Lifestyle Desires
Aerial view of tropical islands surrounded by turquoise lagoon, Indian Ocean atoll
Travel

Four hours to the lagoon: direct to Cocos, finally

On 1 May, QantasLink cut the Port Hedland stopover from its Friday flight to the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. The journey is now four hours, the lagoon is waiting, and the arithmetic of a long weekend has shifted. Cleo Tasman does the maths from a bar stool at the Cocos Club.

Cleo Tasman8 min read
Modern high-rise buildings in Melbourne's skyline viewed from an apartment window
Community

Rental cooperatives: the housing fix hiding in plain sight

A new rental cooperative in Brunswick is offering something the private market can't: income-capped rent, long-term leases, and neighbours who know each other's names. In Norway, 40 per cent of housing stock works this way. In Australia, it's less than one per cent. I went to find out why.

Ngaire Brennan
A hand reaching for a coffee mug next to a laptop streaming content on a dark desk
Culture

Something Has Gone Wrong With Australian Streaming

Jordan Atkinson
Neatly arranged bathroom shelf showcasing various skincare products and accessories
Beauty

What I keep getting wrong about my niece's skincare drawer

Tahlia Park

Food Drink

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A trio of cocktails featuring lemon and cucumber garnishes on a wooden table surrounded by plants.
Food Drink

Three bars opened on Tuesday. The saké one is the keeper.

Bar Kaeru, Bar Ferdinand, and The Florence all opened their doors on the same Tuesday night. Henry Macarthur visited all three — only one made him want to return before the week was out.

Henry Macarthur
Food Drink

Sfogliatelle at 7am, Mussels at Midnight: Bar Bruno Is the All-Day Italian Diner Sydney Actually Needs

Odd Culture Group's Bar Bruno opens 21 May on York Street, serving pastries and Genovese coffee from dawn before shifting to handmade pasta, seafood, and negronis past midnight — a bet that the Sydney CBD still has room for a restaurant that never closes.

Henry Macarthur
Bar Bruno interior — warm timber and long bar seating at Odd Culture's new all-day Italian osteria in Sydney CBD
Food Drink

Mott 32 picks Crown Melbourne. I keep thinking about Lee Ho Fook.

Hong Kong-founded Mott 32, with its 42-day applewood duck and Michelin recognition, opens at Crown Melbourne in March 2027 as part of a $200m Riverwalk redevelopment. It will be magnificent, and I am still working out what it is for.

Henry Macarthur
Close-up of Peking duck plated with hoisin sauce, cucumber batons and steamed pancakes on a ceramic bowl
Food Drink

The cochinita pibil lands. You're already planning your return.

Papalote in Newcastle West does Mexican cooking that's personal rather than thematic: a brick pit, house-made tortillas, and a king prawn tostada worth a three-hour drive.

Henry Macarthur
Authentic Mexican tacos served with tequila on a rustic table, lime and salsa on the side
Models preparing backstage at a fashion shoot, designer adjusting garments on a rack
Style

Three fingers, six fingers, and a prompt: AI meets Australian Fashion Week

Karla Spetic asked AI to generate images for her latest collection and it gave her hands with six fingers, but it also demanded a clarity she did not know she needed. As Australian Fashion Week opens, the industry AI debate is getting specific.

Imogen Hartley
Two models stand backstage at a fashion show in dramatic lighting before a Sydney runway.
Style

What Beare Park doing the CommBank uniform means

Two days before Beare Park's Opera House show at Australian Fashion Week, CommBank handed Gabriella Pereira the brief for its frontline uniform. The forty-year designer-and-bank tradition has a new entry, and the choice is more revealing than it looks.

Imogen Hartley
Designer at a cutting table working on a fabric pattern
Style

Three days from sketch to Shein

A Melbourne designer finds her own dress on Shein for $18, four colourways, days after she posted the tech pack to Instagram. The numbers, the lawsuits, and what it means to make things slowly in 2026.

Imogen Hartley
Gloria Chol in her Melbourne studio, before a rack of printed organza pieces from her Lines of Power collection
Style

Gloria Chol walked across a country to survive. Now she walks into Australian Fashion Week

The Melbourne designer is about to become the first South Sudanese–owned luxury label on an Australian Fashion Week runway. She tells Imogen Hartley why that matters, and what it took to get there.

Imogen Hartley

Community

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Snow-capped Mount Buller in the Victorian Alps on a winter morning.
Travel

Snow at Mt Baw Baw, a month before the lifts spin

Seven centimetres at Mt Baw Baw and a low-pressure front to 400 metres in Victoria. A soft early-May snowfall isn't a forecast for the season ahead, but it is permission to start thinking like a snow person again.

Cleo Tasman
Money Career

Negative gearing reform meets the housing problem it can't solve alone

Treasury is modelling a two-property cap on negative gearing and a CGT discount cut for budget night, and Jim Chalmers has stopped pretending the status quo is acceptable. The reform is real, the housing-affordability problem is bigger than the reform, and that's the part nobody is saying out loud.

Ben Russo
Suburban Australian house facade in Geelong with manicured front garden and tiled roof
Money Career

What Birthright gets right about my parents' house

Zoe Pepper's black comedy lands in cinemas nine days after the federal budget tries to fix the same problem.

Ben Russo
Aerial view of suburban rooftops in Collaroy, NSW, with colourful tiled roofs and pockets of green
Travel

Bicheno keeps making the welcoming-towns list. I think I know why

Bicheno landed at seven on Booking.com's most-welcoming-towns list. St Helens at ten. Two east-coast Tassie towns in the top ten, and I drove down to find out why.

Cleo Tasman
Long-exposure rocky coastal waves at Bicheno on Tasmania's east coast
Christopher Boots Astrolabe lighting installation in his Collingwood studio
Home

Why I keep booking flights to Melbourne in May

Melbourne Design Week opens its tenth edition on 14 May with more than 400 events, and I have been booking flights down for years now. The honest answer to why is that the rest of the country still has not built what Melbourne already has.

Lila Beaumont
Anonymous viewer holding a remote control in a dim living room, switching channels.
Culture

Two Cages, one Brontë and the May streaming pile

Bugonia, Marty Supreme, a Cage doubleheader and a Brontë adaptation I cannot quite defend. What I am watching, and what I am skipping, on the May 2026 Australian streamers.

Jordan Atkinson
A dimly lit lounge with a television glowing across an empty couch, late evening
Culture

Reading the Netflix top 56 from the couch this autumn

TVGuide's annual ranking landed in May. I worked through the upper bracket across the week, and have opinions. Five films, one half-watch, and a quiet suspicion of the form itself.

Jordan Atkinson
Person watching TV at home with a bowl of popcorn
Culture

Best New Shows Streaming in Australia This May

Sam Campbell finally lands a Netflix special, the Stranger Things successor drops, and Nicolas Cage takes his first proper TV role. Your guide to the streaming releases worth your evenings in May 2026.

Jordan Atkinson
A tranquil road through scenic Australian countryside near Thredbo, NSW — perfect for a weekend road trip escape
Travel

The road out of town: four weekends from Sydney, mapped by season

I left Sydney on a Thursday in July, two hours later than I'd meant to. The city exhales on a Friday afternoon and half a million people point their bonnets toward the same escape routes. Here is what I've learnt about the four escapes that actually deliver.

Cleo Tasman
Travel

Six weeks after Narelle, a fare cheap enough to argue with

Western Australia is dropping Perth-Broome fares to $179, Perth-Exmouth to $199 and Perth-Kununurra to $259, all part of a $1.45m post-cyclone tourism support package. A Hobart-based slow-road columnist tries to work out whether the cheap ticket is the right call.

Cleo Tasman
Silhouettes of camels and riders against a vivid orange sunset and sailboat at Cable Beach, Broome, Western Australia
Travel

I almost didn't go: Milton Park's $10m makeover and the case for imperfection

A $10 million renovation, a 115-year-old country estate, and the question of whether chipped paint matters when the gardens look like that.

Cleo Tasman
Elegant hotel lounge with vintage armchairs and warm lighting
Travel

Tiny, Off-Grid, Two Nights Max: How Aussies Are Travelling in 2026

The two-week beach holiday is being quietly retired. Airbnb data and Tourism Australia figures both show short, regional, off-grid stays surging — and South Australian tiny cabins now leading the country's most-wishlisted list.

Cleo Tasman
Wooden house with solar panels surrounded by greenery in Australia