15 Outdoor Entertainment Ideas For Any Occasion
5 min
The backyard has never had more significance than it has in the past few years. Make the most of your outdoor spaces with modifications, renovations and extensions to create an outdoor room you can really embrace.
Easy Access
Nothing beats an easy exit – especially when it’s to an outdoor paradise. It’s all about connection – so glass is king. Steel doors are the thing offering strength and versatility in design – fabulous in edgy modern homes, as well as traditional country estates.
Throw some shade
Enjoying the outdoors is easier if you aren’t being blinded by glare; and nothing is more flattering than the light under a shade. Generous, colourful market umbrellas, or vast cloth shades that can be extracted from a cassette on a wall, or remote controlled louvres.
Dive into a sunken courtyard
When a pool is no longer a drawcard, some clever designers have turned them into sunken lounges, it’s re adaptive use, with an intimate space for those memorable get togethers.
Fill it with a purpose
For families, it’s an absolute ball to spend time outside together, and a little coaxing with playground equipment makes the garden absolutely magnetic. Add a little, or a lot. It is an investment in beautiful memories, that last a lifetime.
Outside can be anywhere – not just the backyard
Reclaiming space down the side of a terrace house is absolutely brilliant. Top outside living spaces can be reclaimed from boring walls in narrow kitchens. Superb extensions of indoors, yet with all the chill value of being outdoors, achieved in such a small space.
The power of the labyrinth
Giving outdoor spaces a pathway and a purpose is an ideal design for outdoor peace. Meander a curving pathway, or be a geometry geek and create parterre garden. Either way, letting a path lead you, through a labyrinth of any size, makes your stress dissolve, and peace will follow each of your steps.
Now THAT’S a bar be que
Eating outside? Everything tastes better in the outdoors, and manufacturers know it. Outside ‘kitchens’ offer a purpose to be outside, while anchoring your space. Go the whole hog with plumbing and TV, or simple, with deck chairs and an old-fashioned barbie. Soak it in, and eat it up.
Pool your resources
A swimming pool is hard work (unless you have the great fortune to be able to sub it out), but absolutely worth the fun and beauty it brings to the table. Night time around a garden pool is nothing short of perfection. And how about watching the steam rising off heated water? Ethereal.
Invite friends over – the ones with feathers.
The perfect outside space is often shared with wild friends – and if we build it, they will come. Birdbaths, birdhouses, ridiculously over the top feeders all add texture and adventure to an outdoor space, plus a never-ending soap opera to watch from dawn to dusk.
Hide in plain sight in an ideal outside space
Landscape architects and designers have made playing hide and seek a profitable game. Getting rid of prying neighbour eyes is vital to that feeling of privacy. From green walls to exotic screens, even outdoors in high density can become a private oasis.
Moving water is a salve for the soul
Even the sweetest, most petite water feature can transform an uninviting space into a well of well-being. Up the size and up the response. With or without fish, having water move around you while experiencing the outdoors is an absolutely primal delight.
Embrace the exuberance of being outside in the cold
You feel alive in the cold – for a little while. However, you feel completely alive in the cold outdoors entertaining space, when there’s a fire pit warming the cockles of your heart. A fire brings focus to a get together – comradeship thrives in the glow of a fire.
Furnish, or fit out – lounging is a top priority
Built-in benches are an instant draw card – throw a few scatter cushions about, pop the umbrella up and you have rustic escapism. But, but, if you can be bothered with stacking lounge pillows under cover, a full-on lounge suite is the ants’ pants in outside luxury.
Nightime is light time
Nights can be transformative – for you and the space. Suspended festoon lighting, or masses of twinkling bud lights wrapped around the trees, or strategic up lights and subtle under seat lighting – all perfect while watching a movie on the drop down screen.
If you live in a space where all this is simply a field too far…
Visiting someone else’s outside space, lolling about in their chairs, inspecting their gardens, watching their dogs romp across the lawn is an indulgently lazy way to experience the joy of the perfect outside lifestyle
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From gorilla encounters in Uganda to a reimagined Okavango retreat, Abercrombie & Kent elevates its African journeys with two spectacular lodge transformations.
Tasmania’s LARK Distillery’s limited-edition single malt is shaping up to be one of the season’s most luxurious gifts.
2 min
If you’re hunting for a Christmas present that won’t end up re-gifted by February, LARK Distillery has delivered something genuinely special.
The Tasmanian whisky house has unveiled its 2026 Limited Edition Lunar New Year release, the Fire Horse Edition, a striking single malt that blends craftsmanship, culture and collectability.
Inspired by the Year of the Fire Horse, the release is as much an artistic object as it is a whisky.
Sydney artist Chris Yee has cloaked the bottle in a luminous wrap of symbolism and texture. His design fuses fire, wood and water, with Cradle Mountain and celestial motifs anchoring the scene.
Waves of movement and paths of connection run through the artwork, reflecting the journeys, traditions and family reunions that define the season.
Yee describes the concept in the release as an homage to the natural elements that shape both Asian and Australian cultures, saying he wanted to highlight how “fire, wood and water” sit at the heart of the distilling process and the stories we share.
Inside the bottle, the whisky is just as layered.
Matured in first-fill Sherry and Port casks, it opens with soft pear blossom and honeyed tea notes before moving through orange-spiced cake, apricot compote and treacle sponge pudding.
The finish lingers with hazelnut praline, glazed fruits and a whisper of highland peat smoke. It’s indulgent without being heavy; festive without being overly sweet.
LARK Master Distiller Chris Thomson captures the sentiment neatly in the release, saying the Fire Horse Edition “is about more than flavour, it’s about the feeling of coming together.”
The whisky holds the celebration in the glass, while the artwork reflects the journey home.
For those planning Lunar New Year drinks, LARK also suggests a few seasonal serves, including a Sencha Blossom Old Fashioned and a Toasted Fortune Highball with toasted sesame cordial.
With only a limited number available and strong gifting appeal, expect this one to move quickly.
When the Writers Festival was called off and the skies refused to clear, one weekend away turned into a rare lesson in slowing down, ice baths included.
From farm-to-table Thai to fairy-lit mango trees and Coral Sea vistas, Port Douglas has award-winning dining and plenty of tropical charm on the side.
