by Jennie Nunn Specialty cheese shop Bottega Rotolo offers classes in how to make braised eggplant, pasta sauces, and profiteroles. Bottega Rotolo,  61/(0) 3-6234-9978, “To the Plate” courses are $96 per person, including wine. Photo by John Kruger. This appeared in the March/April 2012 issue. 

by Jennie Nunn On a tree-lined street just outside downtown, Store & Co sells vintage, recycled, and handcrafted products out of a 19th-century Georgian building. Owner Sandy Robinson stocks the space with Savon de Marseille soaps and Zetta Florence stationery as well as Australian creations, including scented Glasshouse candles, sophisticated accessories by Elk, shown, and cheery rain gear by Wet & Windy. Store & Co, 61/(0) 3-6224-9977. Photo courtesy of Store & Co. This appeared in the March/April 2012 issue. 

Maverick, multi-tasking MONA Pavilions mixes a serene riverside setting with ultra-contemporary pavilions, original art, a winery, microbrewery, lip-smacking restaurant and alternative festivals – and comes up trumps. With an ambitious private museum also on site, this is one for culture vultures, gourmets, gadget heads and style fiends.MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art, is Australia's largest private museum and the brainchild of MONA Pavilions' owner David Walsh. Carved into the cliffside alongside the accommodation, this sexily lit temple showcases a 'subversive Disneyland' of modern art and rare global antiquities worth over AU$100 million, including works by Brit artists Damien Hirst and Chris Ofili, US sloganeer Jenny Holzer and Australian icon Sidney Nolan. You can even stream highlights of the collection into your room via your TV screen for a more personal viewing.

A tessellated pavement is a rare erosional feature formed in flat sedimentary rock formations lying on some ocean shores. The pavement bears this name because the rock has fractured into polygonal blocks that resemble tiles, or tessellations. The cracks (or joints) were formed when the rock fractured through the action of stress on the Earth's crust and subsequently were modified by sand and wave action. Sunrise on the tessellated pavement at Eaglehawk Neck, Tasmania, illustrating the pan formation of tessellation A characteristic example of this formation may be found at Eaglehawk Neck on the Tasman Peninsula of Tasmania. This example consists of two types of formations: a pan formation and a loaf formation. The pan formation is a series of concave depressions in the rock that typically forms beyond the edge of the seashore. This part of the pavement dries out more at low tide than the portion abutting the seashore, allowing salt crystals to develop further; the surface of the "pans" therefore erodes more quickly than the joints, resulting in increasing concavity. The loaf formations occur on the parts of the pavement closer to the seashore, which are immersed in water for longer periods of time. These parts of the pavement do not dry out so much, reducing the level of salt crystallisation. Water, carrying abrasive sand, is typically channelled through the joints, causing them to erode faster than the rest of the pavement, leaving loaf-like structures protruding.