I shall be travelling in Eastern Australia between 1st Jan 2014 departing on 16th Jan, after spending 10 days in Melbourne with friends.
This will be the first time I have ever travelled and will be travelling alone during the second part of my trip.
I'm really looking for advice on:
• how long I may wish to spend in each place
• activities that would be good
• places to look for more advice
• experience from others who have done this before
• ideas of places that others think would be worth visiting
• places to avoid
• best way to travel
• etc.
I'm sure whatever I end up doing I will have a trip of a lifetime, but I don't want to end up aimlessly wandering around not really knowing where to start or what to do, which is my main concern.
For background I am more interested in nature, hiking and scenery than history, museums, architecture and art. Having never travelled before I have zero experience of what I may like outside of general interests. I will be 30 at the time of my trip.
In terms of budget, I'm happy to stay in backpacker accommodation for parts of the trip but wouldn't mind the odd few days of something a bit nicer (but not superdooper luxury!). I suppose it would be useful to know where it would be most appropriate to spend a little more, and where budget will best.
Happy to fly between places, or bus – but prefer to see more things than spend time travelling to save say a couple of hundred pounds.
Places that I think I would definitely like to visit include:
• Sydney itself
• Blue Mountains
• Fraser Island
• Great Barrier Reef
In order to do these things it looked best to travel between Sydney and Cairns (or vice versa), with my international flight out of one of the two cities.
Thank you in advance for ideas and help!! I hope that I have given enough information but please ask if you would like more.
Trip Planning Advice Welcomed
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Because you mentioned pounds I'll presume that you are from the UK.
In January, the heat and humidity will be a real shock to you in the state of Queensland, so be aware of what you are in for weatherwise. Having said that many people from the northern hemisphere surprise us with how much they seem adapt. You may want to spend a night or two in a Nearly-superdooper hotel in that region just to get the airconditioning that may not be available in a backpackers' joint.
I suggest that you fly between places rather than bus or go by train. You are not here long enough to spend vast amounts of time in a bus. If you book early, which here is several months in advance, you can get some good deals on flights.
If you stay in backpackers, you won't spend time aimlessly doing useless things. If you are friendly and join in the social scene, they will have so much information for you that your difficulty will be in deciding what to do next. You will meet tons of German, Dutch, Indonesian, Danish, American, Peruvian (etc) travellers and they will all have their favourite places to share with you.
You have lots of time to do some research on this forum and others - if you buy the Lonely Planet's book on Australia it would be a great start.
If coming to north Queensland for the reef please allow a bit of flexibility to match your trip to good weather. The humidity will be high in north Queensland but it gets much hotter in the southern parts of the continent. I'll let you be the judge about how it feels for you by visiting this site http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/index.shtml?bookmark=200&view=map and checking on the places you are thinking of visiting.
Fraser Island is great but unless you fly in and out takes a bit of time to get to. I would limit myself to two regions other than Melbourne. Sydney and the Blue Mountains would be one and Cairns and the Atherton Tablelands would be the other. On the Wallaby is a backpackers which also runs tours out of Cairns to the Tablelands where they are based in Yungaburra. I passed a bus of theirs this afternoon and it was packed so they must be doing something right as this is the slack season.