Australia advice please?

[kickstartcarl]

Hello All,

I have a once in a lifetime opportunity to travel to Australia for a month and want to do and see as much as I can while i'm there.
Its such a big place and has so much to do I dont know where to start.

Websites are really pushy on organised trips but I'd like to explore the hidden parts.
What would you recommend for a first time traveller to experience the real Australia?
(starting from Syndey!)

[anonymous-user]

kickstartcarl said:

I have a once in a lifetime opportunity to travel to Australia for a month

i think they let you visit more than once.

[Workshy Fop]

Had a month there in October. Basically don't waste your time driving from anywhere to anywhere. The distances are ridiculous and you'll waste days doing this. Get internal flights. We had 5 in total which were dirt cheap with Quantas as we booked the UK flight with them at the same time.

We flew:

Sydney -> Ayers Rock (hired a car at airport)

Ayers Rock -> Cairns - transferred straight to Port Douglas. Hired a Patrol to do the Bloomfield track. Did the reef from here, only 15mins in a 80km/h rib

Cairns -> Brisbane. Hired a car at airport, headed north to Noosa area. Australia Zoo is up there too. Crikey! Headed to Fraser Island, hired a Land crusiser on Fraser to do the offroad stuff (my personal highlight).

Brisbane -> Melbourne. Did city stuff then hired a car to do the Great Ocean Road.

Melbourne -> Sydney - for the return flight home.

[lockhart flawse]

If it's once in a lifetime don't waste time in Melbourne or Brisbane(I used to live in Melbourne and spent a very dull week in Brisbane). Try the Kakadu National Park in the N.Territory. In my opinion the only Australian city worth spending time in is Sydney and just maybe Freemantle.

L.F.

[deviant]

Personally I love Melbourne but it depends on what you want from the trip really.

I live in Perth...I would say you can do Perth city in one or two days. Same for Fremantle. It's well worth a trip up to Coral Bay, very remote and not much there beyond a few campsites and a hotel but the snorkelling and diving is just something else. Fantastic place to go to escape and not have to do anything.
Margret River region of WA is great for some of the best wine, beer and food you will find anywhere. Keep heading south and you will get to Albany which is an old town (for Aus) and is one of the first places to be settled in WA.

[flyingjase]

lockhart flawse said:

If it's once in a lifetime don't waste time in Melbourne or Brisbane(I used to live in Melbourne and spent a very dull week in Brisbane). Try the Kakadu National Park in the N.Territory. In my opinion the only Australian city worth spending time in is Sydney and just maybe Freemantle.
L.F.

Agree with this totally. I lived in Melbourne for 6 months & Sydney for 6 months in the late ‘90’s (ok they have changed but not that much) and I’ve visited Brisbane. Sydney is by far the best place to spend some time especially as Australia is a big country to get round in 1 month.

If you go to Sydney, there are a couple walks to do:

Bondi – Coogee and end up the Coogee Bay Hotel (CBH) for some beers in their courtyard afterwards then get a taxi back to the City

Manly – Spit Bridge – longer walk than above but some amazing houses and views along the way. Once finished walk across the bridge to boat place and flag a cab. Stop at the Oaks in Neutral Bay on the way back to the City and have a beer and some food in the beer garden – cook you own BBQ Kangaroo and amazing salt & pepper squid. Yum.

Workshy Fop said:

Had a month there in October. Basically don't waste your time driving from anywhere to anywhere. The distances are ridiculous and you'll waste days doing this. Get internal flights. We had 5 in total which were dirt cheap with Quantas as we booked the UK flight with them at the same time.

Agree that distances are huge and you will need to fly to come places (Ayres Rock being one) but if you fly everywhere you miss the ability to be spontaneous and go to places that off the beaten track a little.

This is PH after all, so driving is part of the fun!

I’m just on the back end of 3 weeks touring the East Coast of Oz in a Motorhome (great way to get around if the budget / inclination is there) and If I wasn’t driving I’d have missed some really good scenic stuff and also silly places like the Pub with no Beer! For example we decided that we wanted to go to a small town called 1770 which wasn’t in the original itinerary but we’d heard about just pointed the van there and drove. We had a fantastic day at the Barrier Reef from there.

Anyway, recommendations from me are (and these only cover the East Coast, outside of that Kakadu is a must and Ayres Rock is a place you really should do as well but it’s a bloody long way to see a rock!):-

Fraser Island – get a flight there by Air Fraser Island ($100 each way) and land on the Beach which doubles as the main Highway for the Island. Hire a 4WD on the Island and have a couple of days of fun.



Sailing the Whitsundays, but you must also get a Scenic flight from Air Whitsundays as that’s the only way you can really appreciate how magnificent the Reef is, including the Heart reef which you can’t see any other way. I got them to drop me at Hamilton Island (only an extra $60) for a couple of days as well which was quite good fun – they give you a golf buggy to explore the Island in! Bit commercial though.

The pic below is a river that runs through the Barrier Reef about 40 mins flight from the mainland!





There’s loads of other stuff but these are the highlights for me.

Just make sure you enjoy and have fun. Tell us all about it when you get back

[thehawk]

Depends really what you want to do, but if it's scenery and outdoors stuff then re-plan to have 2 weeks in NZ

[Xaero]

As always the answer is 'it depends' - on what you want.

I drove from Perth along the south coast to Sydney and it took 20 days, including 3 in Adelaide and 5 in Melbourne.

I think Melbourne and Brisbane are worth a look but Sydney isn't special. It reminds me of any city in the UK. The Opera house was underwhelming, however I hugely appreciated the harbour bridge - stunning bit of engineering that.

You won't miss anything by not visiting Perth, it is purely a business city, Fremantle is better (there is a prison there that do a good tour of the first convicts in Oz) even though it's smaller. It's worth exploring around Perth though, although by 'around' I mean, a few hours drive to get anywhere.

For the record I lived in Perth for 4 months, and Sydney for 2 months and am now based in Brisbane trying to get rid of a vehicle I bought to get around Oz. A road trip is great here.

If you are in Sydney a visit to the Blue Mountains or Royal National Park is worth a day each too.

I never went to Ayers Rock, or the Great Barrier Reef so can't comment on them.

[Xaero]

Oh and if you do fancy a trip, keep an eye on http://www.standbyrelocations.com/ nearer the time, you can rent a car for $1 a day and sometimes get fuel allowance too. I'd be doing that if I had more time here.

[Workshy Fop]

flyingjase said:

Workshy Fop said:

Had a month there in October. Basically don't waste your time driving from anywhere to anywhere. The distances are ridiculous and you'll waste days doing this. Get internal flights. We had 5 in total which were dirt cheap with Quantas as we booked the UK flight with them at the same time.

Agree that distances are huge and you will need to fly to come places (Ayres Rock being one) but if you fly everywhere you miss the ability to be spontaneous and go to places that off the beaten track a little.

This is PH after all, so driving is part of the fun!

Hey I rented 5 cars and drove 3500km. 2 x Mitsubishi crap, a 3.0 Holden (crap), a 3.0 Patrol in the Daintree and a 4.2 Landcruiser on Fraser. Many baby carbons were harmed I'll have you know
That pic landing at Fraser looks great though. They said to look around for landing aircraft but I reckoned it was their call. Cessna vs Lancrusier hmmmm.
I just explored wherever I was and returned the car to where I got it. No point driving 2 or 3 days from Cairns to Brisbane for example.

[Fox-]

Workshy Fop said:

Had a month there in October. Basically don't waste your time driving from anywhere to anywhere.

I could not disagree more. When I went the only internal flight I got was back to Melbourne to go home. I drove from Melbourne (Which was a fantastic city, cannot understand why the advice is to avoid) to Adelaide, then over to Sydney, then up the coast to Cairns. It was fantastic and it absolutely made the trip. You miss so much going by plane.

[Colonial]

Fox- said:

Workshy Fop said:

Had a month there in October. Basically don't waste your time driving from anywhere to anywhere.

I could not disagree more. When I went the only internal flight I got was back to Melbourne to go home. I drove from Melbourne (Which was a fantastic city, cannot understand why the advice is to avoid) to Adelaide, then over to Sydney, then up the coast to Cairns. It was fantastic and it absolutely made the trip. You miss so much going by plane.

Yep - no point going to just the main tourist spots. See a bit of the country rather than just the big centres.

And I second going to Melbourne. Great city.

Distances are longer, but the driving is half the fun.