Series: Cities Series

MONA has done a lot more than just rescue a flagging tourism economy. It has changed the city's body language, teaching it to stand up straight and look others squarely in the eye, even putting a swagger in its step. Peter Timms leads us on a journey through his adopted city of Hobart, Australia's smallest, most southerly, least prosperous, but...

As I set out from the city's southern end, the sandstone walls beneath the Central railway line still held the day's heat ... The moon rose from the invisible harbour into a sky of such a deep royal blue it was almost hard to believe in. The street smelled of low tide. For all its beauty, the city could return...

...we rarely travel far to swim. We occasionally cross the river to Leighton or Cottesloe, where the white sand squeaks underfoot and the champagne foam in the shallows tingles the legs and fizzes over the shoreline and makes children giddy with delight ... the cirrus clouds above the horizon often resemble passages of perfect cursive script written in soft white...

Darwin is a survivor, you have to give it that. Razed to the ground four times in its short history, it has picked itself up out of the debris to not only rebuild but grow. Darwin has known catastrophes and resurrections; it has endured misconceived projects and birthed visionaries. To know Darwin, to know its soul, you have to listen...

Melbourne's a city you get to know from the inside out—you have to walk it to love it. My favourite time to do this is at night. That's when you capture glimpses of people eating, laughing, talking, arguing, watching TV and reading through half-open terrace house doors and windows... It is a city of inside places and conversation. Of intimacy....

I keep coming back to the light of Brisbane. If you are born into it, this palette of gentle pinks and oranges at dawn and dusk, the blast white of midday in summer, the lemon luminescence of mid-morning and mid-afternoon, you keep it with you and measure all other light by it. If you live away from it, then step...