[ON LOCATION] SUE PELLETIER
It had been a long time—14 years, to be exact—since I had the joy of visiting Australia for Dreamtime, Tourism Australia’s signature incentive showcase where incentive planners from around the world gather to learn what draws more than a million people each year to the land down under. Dreamtime had been on hold since 2019 due to the pandemic, so there was a lot of pent-up excitement for our hosts as well as for the 100 or so incentive planners and media who came to the event to see all that’s new, and all that has historically made this country an incentive jewel.
“In 2019, the business events sector was a major contributor to the Australian visitor economy, attracting more than one million visitors to our country who spent $4.5 billion, and Dreamtime will play a key role in helping us get back to those levels,” said Tourism Australia’s Managing Director, Phillipa Harrison, while welcoming the group to Dreamtime.
“Since January 2020, we have opened almost 200 new hotels across Australia, adding approximately 19,000 rooms,” she added. In Adelaide alone, that includes the new Sofitel Adelaide, Adelaide Oval Hotel and Eos by SkyCity, as well as a soon-to-launch Marriott. But it wasn’t all business. Dreamtime was six days full of surprise, delight, exquisite foods, fine wines and connections made with the local people, places and critters that make Australia a bucket-list incentive destination.
Our first stop was South Australia’s capital city of Adelaide. The first sign, literally, that we were somewhere very different was a “koala crossing” warning we saw on the highway on our 15-minute trip to lunch in the Adelaide Hills at Mt. Lofty House. The 175-year-old, 29-room, five-star boutique hotel features meeting spaces for up to 200 delegates. Our first taste of Australia was at the hotel’s Chef Hat-awarded Hardy’s Verandah Restaurant, where we feasted and drank fine wines from the vineyards while enjoying the view over the Piccadilly Valley. We also got to tour the adjacent Sequoia Lodge, whose 14 cantilevered luxury suites have hosted many a celebrity as well as incentive VIPs.
At nearby Cleland Wildlife Park, we cuddled a sweet koala, fed a field full of kangaroos, and watched mama wallabies try to keep their too-big babies from spilling out of their pouches.
Then it was back to our host hotel, the 377-room Hilton Adelaide, which overlooks Victoria Square in the heart of the city’s entertainment and shopping district. In addition to providing a great early dinner in a private room at the Coal Cellar + Grill restaurant, the Hilton Adelaide has 20 meeting rooms, including a pillar-free ballroom.
The next morning we headed over to the Adelaide Convention Centre, whose three distinct buildings can be used as individual venues or integrated for larger events. Its 215,000+ total sf of flexible event space includes the East Building, which has tiered seating for approximately 3,000 or banquet space for 900+, as well as 27 meeting rooms and expansive foyer space with natural light. The Centre, which achieved EarthCheck’s Master status, also is within walking distance of 4,000+ hotel rooms.
Dreamtime 2023 officially kicked off with a Welcome to Country ceremony during which we learned a little about the Kaurna people who are the traditional custodians of the Adelaide Plains. After an update from Tourism Australia officials, we scattered to the networking event, where 90 of Australia’s top business event representatives met with potential buyers and media.
At the lunchtime break, media reps were in for a very special treat at the Adelaide Botanic Garden. First we experienced a traditional Kaurna smoking and cleansing ceremony, conducted by Jack Bucksin, Founder and Director of Kuma Karru, which provides cultural services and workshops for events (including the Dreamtime Welcome to Country). Then Hamish and Kate Laurie, proprietors of premium South Australian wine producer Deviation Road, treated us to a sabrage demonstration, where Hamish uncorked an exclusive Vintage Brut via sword, along with some out-of-this-world nibbles of flowers, ants (yes, ants, and they were delicious!) and oysters. We then were serenaded by music and learned about the Adelaide Fringe Festival, the Southern hemisphere’s largest open-access arts festival, one of the many festivals that make this place known as Festival City.
Next up was lunch at the Botanic restaurant. Set in a heritage rotunda amidst the lush greenery of the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, Chef Justin James wowed with exotic concoctions featuring plants, flowers, herbs, spices and more ants from the Botanic Gardens, as well as proteins ranging from abalone to marron, which we had to forage for inside a bundle of botanic leaves, lightly scorched. It’s hard to describe the experience, where diners ate all this amazing, exotic and elegant food using sticks and branches for cutlery and licking delectable sauces off of rocks. It’s available for booking private functions, but be sure to leave at least four hours to savor the tasting menu’s 26-plus flavor combinations.
The Dreamtime welcome event, a block party held on Varden Avenue in the East End and hosted by versatile catering company East End Cellars, was a feast for the eyes as well as the palate, with live cooking stations, an outdoor bar, wine tastings, roving entertainment and a welcome from Adelaide’s Lord Mayor, Dr. Jane Lomax-Smith.
The business portion of Dreamtime ended in spectacular fashion the next morning, when we were ushered into the Adelaide Oval, which is home to cricket matches and all manner of sporting events when it doesn’t have incentive planners enjoying a gourmet breakfast and speeches on the pitch. Then Business Events Adelaide’s CEO Damien Kitto told us there was “just one more surprise” as he waved to the Oval’s roofline, where a 30-strong school children’s choir serenaded us from above with a rendition of “We Are Australian” as the names of all the attendees rotated through the scoreboard. Before long, we were belted and harnessed and on our way to the roofline ourselves to check out the Oval’s RoofClimb, where we got gorgeous 360-degree views of Adelaide and the surrounding hillsides.
Next up was the D’Arenberg Cube, just a short drive up into McLaren Vale. We were greeted by the Cube’s mastermind Chester Osborn. “Sydney had the Opera House, and I thought we needed something unique like that in Adelaide,” he told us before gesturing to the five-level cube that was inspired by all the puzzles involved in winemaking. While we didn’t have a lot of time to spend at the Cube, each level was a surprise and delight, from a wine sensory room to a virtual fermenter to a 360-degree video room—and every nook and cranny was jammed with eclectic art and sculptures, including an exhibit of bronze sculptures and graphic artworks by surrealist master Salvador Dali, who would have felt right at home in the Cube. The views at the top over McLaren Vale, the Willunga Hills and the Gulf of St. Vincent are a great backdrop for a group photo-op—something every group that books a conference, board meeting or teambuilding activity will definitely want to do.
We had lunch on the lawn of the Vale Taphouse Grill on the Beresford Estate, where we sampled an assortment of wonderful food and wines while ogling the view over the vineyards. We then headed to the Woodstock Wine Estate to pal around with Dusty the kangaroo and a peckish-but-adorable emu, as well as a wild momma koala and cub, before sampling some of the vineyard’s wine and nibbles, including the best black olives I’ve ever tasted.
The Dreamtime closing gala was a not-so-closely guarded secret—a banquet and several experiences, from wine tasting to floating desserts—at the iconic Penfolds Magill Estate just a short drive from Adelaide. It was a magical evening as we dined outdoors on local dishes such as South Australian oysters and Port Lincoln tuna, with the sun setting over a panorama of gently rolling hills.
Our stay in Adelaide was all too brief, but it was packed with experiences we’ll revisit forever in our memories. As Business Events Adelaide’s Stillen said, “Team Adelaide is more than just a narrative—it is a philosophy that every one of our members understands and makes sure that guests receive an exceptional experience from airport to airport and everywhere in between.”
I knew the second part of our Dreamtime trip to Tropical North Queensland was going to be fun when I saw our luggage pop out through a giant shark head at the baggage claim at Cairns Airport. It was a quick few minutes’ ride to our home for the next few days, the gorgeous, five-star, 311-room Crystalbrook Riley, where my room overlooked the waterside. Then off to a site tour of the five-star, 112-room Pullman Reef Hotel Casino and lunch at the Chef Hat award-winning Tamarind Restaurant, followed by a tour at the Cairns Aquarium, where we learned about critters from the rainforest to the reef, and got to meet a few turtles in the aquarium’s turtle hospital/rehab, where hopefully they would be brought back to health and ultimately released back into the wild.
While we had tasted a whole lot of wine during our time in Adelaide, we ventured into a different sort of spirit journey with a cocktail-making class at the Wolf Lane Distillery, then back to the Riley for apps and a cocktail before dinner at the hotel’s Paper Crane restaurant, where our plates were adorned with leaves bearing our names—such a great touch!
Saturday was the day we’d been waiting for—a trip to snorkel on the Great Barrier Reef aboard the Reef Magic. After the ship connected with the Reef Magic Pontoon, we were outfitted in drysuits and taken on a whirlwind tour, led by a marine biologist, of a reef reclamation project, then a snorkel safari along a reef wall, before heading back to the pontoon to check out the enclosed and sheltered coral lagoon. Then it was time for a buffet lunch, followed by a visit with one of the resident marine researchers conducting work aboard the pontoon, and a cultural presentation complete with dancing and didgeridoos. It was a truly magical day.
But the day’s surprise-and-delight wasn’t over. We showered off the salt water and headed off to the Cane Fields Farm for canapes and cocktails overlooking the cane fields of a working farm as the sun set over the Cairns mountains, followed by a delicious dinner. It was so different from anything we had experienced previously, and such a perfect way to top off an incredible day.
But we still had one more day to explore the other of the area’s natural wonders, the Daintree Rainforest. First stop was breakfast on the beach at the fabulous Nu Nu Restaurant in Palm Cove, complete with an impromptu visit with Chef Nick Holloway, who just so happened to be walking his dog down the beach as we sat down to eat.
Then we headed up to Mossman Gorge, where our local indigenous guide took us on a Ngadiku Dreamtime Walk to learn more about the Kuku Yalanji land and culture, including stops along the way to demonstrate some of the ways the local indigenous people used what the environment provided. For a decidedly upscale experience of the rainforest, we visited Silky Oaks Lodge, a boutique tropical escape in the Daintree Rainforest overlooking the Mossman River where I think we all would have stayed perfectly happily swinging on the hammocks and basking in the outdoor tubs for the rest of the day. We also feasted on modern Australian cuisine in the lodge’s aptly named Treehouse Restaurant.
We finished the day with a tequila tasting and tour of the Sheraton Grand Mirage Resort, a five-star beachfront resort with 12 pools, seven food and beverage outlets, and 18 indoor and outdoor flexible meeting and event spaces in Port Douglas before heading back for our final evening banquet at the Salt House restaurant on Marina Point in Cairns, next to the Cairns Yacht Club.
It was amazing. But of course it was—it was Australia.
businessevents.australia.com/en; hilton.com; adelaidecc.com.au; tropicalnorthqueensland.org.au; crystalbrookcollection.com/riley