100 Best Towns Judging Panel

Between the 12 honest men and women on our judging panel – a jury of your peers, of you like – we’ve got the 100 Best Towns in Australia well and truly covered.

Lee Atkinson

Lee is a freelance travel writer, guidebook author and long-time contributor to AT. Her adventures on the road have entertained readers for the past 18 years, and her latest book to hit the streets is Caravanning Australia: 50 Great Destinations.

The MyPOWER Team

Tom, Matt Anthony and Mereki spent 12 months cycling 17,805km around Australia’s coastline during 2008, encouraging sustainable living and capturing through firsthand experience and photography exactly what makes Australia special.

Fleur Bainger

Podcaster Fleur Bainger cut her teeth with ABC radio and now traipses from remote, croc-infested estuaries in Arnhem Land to vast, aquatic playgrounds hiding gigantic whale sharks in WA, capturing engaging audio for Lonely Planet and Tourism NT and WA.

Matt Cleary

Sports and travel writer Matt Cleary lapped the country in ’08, racking up 25,000km, several rabbits, dozens of golf courses and more stories than Steinbeck. He’s pictured here practicing his bunker shots in the eerie Pinnacles on WA’s west coast.

 Ken Boundy

Ken has travelled Australia widely for business and leisure. He’s a part owner of a tourism business in Tasmania’s remote Tarkine wilderness, a company director, a governor of WWF Australia and a former Managing Director of Tourism Australia.

Kerry van der Jagt

AT stalwart Kerry van der Jagt is a travel writer and photographer who lives in a small rural village on Sydney’s outskirts. After many holidays connecting the dots across Australia in a VW Kombi, she still thinks a road trip is the best way to travel.

Peter Russell-Clarke

Peter is old enough to have travelled most of Australia. He’s not wealthy enough to always stay in five star joints. In fact he rarely does. As a painter he searches for beauty and unusual vistas. As a storyteller he also searches for characters to top up his tales.

Sally Obermeder

Sally is a TV presenter with Channel Seven. She has travelled extensively throughout NSW covering stories for the Seven Network travel show Sydney Weekender, and she also presents entertainment, fashion and celebrity stories for Today Tonight.

Peter Robinson

Drawn to AT because it promotes honesty in the tourism industry, Melbourne writer/photographer Peter Robinson is an expert B&B reviewer who has been a trusted and valued contributor from the magazine’s inception.

Inger Vandyke

As an eco-writer and photographer, most of Inger’s time is spent on Australia’s offshore territories where the wildlife and the lure of a superb beach consistently draw her back to places like Lord Howe, Norfolk, Christmas and Cocos-Keeling Islands.

Justin Wastnage

Justin is the news editor at industry magazine Travel Weekly and his expert insights on the glamorous and unglamorous side of Australian towns, as well as everything from food to air travel to hotel reviews, have done much to enliven AT’s pages.

Allan Whiting

Allan has been travelling the outback for 30 years and has driven most of the inland tracks. As one of Australia’s foremost auto experts, if it’s got four wheels (or as many as 18), Allan’s driven it, pushed it to its limits, then written about it afterwards.