Month: June 2013

At Paramount, the term High Tea is applied literally, as a lavish afternoon spread is enjoyed with 360 degree views of London.

TRAVEL WRITER WINNER | The contagious rhythm of Havana, Cuba sweeps up this month’s travel writer winner, EMMA O’NEILL in its heady, steamy embrace. Emma is our Great Travel Writer competition winner for May, and has won a £250 voucher with Topdeck.

Adrian Bayley was on parole for raping five women and on bail for an assault when he raped and murdered Jill Meagher, a court has heard.

The Queen is carrying on with official engagements while Prince Philip remains in a London hospital including granting an audience to the governor-general.

The federal attorney-general doesn’t want to be drawn on whether Australia is using information gathered by a controversial US surveillance program Prism.

On Monday 3 June Western Australians in London gathered to celebrate Western Australia Day, marking the establishment of the Swan River colony in 1829.

Ben MacCormack moved to London in March 2011 to take on the role of General Manager of AFL Europe to develop the sport of Aussie Rules in Europe and the UK. Since then he’s helped run three Euro Cups, the AFL European Challenge, and met the Queen at Buckingham Palace.

SURVIVING LONDON | Rent. Those four innocent looking letters that taunt and tease every Aussie when they first come to London. Here's our tips to survive the rental jungle.

Three Australian architecture practices will exhibit in the showcase exhibition, Atlas of the Unbuilt World, during this year’s London Festival of Architecture.

Two men have died and two remain in a critical condition after drinking a bad batch of home brew grappa in rural Queensland, with the government saying that it will investigate the incident in order to determine whether steps must be taken to prevent the same thing happening again.

View the digital edition of this week’s FREE Australian Times newspaper, available every Tuesday across London.

ASTUTE AUSSIE IN LONDON | We live in an intertwined world of systems — families, communities, teams and organisations. Our choices lead to actions and reactions which affect others in the system. Nothing works in isolation and awareness of the systems in which we operate is key.

Leadership speculation in the federal government has put the country at risk of an early election after Independent MP Tony Windsor claimed that the deal he made in 2010 to support the Gillard Government would be “null and void” if the Australian Labor Party were to change leaders before the ...

Tim Minchin’s Matilda the Musical failed to pick up the top Tony Awards on Sunday, with Cyndi Lauper’s Kinky Boots strutting off with the big gongs.

Artists, jurists, academics and sports legends have been honoured on the Queen’s Birthday list, released in Australia on Monday.

Australian border protection authorities won’t yet recover the bodies of dead asylum seekers near Christmas Island.

Labor would attract almost seven per cent more votes on a two-party preferred basis if Kevin Rudd was prime minister, a poll says.

The son of controversial former Queensland premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, John Bjelke-Petersen, has quit the Liberal-National Party and today announced that he will run as a candidate for the Palmer United Party.

Former Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has revealed that she underwent surgery to have a tumour removed from a lymph node in her neck last week and has been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

REVIEW | Happy New at Trafalgar Studios, by Australian playwright Brendan Cowell, is full of raw emotion and an undertone of restless aggression. It is a brutal exploration of how humans operate in modern Australian society, that sucks in the audience by virtue of proximity and off the back of ...

The Taste of London Festival in Regent’s Park on 20-23 June is packed full of produce, products and sneak peeks into London’s top restaurants. A foodie heaven you don’t have to wait for.

WHAT'S ON | A BBQ with a comedy show on the side? Sounds pretty Australian to us. Check out The Invisible Dot’s BBQ previews season of Edinburgh Fringe shows, including Australian comic Claudia O’Doherty on Wednesday 12 June 2013.

SUBCULTURE SLEUTH | As the cliché goes, there are plenty more fish in the sea. And in the ocean that is London, it is best to cast a wide net.

Former Labor leader Kevin Rudd says he is available to campaign in seats across the country, but is not a candidate for the leadership.

A live 12-hour interactive show about the Great Barrier Reef, featuring underwater tweets and footage from divers, is being broadcast on YouTube. Watch the video below.

Elliot Wheeler, film composer and music arranger, has applied his prodigious skills to his own creation with his debut album The Long Time. He talks to BONNIE GARDINER about drawing inspiration from iconic films, including his latest — Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby.

The ABC will stop making the animated version of Bananas in Pyjamas, featuring loved children's characters B1 and B2. ABC have seen a recent decline in overseas merchandise sales.

An Australian female director, SOPHIE MATHISEN, answers the question being asked the world over: where are the female directors? Sophie is currently working on her first feature film, DRAMA.

EDINBURGH EXPAT | If part one of our top summer in Scotland activities didn’t help you turn that translucent skin a healthy shade of pink, this week’s best of list should do the trick.

AUSTRALIAN VISAS | Eligibility and requirements for Australian Resident Return Visas (subclasses 155 and 157) explained.

A piece of Western Australia's remote East Kimberley region will be able to be seen from the top of the Eiffel Tower when an enormous artwork by an Aboriginal artist is unveiled on a Paris museum's rooftop.

The family of the British nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, who committed suicide days after a prank call by two Australian DJs has slammed the radio station for giving one of the DJs, Michael Christian, a major award.

London Legacy will host their annual reception on Thursday 13 June at 6pm in the Downer Room at Australia House.

REVIEW | Margaret Evison's Death of a Soldier - A Mother's Story is a book that needed to be written. It goes beyond the headlines and strips away the veneer to show what it is really like on active service in Afghanistan, and just as importantly, the mother of one.

INTERVIEW | Australian mezzo-soprano and musical all-rounder Caitlin Hulcup talks to WILL FITZGIBBON ahead of her performance as Calbo in Gioachino Rossini’s opera Maometto secondo at Garsington Opera.

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison was left looking red-faced as a dozen journalists abandoned a press conference he’d called outside Canberra’s Parliament House to chase down Labor rival Joel Fitzgibbon.

Communications minister Stephen Conroy says he’ll be meeting with stakeholders in Canberra on Thursday to discuss the latest asbestos scare in communities living around the national broadband network (NBN) work sites.

The awarding of "Top Jock" to Australian DJ Michael Christian, one of the 2DayFM radio jocks embroiled in the UK royal prank call scandal during which nurse Jacintha Saldanha took her own life, has been labelled in "bad taste".

A United Nations treaty co-authored by Australia and designed to restrict the sale of illegal arms in the global marketplace has been signed by Junior Defence Minister Mike Kelly in New York City earlier this week.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague will meet his Ecuadorian counterpart Ricardo Patino on 17 June to discuss the future of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Change Hospitality are hiring chefs for their team to work over the 2013 event season with some of London's top event caterers.

Drawn to London as a hub for travel and work in the tourism and hospitality industry, Elizabeth Martin quickly discovered the two year UK working holiday visa was just not long enough. Four years on, and Elizabeth has forged a successful career in events management in the London's fast paced, ...

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has rejected Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s accusation that Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop had “embarrassed the nation” by claiming that the Indonesian government supported the Coalition’s policy to turn back the boats of asylum seekers if elected later this year.

HONEYMOONING NOMAD | When confronted with nine days of no internet, our honeymooning nomad was forced to reassess the true value of technology.

Beautiful beaches, tick. A history as colourful as its landscape, tick. Charming, friendly people and delicious food, bingo. MELISSA TOWNSEND discovers the magical melting pot that is the small Mediterranean nation of Malta.

Queenslanders will each fork out an additional $181 as a result of the Newman Government’s second budget announcement yesterday, which is expected to earn the state an additional $1 billion in revenue over the next fiscal year.

Former cabinet minister Joel Fitzgibbon has openly ridiculed Labor HQ in the wake of opinion polls showing the government heading for a massive defeat, whilst backbencher Graham Perrett likened the situation ahead of the 14 September federal election to an Indiana Jones movie.

A former Sydney bishop says the Catholic Church needs to fundamentally change to address its abuse crisis.

One Nation founder Pauline Hanson has claimed that she understands the lifestyle of Australia’s “young ones” in a national radio interview that discusses the controversial politician signing up to Facebook in the lead-up to the upcoming federal election.

The boys from Stoke Travel are well versed in the art of the European party festival in Haro. Here, WADE GRAVY talks us through his favourite — the Batalla de Vino.