I am slow to notice Maximilian Habsburg-Lothringen emerge under a balcony overhung with vines.

There is no trumpet fanfare announcing my audience with the two-times great-grandson of a Habsburg emperor, just an outstretched hand, and a smile.

“Herr is fine,” explains the man in a greenish-grey loden jacket who might have been archduke ...

"Allow me, madam," says Samil Sahin, white gloves whisking away suitcases.

Samil is the sort of man who can whip up an Espresso Martini blindfolded while calculating the precise amount of time it takes to sail across the Bosphorus Strait.

He is my butler.

"Ask me for an elephant and I will ask you what colour," he chirrups, steering towards a plush ivory lounge in the foyer ...

It’s the rule of thirds,” Matt Griffiths declares, stooping under branches the colour of bleached bones on the stony flanks of Mt Strzelecki.

“It’s an old mountaineering saying that two-thirds of all accidents happen on descent,” he warns, “but I always think that the last third of the mountain takes two-thirds of the effort.”

Comfort has slipped away in an infinite whiteness whipping through trees scrawled tightly around him …

The bear sighs. Sounds human.

She’s invisible in a steel cage, a shadowy mound curled into herself, concealing the glorious lemon crescent of moon emblazoned on her chest.

Unthinkably, she’s been incarcerated for 24 years, until two days ago, when she was rescued from a bear bile farm and delivered to a sanctuary in the lush foothills of the Tam Dao mountain range in Northern Vietnam ...

In the ancient Vietnamese town of Hoi An, between the 1000-year-old blue stone temples and the mustard-yellow pagodas, a seamstress is at work in an old tailor shop.

Every generation in human history has had its own paragon of female beauty and Pamela Van has less than seven hours to realise mine ….

It is the morning before the Moroccan earthquake in the ancient heart of Fes ….

There are many beguiling footnotes in this monumental building, but it’s hard to top the one about King Ludwig I of Bavaria who came twice a month for a bath after the hotel opened in 1841 ...

It’s a savage day in the Tasmanian midlands but the spine-chilling cold goes deeper than the shallow, worn flagstones in The Commissariat Store.

“I see this place very differently now,” confides weather-beaten Jon McCure, sheltering from a howling gale in the lime-washed fortress that squats above the heritage village of Oatlands …

Stand close to almost any cliff on the Great Ocean Road and you appreciate the perils of the Shipwreck Coast, serrated as a knife along the rim of the wild Southern Ocean. More than 700 hulks lie in the fathomless depths of this graveyard beneath the sea. On a windswept bluff near Port Campbell, two headstones are tucked under heathland in a tiny cemetery marking the calamitous loss of the ill-fated Loch Ard in the pre-dawn hours of June 1, 1878.

It’s reasonable to expect the Cobourg Peninsula will be chock full of wild things but a glass of chilled champagne on arrival has a way of softening reality. So we’re radiating calm beside a lagoon pool, plumped into cushions overlooking a pristine cove in a wilderness resort that can only be accessed by boat or private air charter, entirely unprepared for what follows ...

It’s just past dawn in peaceful art-deco Murwillumbah where an early morning queue has formed outside a tiny hole-in-the-wall bakery at the trendy end of town. There are plenty of skilled technicians in the pastry world but few of them are magicians like Ben Leonardi.

Three things exercise a constant influence over the minds of men’," wrote Voltaire in the mid 18th century. ‘Climate, government and religion.’ Climate change anxieties as old as time come up as we wend our way over the twisting viaducts of the astonishingly beautiful Bernina Railway in Switzerland.

It’s winter and the tiny alpine village of Pontresina, in the Engadin Valley, is blessed by golden sunshine.

An ancient stone courtyard is the end of the journey for Sophie Levi. London’s award-winning landscape painter has driven for three days across England and France to arrive in the foothills of the Alpilles Mountains. She parks the car, flings opens the boot, and lances the silence as most of the contents clatter noisily onto gravel at her feet.

“Exactly how long are you staying?” calls out fellow artist Sarah Warley-Cummings, sketching halted on the shady terrace.

An acclaimed Australian author is standing in front of a group of writers from Australia, Britain, France, Holland, New Zealand, Denmark and America. They are 10 disciples framed by chairs, pens poised, seeking the gospel of The Art of Writing at a residency that was once a medieval monastery at the heart of the historic quarter of Florence. There’s a palpable sense of urgency in the room. One week is not enough to master the art of memoir and the essentials of story, but it’s a beginning. They are about to get lost in a love affair with Italy …

In the kitchen of The Old Coastguard hotel, chef Jamie Porter is bent low over a bench, unfolding a marvellous fish fantasy that's all heads, no tails.

He's shoving mackerel noggins into slits in a pastry lid, tweaking bulging eyeballs so that they stare straight into the sky, egging crust with soft strokes as if it's a Franciscan fresco …

The bells are ringing in Antwerp. Dong. Dong. Dong.

The clanging melody peals from belfry to cobblestones, gathers speed along the rows of ornate guild-houses, hurtles giddily towards a miraculous happening.

Antwerp has been waiting for this moment for more than a decade. And nothing, not even the rain that's pelting down like Belgian bullets, will stem the tide of citizens flowing towards boulevard Leopold de Waelplaats …

We’re standing on a street corner in a country town that’s half way to somewhere and a long way from anywhere.

The road to Katanning - 277 kilometres southeast of Perth - used to be a lonely highway. Not anymore.

Silence at Stokes Hill lookout. The tourists are hypnotised. A moment ago they were chatting over beer and biscuits, trying to gain a sense of perspective over the Flinders Ranges, but a sudden spectacle is unfolding in the pantheon of Australian outback wonders.

Twilight fades from blue to black and the brutalised bones of the earth, stripped bare of flesh, expose the rock red entrails of millennia clawed to a waterless horizon.

It’s arguably the greatest land feature on continental Australia …

Truffle farmer Damian Robinson is striding along a line of hazelnut trees, charting the mysteriously symbiotic relationships in the fungal world, when he offers a theory: “We are one chromosome removed from a pig and that’s probably why we like the smell of truffles so much.”

Damian doesn’t have a pig. He has a fiercely intense Jack Russell that’s a few chromosomes further down the DNA chain but the dog knows his own mind.

He doesn’t give a fig about truffles. Frisbee likes Schmackos.

Her Majesty has been liberated from three days of lockdown in a padded post bag and is secreted in a tiny timber box with five fawning court attendants.

She’s under gauze and quivering. Her aides are edgy, feeding from a plug of sugary fondant, fussing and fidgeting. Perhaps they can predict the tragedy that’s about to unfold.

A nearby hive is vibrating in a single pure note and it’s time for introductions.

Instead of the planned insertion of the royal antechamber into the comb for a couple of days, the coronation will begin immediately, the queen will be released directly into the hive.

It’s a cruel miscalculation …