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Popular Festivals in New Zealand!

New Zealand is known all over the world for being a leading tourism destination. From serene sights to a dream lifestyle, New Zealand has it all. Among the things that make New Zealand so highly adored by travellers, festivals are some of the most enjoyable occasions for residents and tourists alike.

To help you learn more about New Zealand’s culture and traditions, here are five popular festivals in New Zealand!

1. Auckland International Buskers Festival

The Auckland International Buskers Festival is an incredibly vibrant and crowd-pleasing festival, held in New Zealand over four days, with displays of spectacular performances from the world’s most talented street performers being the headline act. The thrilling show put on by the acrobats, hula hoop artists, jugglers, and magicians are sure to make your jaw drop in amazement!

2. WOMAD

WOMAD, short for World of Music, Arts and Dance, is a popular annual festival of New Zealand that brings together international musicians and artists from all over the world. This three-day-long fiesta is held at the beautiful New Plymouth site of Taranaki, and has been a recurring annual New Zealand festival since March 2003. To amplify the electrifying atmosphere of the festival, WOMAD offers numerous food stalls serving scrumptious delicacies, delightful craft stores, and scores of other workshops and activities!

3. Queenstown Winter Festival

Queenstown Winter Festival, which marks the beginning of the winter season in New Zealand, promises to provide the best weekend of the year for New Zealand’s residents and tourists alike. The three-day festival is packed with exciting events and activities, including skiing, a snowman-building competition, a winter gala, suitcase racing, and a spectacular fireworks display! Ever since the first iteration being organised in 1975, this festival has come to be known as the biggest winter party in the entire Southern Hemisphere!

4. Earth Beat Aotearoa

Earth Beat Aotearoa is an innovative, five-day-long festival that celebrates earth-friendly music, arts, culture and well-being. Taking place at the picturesque shore of Kaipara Harbour, this family-oriented camping festival offers plenty of wellness workshops, comedy, and poetry events. In addition, Earth Beat also organises outdoor, nature activities for kids to ensure that the little ones enjoy a wonderful time as well!

5. Crankworx Mountain Biking Festival

This much-anticipated annual mountain biking festival of Crankworx Rotorua is attended by the world’s legendary bikers and biking enthusiasts. This five-day festival holds competitions in different categories, from amateur to pro, and in various styles – downhill, slopestyle, and many others! To heighten the adrenaline rush of attending fans, this festival also provides an amazing live music experience to make the time spent here truly memorable!

Ten fascinating facts on Canada!

Facts on Canada: Canada is one of the most alluring countries in the world, and is also called the Great White North for its vast frozen landscapes. Having an abundance of scenic landscapes, lush forests, and sparkling lakes and rivers, Canada is a regular choice of tourism destination for travellers from all around the world!

To help you learn more about Canada, here are ten fascinating facts on the Great White North!

1. Canada is an incredibly vast country, and the sheer size of the country is mind-blowing! It is the largest country in the Western hemisphere, and is the second-largest country in the world, after Russia. Moreover, Canada is bigger than the entire European Union, is 33 times bigger than Italy, and 15 times larger than France!
2. Sticking to size, Canada is also home to three of the world’s ten biggest islands! The Baffin Islands are more than double the size of Great Britain, while Victoria Island and Ellesmere Island are both roughly as big as England!
3. Canada is also the location of more than half of all the lakes in the world! The number of lakes in Canada exceeds 3 million, with the two biggest ones being named the Great Bear Lake and the Great Slave Lake!
4. Quebec City is a special city in not only Canada, but also in North America – it is the only walled city on the continent! The fortifications were built between the 17^th and 19^th centuries, and the historical significance of Quebec has seen it declared as a UNESCO World Heritage Site!
5. Canada’s lowest recorded temperature is akin to Mars! On February 3, 1947, the temperature in Snag, Yukon was recorded to be -63 C, which is roughly the same temperature as the surface of Mars!
6. Speaking of Mars, several crates on the Martian surface have also been named after Canadian places such as Newfoundland and Gander, owing to the space research efforts conducted at these locations!
7. Canadian national parks are bigger than many countries! The Nahanni National Park Reserve in the Northwest Territories is larger than Albania, while the Wood Buffalo National Park outsizes Denmark and Switzerland!
8. Alert, Nunavut is the northernmost inhabited place in the world! Serving as a settlement for military and scientific personnel, this place is so far up north that it is less than 820 kilometers from the North Pole!
9. Canada is also home to the longest coastline in the world, measuring 202,080 kilometers. Canada’s mainland coast, together with Cape Breton, Newfoundland, and Prince Edward Island, is bordered by three different oceans: the Arctic, Atlantic, and Pacific. It would take you more than four years to walk the length of the coastline without any stoppages whatsoever!
10. Canada also boasts around 10 per cent of the world’s entire forest area! Canada has an incredible 396.9 million hectares of real estate belonging to forests and wooded lands, most of which are publicly owned!

Facts on Canada

Ten fascinating facts on Australia!

Australia is a leading tourism destination in the world. Ten fascinating facts on Australia, Dubbed the “Land Down Under”, Australia is a country rich in history and traditions, and is filled with natural wonders, exotic flora and fauna, and facts that range from interesting to weird to downright crazy!

To help you learn more about Australia, here are ten fascinating facts on the Land Down Under!

1. Australia is home to almost 12,000 beaches! If you visit one beach every day, it will take you more than 32 years to see them all!

2. Of all seven continents on Earth, Australia is the only one that does not have an active volcano! The last volcano that erupted in Australia was over 5,000 years ago!

3. Canberra was selected as Australia’s capital because other candidates Sydney and Melbourne could not stop arguing over which city should be made the capital!

4. Australia was the second country in the history of the world to give voting rights to women back in 1902! Nine years earlier, neighbouring New Zealand became the first country to allow women to vote!

5. Australia has the largest Greek population in the world outside of Greece! The second-largest Greek population, after Athens, can be found in Melbourne, Victoria!

6. An Australian citizen once tried to sell New Zealand on eBay! The listing, posted in May 2006, had a starting price of AUD 0.01, and had risen to AUD 3,000 before eBay closed the auction!

7. Most Australian flora and fauna are exclusive only to Australia. In addition to kangaroos, you will find cuddly koalas, quokkas and wombats only in Australia, as well as some of the more venomous members of the animal kingdom!

8. The Australian Alps, located in southeastern Australia, are the highest mountain range in the country, and receive more snowfall than the Swiss Alps!

9. Australians are infamous for gambling, and spend more money in the world to gamble than any other country. Per capita, more than 80 per cent of Australians engage in various forms of gambling, with one-fifth of all poker machines in the world being in Australia!

10. Australia has 60 designated wine regions throughout the country, which produce approximately 1.35 trillion bottles of wine annually!

 

Ten fascinating facts on Australia

Popular festivals in Canada

Popular festivals in Canada and its people enjoy and celebrations. Canadians are a friendly and outgoing bunch, and hold and participate in festivals in the country almost all year round. To familiarize you with popular festivals in the country, here are five festivals that Canadians love!

1. Canada Day Celebration

Canada celebrates its birthday on the first of July every year. On this national occasion, all the streets are adorned in the red and white of the Canadian national flag. Canada Day is celebrated throughout the country, with vivacious parades, breathtaking fireworks shows, and Canadian delicacies making the air magical all day long!

2. Montreal Jazz Festival

Every year Montreal holds the biggest jazz festival in the world, with over a hundred thousand jazz lovers taking to the streets to celebrate. In this 10-day long, vibrant fiesta, more than eight hundred concerts are performed by musicians who gather to take part from all over the world. In addition, more than two-thirds of the festival events are entirely free of cost, which makes it even more inclusive and enjoyable!

An additional fun fact: the Montreal Jazz Festival holds the 2004 Guinness World Record as the largest jazz festival in the world!

3. Winterlude

The ice carnival, Winterlude, is an annual winter festival held in Ottawa, Ontario, and Gatineau, Quebec. This festival is popular among tourists for its exclusive exhibition of ice sculptures, ice art, kids’ activities, and musical events. Winterlude’s main attraction is the world’s largest skate rink, Rideau Canal Skateway, which helps attract hundreds of thousands of visitors to the festival every year!

4. The Calgary Stampede

The Calgary Stampede is the world’s largest rodeo, where more than a million people gather to party non-stop over ten days. It is held in July every year in Calgary, Alberta. This famous festival exhibits Canada’s cultural diversity through art shows, street dance performances, concerts, and many more exciting events, including the Calgary Stampede Rodeo, Evening Show, Dog Bowl and live music!

5. Celebration of Lights

Witness the fireworks extravaganza choreographed with music that will leave you awestruck! In this summer event held in Vancouver for three nights at the end of July, three selected countries compete with fireworks to light up the sky over English Bay with stunning bright glittering colors. The magical bursts of color turn the sky into an artist’s canvas, and create a lifetime of memories for spectators!

Popular festivals in Canada

Historic tourist spots in Canada!

Canada has long been a leading destination for tourism and spending holidays. And with picturesque mountains, shimmering rivers, and awe-inspiring heritage, it is easy to see why! Historic tourist spots in Canada While tourist attractions like the Niagara Falls are renowned the world over, Canada is also home to numerous historic sites that are worthy of visiting. To help you plan your Canadian sight-seeing ambitions (once border restrictions are lifted), we have compiled a list of five historic tourist spots you can visit in Canada!

1. L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland

This UNESCO World Heritage site is the very first place where Vikings settled after arriving in North America, and is the only true Viking settlement in the continent. Visitors to the L’Anse aux Meadows can bask in the history of the Norsemen voyagers which dates back to over 6,000 years, and discover the story of the Norse sailors by exploring their original settlement!

2. Signal Hill National Historic Site, Newfoundland and Labrador

From harbouring defences during World War II to being the site where Guglielmo Marconi received the world’s first transatlantic wireless signal in 1901, the Signal Hill National Historic Site is St. John’s most popular landmark! You can overlook the city of St. John’s from Ladies’ Lookout – the highest point – and even fire a rifle or a cannon at this tourist spot!

3. L.M. Montgomery’s Cavendish National Historic Site, PEI

This cultural landscape, located near Cavendish, Prince Edward Island, was the real home of L.M. Montgomery, the author of the “Anne of Green Gables” book series. This historic site lets you visit Montgomery’s Cavendish home, the Green Gables house, and landscape features including Lover’s Lane and the Haunted Wood trail!

4. The Forks National Historic Site, Manitoba

Located at the heart of Winnipeg, Manitoba, this vibrant landmark with public shopping malls, parks, and entertainment zones was originally established by explorers, hunters, and settlers who gathered to do trades and set up businesses as much as 6,000 years ago! Ideal for a day out, this location offers visitors activities such as hiking, skiing, dining, and much more!

5. Dinosaur Provincial Park, Alberta

The Dinosaur Provincial Park, located two hours east of Calgary in the province of Alberta, is one of the most unique National Parks in Canada. This National Park houses some of the largest dinosaur fossil fields in the world, and fascinates visitors with the remains of at least 35 dinosaur species that roamed this very spot 75 million years ago!

 

Unveiling the Allure of Canada’s Timeless Tourist Gems Historic tourist spots in Canada

Popular New Zealand Recipe – Lolly Log Cake

The lolly log cake, also called the lolly cake, is a classic confectionery treat in New Zealand. It primarily features lollies as the main ingredient, and is adored by children and adults alike. This colorful fruit puff cake dates back to first becoming popular in New Zealand households in the 1940s, and was widely available in New Zealand supermarkets from the 1960s. New Zealand’s famous lolly cake is a great option to bring along when visiting friends or family, and you can easily make this scrumptious treat in just a couple of hours!

You can find the entire recipe below to try your hand at making the popular New Zealand delicacy known as the lolly log cake!

Ingredients

• 1 packet malt biscuit (crushed);
• 120g unsalted butter;
• ½ cup sweetened condensed milk;
• 180g fruit puffs;
• ½ cup dried coconut (for icing).

Procedure

1. Melt the butter and condensed milk in a bowl.
2. Pour the melted butter mixture on the crushed biscuits and chopped fruit puffs. Mix thoroughly until the ingredients are well combined.
3. Lay out the mixture on a flat surface. Roll it up and tightly pack it in a log shape with your hands.
4. Roll the lolly log in dried coconut and make sure the cake is fully covered with the topping.
5. Wrap the lolly log in cling film and put it in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
6. Take the lolly cake out of the refrigerator and cut it in 2cm thick slices.

Your delicious lolly log cake is ready to be served and enjoyed with a steaming cup of tea or coffee!

Popular New Zealand Recipe

Popular Canadian Recipe: Timbits

Popular Canadian Recipe Timbits, the bite-sized doughnut-holes, are Canadian delicacies that are adored all over the country. These sweet morsels are perfect for light snacks to be enjoyed with your loved ones, and are great to go with tea or coffee.

To help you indulge in these sugary cake balls at home, we have provided the super-easy recipe below, which will definitely satiate your sweet tooth cravings!

Ingredients

· 4 cups of all-purpose flour, sifted;

· 4 tablespoons of sugar;

· 2 tablespoons of baking powder;

· 1 teaspoon of baking soda;

· 1 teaspoon of salt;

· ½ teaspoon of grated nutmeg;

· 2 eggs;

· 300 ml milk;

· 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract;

· 6 tablespoons of melted butter;

· Oil (for frying); and

· 1 cup of icing sugar (or any other topping of your choice).

Procedure

1. In a large bowl mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt and nutmeg.
2. Take a smaller bowl and pour the eggs, milk, vanilla extract and melted butter into it. Give it a little whisk.
3. Gradually pour the milk mixture into the flour mixture, and mix it with a beater till it becomes a dough.
4. Scoop out the dough in tiny, doughnut-hole sizes and deep fry in hot oil for 4 minutes (or until it turns golden brown in colour).
5. Toss the fried doughnut-holes in your topping of choice to get an even coat.
6. Enjoy your freshly prepared and steaming Timbits!

Note: You can also use chocolate or sprinkles instead of icing sugar as the topping, and store the Timbits in a container, to snack on them whenever and wherever you want!

Popular Canadian Recipe

Top Universities of Australia

Australia, being home to some of the most excellent and top-ranked universities in the world, is one of the most popular target destinations worldwide for international students looking to pursue higher education. To help you choose Australia as your destination for higher education, here are five of Australia’s top universities!

1. University of Sydney

The University of Sydney is currently ranked as the top university in Australia. Hi-tech facilities, a world-class learning experience and a broad spectrum of disciplines make this university the most preferred among students – both local and international alike. Degrees provided by this university holds the same value as the ones provided by universities in the UK.

2. University of Melbourne

Located at the centre of the vibrant international city of Melbourne, the University of Melbourne is one of the world’s leading universities. This university offers an invaluable firsthand experience to students in addition to structured learning. Being a highly progressive research university, the University of Melbourne provides state-of-the-art research facilities for its students, who can enrol in their subject of choice from a broad range of disciplines offered by the university.

3. Australian National University

The Australian National University takes first place for graduate employability in Australia, with an astonishing employment rate of 88%, which makes ANU an attractive option for international students looking to study and build a career in Australia. This open research university is well-known for its engaging co-curricular and cultural activities.

4. University of New South Wales

The University of New South Wales, or UNSW for short, is a research-intensive institute specializing in scientific, professional and technological disciplines. The cutting-edge research and learning facilities prepare the students for a successful and international career and sets them on the path to the future they always dreamt of. The main campus of UNSW has two research centres.

5. University of Queensland

Finally, the University of Queensland proudly boasts winning the most national teaching awards among Australian universities. The top disciplines at UQ are sports-related subjects, mineral and mining engineering and environmental sciences. The impressive hands-on learning allows the students to sharpen their skills and impart a real impact in the world after completing their studies.

Top Universities of AustraliaTop Universities of Australia

High Immigration Levels more Boon than Bane, says Reserve Bank Governor

Australia’s healthy rate of immigration was lauded by the country’s Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe for its contribution to growth at a recent event in Sydney. High Immigration Levels more Boon than Bane, says Reserve Bank Governor.

According to Lowe, the high immigration levels have had only positive impacts on the economy.

It has also helped to pacify the rate of the ageing of population in recent years.

This has resulted in Australia having not only one of the youngest populations amongst the advanced economies worldwide, but also a higher fertility rate and better prospects for growth.

Lowe appreciated the scores of young people who moved to Australia in the past decade, as the numbers had a very positive impact on the nation’s demographic.

He drew focus to the fact that back in 2002, the population’s median age was estimated to cross 45 years by 2040.

However, thanks to the growth in the number of youths over a decade, the latest estimate projected the median age to be around 40 years by 2040.

Lowe praised this statistic in particular, and said that this is a prime example which shows that demographic trends are not set in stone.

Data shows that on average, new migrants to Australia in recent years have been younger than the resident population.

The median age of recent migrants sits between 20 and 25, which is more than 10 years younger than that of Australian locals.

This proved to be a massive factor in stifling the rate of population ageing in Australia, and resulted in the population ageing more slowly now.

Moreover, the Australian population has a higher fertility rate than most advanced economies now, as well as having a lower old-age dependency ratio.

“This has implications for future economic growth and the pressures of government budgets,” said Lowe.

The benefits will be available both in the short term as well as the long run, as the unemployment rate is expected to fall to 5% – possibly even lower – in the next few years, and is presumed to sustain.

 

High Immigration Levels more Boon than Bane