There aren’t many countries where you can sit in the spot where it all began. Relaxing in a small meadow on Lake Lucerne’s shores, however, I can make that claim for Switzerland. Here on this patch of grass on 1 August 1291, representatives of three small alpine valleys got together and signed a pact from which modern Switzerland emerged. August 1 is now a national holiday, and the meadow’s name, Field of Rütli, resonates through Swiss history.

True, I don’t find much happening in Rütli these days, but it’s a fine place for a picnic and a good location to start an exploration of the Swiss heartland around Lake Lucerne, where history and scenery are equally dramatic. It’s also the spot to start my hunt for William Tell, the local lad who fought for freedom and became the world’s most famous Swiss.

I arrive from Lucerne by steamer on an astonishingly scenic ride down its lake, embraced in mountains. My aim is to walk parts of the 36-kilometre Swiss Path, created for the 700th anniversary of Switzerland. With Swiss precision, the pathway is divided into segments representing its 26 cantons. As I walk, signs informs me when each canton joined the confederation, and gives a background to their history. It’s a lovely walk, the path sometimes talking to footbridges across streams and tunnels through cliffs. The landscape is surprisingly wild and rugged: quite the contrast to the bourgeois prettiness of downtown Lucerne.

The following morning, a yellow postal bus deposits me back on the Swiss Path at Altdorf, a pleasant town of cobbled squares, painted houses and elaborate shop signs. A twist of bread marking a bakery directs me to a scrumptious almond croissant. Altdorf is the birthplace of William Tell, whose statue I find at the base of a medieval tower. The hero stands with his crossbow over his shoulder, his arm around his son. The monument marks the place where Tell was forced to shoot an apple off his son’s head by Gessler, an arrogant Hapsburg overlord.

As I walk onwards, the valley narrows and the cliffs close in. Steep ups and downs challenge my lungs and knees. There’s only enough flat land to support a few villages under towering snow-capped peaks. It’s a rewarding hike to the Tell Chapel along the lake’s shore, which is painted with scenes from Tell’s life. It was from this spot that the hero supposedly leapt from a boat taking him to captivity. Tell fled into the forest and later shot Gessler dead with his crossbow, sparking Swiss independence.

Nearby Schwyz sits high above Lake Lucerne in a wide valley of cherry orchards surrounded by snowcapped mountains. This now-quiet backwater canton gave its name and flag to Switzerland, and became famed for its mercenaries, who returned to build the impressive townhouses. The Town Hall is exuberant: cherubs hang over every window and frescoes depict historical battles.

In contrast, the Federal Archives are kept in an ultra-modern, concrete building on the edge of town. I drop by to see the original Oath of Alliance signed at the Field of Rütli. Other proclamations mark the adherence of new cantons to Switzerland, each becoming increasingly ornate with ribbons and wax seals. Few countries in the world have such delightful birth certificates.

Back by Lake Lucerne, I follow the road to Gersau. Improbably, this was once the world’s smallest republic, independent from 1390 to 1817. At Vitznau I enjoy modern evidence of Switzerland’s fighting spirit at Mühleflüh Artillery Fortress, decommissioned in 1998. I enjoy a scramble through underground bunkers to inspect barracks, kitchens and artillery batteries beneath fake rocks.

From here, legs weary, I take to the rack railway up Mt Rigi, and the views become ever more expansive around each dizzying bend. Lake Lucerne shrinks to a puddle and a 200-kilometre range of jagged snow peaks emerges on the horizon. Though less glamorous than more famous viewpoints near Lucerne, such as the James Bond movie setting, Mt Pilatus, Rigi provides a landscape to make my soul sing. Even the cows seem to pause in their chewing and bell-clanking to contemplate the scenery that plunges below their flowery pastures.

At the western end of the lake I’m back to base at Lucerne, whose old town straddles the Reuss River and looks onto the yacht-studded lake and panorama of alpine peaks. In 1332, Lucerne became the first big town to join the alliance of alpine cantons. It’s crammed with old guild houses, baroque churches and ornamental fountains. I study a cartoon-like account of its history on the painted panels that line its famous symbol – a covered wooden bridge. One shows William Tell with his crossbow at the ready. The timeline shows me something that I’ve already gathered: Switzerland has a birthplace, a proper birth certificate, and a mythical founding father, providing a story to delight me.

There are always moments in Austria when I feel like bursting into a song from The Sound of Music. The urge hits me on my second day in Innsbruck, as I browse the Christmas market. Snow crunches underfoot, the air smells of the cinnamon and cloves used to spice up the mulled wine, and carollers serenade the crowd with ‘Silent Night’ in its original language. Christmas trees shimmer with fairy lights and the Swarovski crystals manufactured just outside town. This is a scene from a Christmas card, a winter wonderland brought to life. No wonder I feel a Julie Andrews moment overcome me.

Innsbruck in winter provides plenty of reasons to sing. This is Christmas with snow, tinsel and crisp apple strudel. Advent singers from local schools warble at weekends throughout December. Snowy mountains loom above gabled houses, shops are arrayed in Christmas splendour and – yes – snowflakes do stay on my nose and eyelashes. Even better, Innsbruck, former capital of Austria and important trading post in the Middle Ages, has a glamorous imperial history, university-student energy and edginess, and enough cake-crammed cafés to keep me happy in the cold.

Innsbruck’s old town oozes Gothic spires, medieval shop signs and baroque angels in blue and pink. I hop on the old-fashioned, red Christmas tram, draped in glass balls and fir boughs, and clank around beautiful light-strung streets, hopping off whenever I spy another Christmas market to plunder for marzipan and wooden carvings. The one in Marktplatz has a jolly family atmosphere, with puppet shows, pony rides and an ornate nativity scene. Across the Inn River, the market in the district of aptly-named St Nikolaus is small, but has a wonderful backdrop of leaning houses and church spires.

Then I walk the streets, atmospheric in the fading winter light. My wanderings always end up delivering me to the central square, overlooked by Innsbruck’s iconic landmark, the Golden Roof, which protects a Gothic building carved with jesters, city councillors and heraldic animals. Beneath is the city’s best Christmas market, still with a medieval feel. I munch Kiachl doughnuts and listen to brass bands as I browse stalls laden with tree decorations, music boxes and nutmeg-flavoured macaroons. Occasionally the pagan-looking Krampus make an appearance: a shaggy, costumed figure that scares away evil spirits.

Innsbruck is a small city, but rich in culture. I visit the Hofburg Palace and intriguing Maximilian Chapel, where full-size statues of the Hapsburg emperors stand in rows. The codpiece of the first Hapsburg king, Rudolf, has been rubbed to a shiny bronze by Italian women from across the nearby border, hoping for luck in love. Then I spend a fair while admiring the old town’s jumble to turrets, oriel windows, gables and dormers, which give Innsbruck the air of a gingerbread town.

Sightseeing done, it’s easy to escape into the mountains. The Nordkette mountain railway starts from the city centre and in 20 minutes deposits me at 2,256 metres onto a sunny, eye-squinting viewpoint over a grand sweep of Austrian Alps. Unexpectedly, there’s another little Christmas market up here at Hungerberg station, scented with gingerbread and mulled wine. Fairy lights compete with icicles beyond the windows for maximum glitter.

Another top spot lies across the valley on the other side of town. Bergisel ski jump thrusts up like a work of contemporary art and has a restaurant and viewing deck for fine vistas over the city and Alps. I sit in the café, forking up cherry strudel as the pine trees sough below and winter glitters on the peaks. I watch as jumpers leap into the void with Innsbruck tilting below them, then land on a near-vertical slope. If they don’t stop, they might end up on the gabled turrets of Innsbruck’s old town far below.

Mountain paths – and ski slopes – meander all above this alpine city. The sky is blue, icicles wink on tree branches and across the valley mountains serrate the horizon. My heart gives a leap and I want to sing, and ‘My Favourite Things’ is all that springs to mind. Still, why not? The landscape is happy as a child’s drawing: mountain peaks, little pointy-roofed chalets, hikers snug in bright red jackets.

A hike in the countryside, breath crystallising in the air, is a good way to work up an appetite. You won’t go hungry in Innsbruck at Christmas. Cafés dish up Austrian pancakes smeared with apricot jam and sprinkled with sugar. For dinner, the traditional alpine dish Gröstl – pan-fried potato with bacon and onion – fortifies against the cold. The Christmas markets sell bags of hot chestnuts, gingerbread men, slabs of Stollen cake and sausages the length of my arm, slathered in mustard. Overhead, Christmas trees shimmer like a heavenly vision, snow starts falling, and I feel like singing once more.

Three giraffes are outlined against a blue sky, pink tongues unfurling around the leaves of an acacia tree. Two cheetahs prowl as the sun sets, and hippos wallow. Every day on safari in South Africa brings something new: wildebeest moving through a dry riverbed, or a leopard slinking through golden grass that crackles in the sun. Back in my luxury lodge, I soak off the dust in an infinity pool and gaze over antelope-dotted plains. As dusk stains the sky red, I hear the quintessential sound of Africa: the roar of a lion satisfied with its kill.

I’ve had many South African safari experiences, all different but equally thrilling. At Karkloof Safari Spa near Pietermartizburg, owner Fred Wörner has realised a mad dream to combine wild animals with first-class wellness treatments. (And why not: he made a motser selling wheelie bins to Australian councils, and can now do what he wants.) Now he sits like a James Bond villain – though a rather likeable one – drinking brandy in a throne-like chair decorated with kudu horns, ordering pan-seared ostrich and – on occasion, when tourists aren’t looking – shooting the odd warthog for the pot.

In Great St Lucia Wetland on the coast east of Durban, I stayed at unpretentious Makakatana Bay Lodge where the waitress was called Promise, the chef Rejoice, and the vibe was more laidback than at upmarket game reserves. It provides a sampling of raw African nature, where wildlife isn’t yet accustomed to tourist-filled safari vehicles, and zebra and buffalo remain skittish and unpredictable. In the evenings, hippos snort in the dark as I tuck into Rejoice’s simple but delicious food. Lanterns swing in the trees and cicadas hum.

Not so far away, Phinda Private Game Reserve has the most varied habitats of any South African safari lodge. I paddle the river to spot crocodile and hippos that yawn to reveal cavernous pink mouths. I see turtles on the beach, and then pluck up the courage to tackle a specialist white-rhino safari with a tracker and armed ranger. After picking up the trail, we descend from the vehicle and follow the rhino on foot through rustling grasses in an unnerving but utterly exhilarating wildlife experience.

I’m also fortunate to visit Kwandwe Private Game Reserve northeast of Port Elizabeth. On my first morning’s safari we come across a lion lurking in a thicket, but some of the smaller animals are lovely too: malachite sunbirds sipping nectar in a flurry of emerald-coloured wings; blue cranes strutting through the grass. At day’s end, guests gather with whiskeys to sit around the dining-lodge fire and swap improbable stories of the day’s adventures. Nobody has spied a shy leopard, but we’ve spotted giraffe, eland, springbok and rhino. On a night safari we track down those elusive beasts that haunt the first page of our dictionaries, the aardvark and aardwolf.

For a particularly memorably splurge, on one visit to South Africa I take to an aircraft to view the landscape and its creatures from above. It’s like living a celluloid dream. Remember the 1985 movie Out of Africa, and the scenes in which Robert Redford takes Meryl Streep on a joyride in his aircraft, high above a marvellous landscape of flamingo-haunted lakes and rustling grasslands? That’s what comes to mind as I swoop between the vast cotton balls of African clouds, muddy rivers oozing below. Animals look odd from above: humped elephant backs and shifting patterns of zebra and dainty impala.

Flying is a different way to see things, but you can’t beat being on the ground and down among the wildlife. At Ulusaba, owned by Sir Richard Branson, I sit on my lodge deck and gazed over Sabi Sand Reserve’s undulating landscape of grass and low trees, pockmarked with waterholes and the odd rocky outcrop. Elephant and rhino occasionally wander about the lodges, and windows have to be latched against baboons.

As dawn breaks, we clamber into open Jeeps and head through the bush. The tracker’s radio hisses with a message that there are lions nearby. Then they emerge from the grasses: a shaggy-maned male and three females, parading down the dusty track as if showing off. Over the next two days, we watch a file of stately giraffes blink their long eyelashes, and spot another leopard, one of the most elusive of African animals. Red-billed oxpeckers pluck ticks off the backs of lumbering animals. One hops right into a rhino’s enormous ear, looking for a treat.

Later, sunset flares in a magnificent display of crimson and gold. From the lodge deck, the display of stars is so extravagant I wonder whether I’m hallucinating. Vivid blue lizards scamper over the still-hot rocks as guests exchange stories of the day’s adventures. Out of the night an elephant trumpets: the end of another excellent day on safari in South Africa.

Approached over almost featureless plains, the Flinders Ranges’ rugged ridges emerge slowly on the horizon, promising adventure in their shattered peaks and shadowy red gorges. I love this wildly scenic destination, where the landscapes steal the show and the history endlessly fascinates.

Aboriginal rock art graces the walls of Sacred Canyon. Tumbledown homesteads and stark chimneystacks – last forlorn remnants of sheep stations – speak of defiant European pioneers. The juxtaposition of puny but admirable human endeavour and harsh raw landscape creates a classic outback story.

I scrunch my eyes against the dust as I drive around the 30-kilometre dirt track of Moralana Scenic Drive, lurching slowly through beautiful undulating countryside dotted with Callitris pine forest. It’s just a teaser to Flinders splendour. Next day, the Brachina Geological Trail brings me on a 20-kilometre 4WD journey through 130 million years of geology, with signage along the way detailing the formation of the ranges.

I’ve been tipped off to time my drive through Brachina Gorge for late afternoon, and soon I understand why. Blue river boulders clash with orange cliffs, rocks turn virulent pink, and rare yellow-footed rock wallabies emerge. Eventually, I arrive at Brachina Lookout to catch the virulent sunset over the treeless plains near Parachilna.

Outback travellers, backpackers and RV-touring retirees alike exchange such tips in the region’s pubs and laybys. I like the easy Aussie camaraderie. One night I swap adventure stories at the Prairie Hotel – a legendary outback pub at Parachilna – as I tuck into kangaroo-tail soup and red goat curry. Residents and travellers lean on the bar, while outside a fire crackles and local musician John O’Dea sings Jimmy Barnes covers under the stars.

The Flinders Ranges were formed when an ancient, uplifted seabed was deeply eroded over millions of years into cracked mountains and gorges. Wherever I go, the landscape is a pop-up geology book come to life in escarpments, creek beds and fossils that remind me of school geography lessons. Great layers of twisted rock demonstrate the tectonic forces at work, but millennia of floodwater in these semi-arid ranges has proved just as powerful, scalloping riverbanks and gouging out twisting gorges.

There’s never a shortage of rugged scenery to tempt me to become a pagan worshipper. The 100-kilomere roundtrip along the Bunyeroo-Brachina-Aroona Scenic Drive adds early pioneer heritage and abundant wildlife to spectacular landscapes. Its rollercoaster surfaced roads provide ever more splendid vistas of the outer ramparts of eastern Wilpena Pound and the Bunyeroo Valley, where Razorback Lookout entrances me with its classic, calendar-worthy Flinders viewpoint.

Wilpena Pound is an awe-inspiring natural formation that looks like a giant meteorite crater, but it is actually a remnant valley floor where the surrounding ranges have been eroded away, leaving only a circle of hard quartzite cliffs. The pound, which is roughly 17 kilometres long and eight wide, was used by early pastoralists, with the ruins of Hill Homestead a significant heritage site. A walk to Arkaroo Rock brings me to a much more ancient history, with images of emus and snakes in red ochre on the rocks.

I chicken out of the rugged hikes that lead up the sides of the pound, such as the all-day heart-banger to St Mary’s Peak (the highest point in the Flinders) or into Edeowie Gorge. The flat bottom of Wilpena Pound, however, offers less challenging day walks through bonsai-twisted eucalypts and enormous red river gums. As I hike, kangaroos flop in the shade and flocks of galahs swirl like pink confetti.

I love walking in the Flinders Ranges as much as I enjoy driving through them. The mountains hide deep valleys whose permanent waterholes provide sustenance for giant eucalyptus trees and wildlife such as wallabies, gaggles of emus and wedge-tailed eagles. One day I tackle the hike through Mt Billy Creek and into Wilkawillina Gorge. In places, I almost imagine myself in the Mediterranean, with bullock trees resembling the olive groves of Greece. Then I’m reminded of the uniquely Australian flavour of this landscape, where mighty white gums clash with orange rock, cockatoos scream, and sunsets explode.

I’ve been to the Flinders several times and never miss an outstanding day walk that starts at Black Gap on the outer, western edge of the Wilpena Pound, from which there are stunning views of the Elders Ranges. This time, by lunchtime I’ve reached the top of the pound at Bridal Gap and then I hike through the banded red and green rock formations, down into the valley bottom, finishing at Wilpena Pound Resort.

The 11-kilometre hoof isn’t unduly strenuous, with all the uphills coming early in the day; the only tricky part is arranging a drop-off at the start of the trail. My reward at the end is a cold beer and another flaring sunset. Then the staggering stars of outback Australia start to twinkle: heavenly fireworks to celebrate the end of another spectacular day.

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