Fiords, Fireworks & the Southern Summer

New Zealand's largest city rises from no fewer than fifty extinct volcanic cones, several of them, like Mount Eden, an easy climb for a full harbor view. The City of Sails' waterfront has been reinvented around Wynyard Quarter and Britomart's warehouse-turned-restaurant precinct, drawing on some of the country's best produce and wine lists. A short ferry ride puts Waiheke's vineyards within easy reach for anyone who doesn't linger in town. Volcanic, maritime and increasingly serious about its food.

Leveled by a catastrophic 1931 earthquake and rebuilt almost entirely in the fashionable style of the day, Napier is now one of the most complete and best-preserved Art Deco cities on the planet, its pastel facades a genuine architectural pilgrimage. Cape Kidnappers, a short drive along the coast, holds the largest mainland gannet colony in the world, tens of thousands of birds nesting in full view. Hawke's Bay's Gimblett Gravels have become one of New Zealand's most serious wine districts, its Syrah and Bordeaux-style blends now taken seriously well beyond the region. A disaster turned, deliberately, into a design statement.

Leveled by a catastrophic 1931 earthquake and rebuilt almost entirely in the fashionable style of the day, Napier is now one of the most complete and best-preserved Art Deco cities on the planet, its pastel facades a genuine architectural pilgrimage. Cape Kidnappers, a short drive along the coast, holds the largest mainland gannet colony in the world, tens of thousands of birds nesting in full view. Hawke's Bay's Gimblett Gravels have become one of New Zealand's most serious wine districts, its Syrah and Bordeaux-style blends now taken seriously well beyond the region. A disaster turned, deliberately, into a design statement.

New Zealand's compact, hilly capital has built a reputation on precisely the things that fill a short visit well, a world-class national museum in Te Papa, a coffee and craft-beer scene that rivals any city its size, and Zealandia, a fenced urban sanctuary where takahe and kaka have returned to a capital city for the first time in generations. Wind off Cook Strait keeps the city famously bracing, but a cable-car ride up to the botanic gardens rewards it with one of the best harbor views in the country. Weta Workshop's props and creatures, built for Middle-earth, are a short drive from the wharf. Small, sharp and unmistakably creative.

Picton sits at the head of the Marlborough Sounds, a drowned river valley system of forested inlets that the Queen Charlotte Track threads for four days for anyone with the time. It is also the gateway to Marlborough, the wine region that put New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc on the world's tables, its vineyards a short and scenic drive from the wharf. The Sounds shelter the king shag, a rare cormorant found nowhere else on earth, alongside dolphins and fur seals. Greenshell mussels from nearby Havelock round out a region built on both wine and water.

Christchurch has rebuilt itself with real ambition since the 2011 earthquake, a new cathedral square, riverside gardens and an innovative container-mall precinct standing where rubble once did. Its historic port, Lyttelton, tunnels through the hills separately and has its own tight-knit, artsy character worth a wander in its own right. Banks Peninsula, just beyond, shelters Akaroa's French-founded harbor town and some of the only reliable sightings anywhere of Hector's dolphin, the world's smallest and rarest marine dolphin. Canterbury's vineyards and a strong new dining scene round out a region very much back on its feet.

New Zealand's third and least-visited main island offers the best real chance in the country to see a kiwi in the genuine wild, rather than behind glass, its birds are unusually active by day here thanks to an absence of mammalian predators. Barely four hundred people live on Rakiura, as the island is known in Maori, and its International Dark Sky Sanctuary status makes for some of the clearest stargazing in the Southern Hemisphere. Predator-free Ulva Island, just offshore, is a working sanctuary for some of the country's rarest birds. About as far south, and as wild, as New Zealand gets.

Milford Sound's wilder, larger cousin takes three times as long to reach and rewards every extra mile of it, Doubtful Sound sees a fraction of the visitors and correspondingly more silence, the Sound of Silence being its unofficial nickname among those who know it. Rain-fed waterfalls drop hundreds of meters down sheer, forested walls into water so still it mirrors them perfectly on a calm morning. Bottlenose dolphins and fur seals work the fjord's mouth, and Fiordland crested penguins nest along its more sheltered arms. A slow, wordless cruise through some of the most untouched wilderness left in New Zealand.

Australia's southernmost city pairs convict-era sandstone warehouses at Salamanca Place with one of the world's most talked-about museums, David Walsh's subterranean, deliberately provocative MONA, a short ferry ride up the Derwent. Tasmania's cool-climate wine country fans out from the city in every direction, its pinot noir and sparkling wine now taken seriously worldwide, while Bruny Island's oysters are a short drive south. Mount Wellington looms over it all, often snow-capped even in the shoulder seasons. Small, sharp-edged and increasingly essential.

The ruins of Australia's most notorious convict penal colony sit improbably beautifully on the Tasman Peninsula, sandstone shells of a prison, church and asylum now framed by manicured lawns running down to the water. The Isle of the Dead offshore holds the graves of nearly two thousand convicts and settlers, while the wider site's history, both convict-era and more recent, is told with real care rather than spectacle. Coal Valley's vineyards and a strong regional dining scene lie a scenic drive back toward Hobart. A profoundly moving stop, handled with the seriousness it demands.

Tasmania's second city sits where the Tamar meets the dramatic cliffs of Cataract Gorge, a short walk from the city center and improbably wild for something so central. The Tamar Valley's vineyards, some of the coolest-climate wine country in Australia, produce a sparkling wine and pinot noir now sought out well beyond Tasmania, while colonial architecture lines streets barely touched since the 19th century. A compact, characterful base for Tasmania's north.

A deep natural harbor with one of the strangest true stories on the New South Wales coast, for decades, a pod of wild orcas actively helped local whalers hunt baleen whales in Twofold Bay, an extraordinary interspecies partnership documented at the town's Killer Whale Museum, skeleton of the lead orca, Old Tom, included. Ben Boyd National Park's dramatic cliffs and pink pipe-clay headlands ring the bay, and the town's fishing fleet still lands some of the best seafood on this stretch of coast. One of Australia's more improbable, and true, tall tales.

The harbor city needs no introduction, but it rewards a slow look anyway, the Opera House's sail-like shells and the Harbor Bridge's steel arc framing a working harbor still busy with ferries. Bondi's sweep of sand and the coastal walk to Coogee show the city's beach culture at its best, while rainbow lorikeets and sulphur-crested cockatoos crowd the Royal Botanic Garden along the water's edge. A round at one of the city's championship golf courses caps a day in a city that rarely runs out of things to show you.

The harbor city needs no introduction, but it rewards a slow look anyway, the Opera House's sail-like shells and the Harbor Bridge's steel arc framing a working harbor still busy with ferries. Bondi's sweep of sand and the coastal walk to Coogee show the city's beach culture at its best, while rainbow lorikeets and sulphur-crested cockatoos crowd the Royal Botanic Garden along the water's edge. A round at one of the city's championship golf courses caps a day in a city that rarely runs out of things to show you.

The harbor city needs no introduction, but it rewards a slow look anyway, the Opera House's sail-like shells and the Harbor Bridge's steel arc framing a working harbor still busy with ferries. Bondi's sweep of sand and the coastal walk to Coogee show the city's beach culture at its best, while rainbow lorikeets and sulphur-crested cockatoos crowd the Royal Botanic Garden along the water's edge. A round at one of the city's championship golf courses caps a day in a city that rarely runs out of things to show you.