Sydney Comedy Festival

Like Erma Bombeck said: Laugh now, cry later. And you will laugh because the ninth annual Sydney Comedy Festival is just around the corner. From 22 April to 11 May 2013, international and local world-class comedians will take over the event and fill Sydney's air with laughter.

The Sydney Comedy Festival Gala Night will open the event on April 22nd in Sydney Opera House with a selection of the best of the festival with a ninja first-rate host and more surprises. The prices range from $79.90 to $119.90.

As a prelude to the Festival, 30 Rock star Tracy Morgan will take to the stage on April 11th. Famous for performing alongside comedy legends Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey in Saturday Night Live, the American comedian will bring his stand-up show to Australia for the first time. His performance will take place in The Enmore Theatre.

April 25th will be Chopper's Big F**kin Anzac Day. Best known for his impersonation of the infamous Australian criminal Mark Brandon Chopper, Australian performer Heath Franklin will bring crime comedy in all its glory to The Enmore Theatre.

There are no like buttons on the Enmore Theatre, so Internet sensations Superwog and Muchonny will have to rely on the big laughs of the crowd when they bring their YouTube performances to real life on April 28th.

British performer Stephen K Amos will have the opportunity to his famous coon cheese in Australia. On May 9th, Amos will supply the Festival with a dosage of witty and real life humour.

The Kransky Sisters, Mourne, Eve, and Dawn will perform their famous songs and tell their bizarre stories in the Seymour Centre on April 24th.

Some Australians thought they lost Jim Jefferies to the palm trees of Los Angeles, but he is coming back home to Australia and is bringing all of his self-righteous sense of humour with him.

And there is no real comedy festival without a contradictory band. British folk band Bad Shepherds play punk songs with traditional folk instruments... Too many adjectives come to mind. Original is for sure one of them. Indeed, it sounds like a promising performance!

Take a Walk on the Wild Side of Australia

The course of true adventure never did run smooth… A Shakespeare misquotation, passion for exploring, a taste for danger and the love of nature are the soul's fuel to set out and discover Australia's unique wildlife. The journey will take the adventurous at heart far from the comfort of developed cities and the safety of civilisation in exchange for a koala's cuddle, the sight of jolly dolphins, the bewilderment of immense humpback whales, and the spellbinding mermaids' songs… The latter might not be certain, yet the encounter of a natural world found nowhere else in the planet is guaranteed.

Pack your backpack, get ready to board a boat, camp out in the desert or trek through eucalypt forests, and let the quest begin:

1) Observe turtle nesting (Mon Repos, Queensland) The place has the largest concentration of nesting marine turtles on the eastern Australian mainland. In Mon Repos, you can take an active role and not only watch marine turtles come ashore to lay their eggs, but also you might end up carrying their eggs across a beach in the middle of the night. This is part of the conservation effort at Mon Repos, where visitors' help welcomed if a turtle has laid her eggs too low on the shoreline.

2) Camel riding (Alice Springs, Northern Territory) The camels found around Alice Springs are mostly wild, but in one farm cameleer Marcus Williams has tamed a herd and now offers camel rides through the stunning White Gums Valley. The camel tour takes the rider into the mountain ranges and unforgettable landscapes where kangaroos, wallabies, birds of prey and lizards en-route run free.

3) Quokka spotting (Rottnest Island, Western Australia) In Rottenest Island, visitors can find quokkas which are animals that look a cross between a wallaby and a giant rat, a fact that made the Dutch sailors call the new-found land Rat's Nest Island. Even though quokkas are the main attraction of the island, visitors can also spot humpback whales passing by the coast.

4) Wild dolphin swimming (Bunbury, Western Australia) At the Dolphin Discovery Centre, visitors can take the tour called Swim on the Wild Side. As part of the tour, visitors can board a boat into the waters of Kommabana Bay to join scientists monitoring wild dolphin behavior. Researchers make use of tourists' dollars to fund their research. This is part of a cetacean project affiliated to Murdoch University.

5) Forest flying (Mackay, Queensland) An innovative eco-attraction around 70 km inland of Mackay called forest flying is a treetop cableway that allows visitors to glide over pristine forests at the same height as the canopy, where they can spot birds and bats. Watch some rare creatures and ancient forests while having fun.

6) Koala spotting (Magnetic Island, Queensland) The interior of the island hosts the largest colony of wild koalas in the country. It is not recommended to try and get a hug from these particular koalas. Take a walk in the area and scan the eucalypt tree line to spot these pointless creatures that sleep 20 hours per day cuddling around a tree branch.

The Theatre of the World exhibition at Hobart's MONA

The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart, Tasmania, invites everyone who has an interest in old and new art to visit a new exhibition: the Theatre of the World.

The display spans over 4,000 years of fine and decorative arts and includes 180 works from the private collection of MONA owner David Walsh and 300 items from the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG). The collection ranges from historical furniture to contemporary art.

The impression the exhibition is trying to make is that seeing the object is enough, a simple interpretation of beauty and there is no need for knowledge or meaning.

The exhibition will include renowned pieces like a 30 million pounds Picasso, Weeping Woman, which the artist painted in 1937, plus trench art and video. The marvelous exhibition is an exhilarating assemblage of designs, media and objects gathered in different themes as opposed to traditional categorical grouping by period or media. For those who want to see it, Theatre of the World runs until 8 April 2013.

The coherence of the exhibition comes by the hand of French curator Jean-Hubert Martin. Each piece brilliantly develops the theme within its space while the visitors are encouraged to draw their own meaning from the incongruent objects. They label this a visual search-engine result spectacular, a parallelism with Google. Surprisingly, no author tags can be found and visitors must accept the visual search results Jean-Hubert provides to be able to draw their own conclusions about each theme.

As to MONA, the building is carved four levels deep into sandstone. The tour starts by descending into the depths of the rock. The ground-breaking gallery is becoming a cultural icon in Australia at a high speed.

Top Surf Spots in Australia

The sun is out; the sky is blue, it's beautiful… and so is the Austral summertime! And we all know what that means: Sand, waves and barbecue. Grab your surfing board, ignite your car and get ready to ride the swells across Australia's 37,000 km long coastline. As paradisiac beaches, reefs and epic point breaks surround the country, some of the best surf spots in the world are found Down Under. Hot, breezy, soul and blue, a rush of adrenaline, the danger factor and the freedom sensation never ends…

1) Superbanks, Gold Coast, QLD: This spot is at the very top of the world's breaks. Catch the wave and produce tubes and solid walls at this never-ending beach that extends for 2 km.

2) North Coast, Angourie to Byron Bay, NSW: When the surfing counter-culture became popular in Australia in the late 1960s, the NSW north coast became a Mecca for surfers. The point break at Angourie remained relatively unaltered for the next two decades. Today, the place is widely known as home break of Aussie surfing myth Nat Young. As the historical home of surfing, Byron Bay keeps the 70s hippie spirit alive and it is the place to let the weeks roll by, laid-back gatherings, communal drumming, live bands, relaxed cafes and, of course, reggae music fills the bars.

3) Noosa, Point Break, QLD: Remarkable for its genuine beauty, the point at Noosa has originated 200 metre rides on its proudest moments. Smaller swells can also be found, which are perfect for beginners eager to join the free-spirited world of surfers.

4) Snapper Rocks, QLD: This is a sand bottom point break considered one of the best surfing spots on the Gold Coast. Impressively so, Super Bank -the longest, most consistent and most hollow wave in the world- takes place in Snapper. Here it is not unusual for a wave to reach six to eight feet of height while one clean wave can transport the surfer for a distance of almost two kilometres.

5) Seal Rocks and Pacific Palms, NSW: When a south swell rolls in, the beaches at Seal Rocks may be home to legendary waves, curiously shaped by prominent headlands. Keep a look out for the dolphins. Soul surfers might find in this part of the NWS coast the perfect ambience for their lifestyle as it remains undeveloped and peacefully quite.