which tends to wash out a good
portion of the sky.

For optical telescopes, mountaintop
locations are best, since the thin air and low
water vapour at higher altitudes and drier
locations make for much better observing
conditions than at sea level. Similarly, cold
air also improves visibility because it’s
stiller than warm air.

To read the article in its original form, click here.

The Rebirth of Pub Grub

The article below first appeared in Australian Traveller magazine, June 2009 edition.

In the cool rolling hills of the NSW Southern Highlands, the reborn Sutton Forest Inn – with its famous new neighbour, one Nicole Kidman – is redefining pub fare one elegant dish at a time. Words by Justin Wastnage, who paid his own way and visited anonomously.

The NSW Southern Highlands has a host of high-end eating options but no real mid-range, convenient alternative to Macca’s – and while eating at the Sutton Forest service station does have its highlights, for most it’s just a handy stopover between Canberra and Sydney. That all changed in June 2008, however, when the Sutton Forest Inn changed hands and Jason Grumley-Grennan, former executive chef at Sydney’s Summit restaurant, took over the pub’s bistro in his first solo venture.

His ongoing vision is to bring the gastropub trend from his native England. "There are lots of great restaurants in Australia and loads of good pubs to drink in," he says. "But there aren’t many pubs that offer restaurant-quality food."

The ethos is simple: an unpretentious pub with a bistro menu. The first part is certainly on the money – the Sutton Forest Inn is an unremarkable building from the road and its dark wood and tartan carpet décor date it. These will go in time, says Grumley-Grennan, but his first concern had been to overhaul the menu.

Calling his cuisine bistro is to do a disservice. At first glance an entrée of prawn salad or salt and pepper squid could have been plucked from any pub menu in the country. But when it’s brought out, it’s clearly something different. Spiced prawns are paired with salmon marinated in miso paste and both sit on a bed of delicately julienned paw-paw and cucumber. The mildest of satay sauces with a hint of mint finishes off the dish. These are complex flavours, rather than a mayonnaise-laced prawn cocktail.

To read the full review, please visit Australian Traveller by clicking here.

Flight club

Originally published in the New Scientist

I am sitting inside the cabin for
the new longhaul 787 aircraft
from manufacturer Boeing and
it feels huge.
Boeing is calling this aircraft the
Dreamliner and a lot of the thought has
gone into passenger comfort as well as
the aerodynamics. A good example is the
inclusion of thousands of tiny blue lightemitting
diodes which fool the eye into
thinking the 787 cabin is larger.
“Eyes can focus very easily on cold
white light, but the frequency of blue
we use makes it very hard to focus on,
enhancing the sense of space,” says Ken
Price, who heads up the revenue team
of the 787 project, working with airline
customers.
The galley of the Dreamliner is where
this sense of space is most impressive;
the entryway is an atrium arch, giving the
sense of a hallway in a stately home. There
are other tricks, too. The aircraft is the first
commercial airliner to be built of advanced
composites, which allow for moister air at a
higher, more natural pressure than in metal
aircraft as the fuselage has no rusting rivets
to worry about.
Boeing is obviously banking on passengers
wanting to find out more about this new
technology, as it has transformed the
traditional tour of its facility north of Seattle
into a Future of Flight museum packed with
concept aircraft from blended wing bodies
to hypersonic aircraft capable of reaching
Sydney from London in two hours.
The airframer’s plant is a fascinating
place too. I met my wife on a tour, having
shoe horned ourselves into the cramped
crew sleeping quarters that are hidden
inside the roof of a 777. The efficiency of
the facility’s work flow processes are as
much a marvel as its sheer size.
Located at the edge of the Puget Sound that
separates the US from Canada’s Vancouver
Island, the Boeing factory is also close to an
area of outstanding natural beauty.
For those who like to combine the
traditional holiday habits of good food and
wine with a little aeronautic sightseeing,
the factory of Boeing’s archrival Airbus is
just as attractive. Its A380 visitor centre,
dedicated to the two-storey flying castle, is
in the southwestern French city of Toulouse.
There are plenty of quirks about the
beautiful city, known to Frenchmen as the
home of rugby and fine food. That the
Airbus facility is here at all, in the middle of
the mountainous Midi-Pyrénées region, is
a twist of historical fate: it is the site where
French aviation pioneer Pierre-Georges
Latécoère founded his factory at the end
of the First World War, far from both the
German border and sea access.
Today, the British built wings and
German-built fuselages have to wind their
way through medieval towns on transporters
from the nearest port in Bordeaux to the
Toulouse suburb of Blagnac.
The site was most famous as the
headquarters of the Franco-British
supersonic aeroplane Concorde, which first
took flight from Blagnac in 1969.
All of this history is presented in a
surprisingly cheap Airbus facility tour,
which Nicole Pradines from the tourism
board of Midi-Pyrénées recommends
combining with a visit to the space
adventure park Cité de l’Espace.
Aside from space paraphernalia from the
past half-century, its Terradome presents
the history of space from the Big-Bang
to the creation of the solar system, while
its hypothetical human settlement on the
moon is entitled, confusingly, Astralia.
Both the third and fourth largest aircraft
manufacturers, Bombardier of Canada
and Embraer of Brazil, also allow tours
of their facilities, although Montreal is far
easier to reach than the jungle city of São
José dos Campos.

FLIGHT TIMES
• The Airbus facility in Toulouse,
France, is home to the world’s fastest
commercial plane, the Concorde, and
the largest, the A380. Manatour Taxiway
offers a combined tour of the A380
assembly line and the Concorde for
EUR22 (AU$41): http://pagespersoorange.
fr/manatour-taxiway.fr/gb/
airbus.htm
• The Future of Flight Aviation
Centre and Boeing Tour are located in
Mukilteo, Washington, approximately
30 miles north of Seattle. The centre
features hands-on exhibits, videos,
graphics and interactive stations to
involve and appeal to the whole family.
For example, you can digitally design
and test your own jet or ride a simulator
of the multi-passenger XJ5 supersonic
jet. General admission costs US$15
(AU$22). Further details are available at
www.futureofflight.org