Perth

Perth needs 3 days: Kings Park, one of the largest urban parks in the world with views of the Swan River, on one, a ferry trip to Rottnest Island to see quokkas, smiling marsupials found only there, on another, and Cottesloe and Scarborough beaches on the third. March-May avoids the extreme summer heat. It's mid-to-high priced for Australia. It's considered one of the most isolated inhabited cities in the world, closer to Jakarta or Singapore than to Sydney (over 3,900 km away by land), which gave it an urban development and identity, built on mining, very different from the country's eastern capitals.