bdehning

Landing in Sydney 3/27/07 and leaving Melbourne on 4/10/07. Would like to get to Cairns to snokel on reef, visit adelaide and Kangaroo Island as well as Sydney and Melbourne since flying in and out of these cities.

Could use suggestions on best use of our two weeks to get the most out of it based on the above.

dave_261

I did almost the same trip earlier this year. I wrote a trip report, which may help your planning.

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34750423

DownUnder

I think I posted to you on a different question, but as you are looking for a more detailed itinerary and as I have lived in this country for a long while I suggest the following.
Arrive Sydney stay 4 nights. Sufficient to see the City, a harbour cruise, climb the bridge, the Blue Mountains etc. etc.
Fly Cairns 3 nights. GBR one day hinterland another or 2 days visiting Reef. It's a great attraction.
Fly Adelaide 3 nights. KI and the Barossa. (might need an extra night if you overnight on KI)
Drive to Melbourne visiting Robe (the crayfish capital) Mt. Gambier ( blue lake) with an overnight stop at Pt. Fairy or Warnambool. Then drive the GOR via 12 apostles, Apollo Bay, Lorne to Melbourne.
Melbourne 2 or 3 nights (depending on KI) Sufficient to see Galleries, Penguin Parade, Chapel St. and the best Shopping.
Next time visit Ayres Rock and Kakadu!

bdehning

DownUnder

Yes you did reply to my other one so thank you very much. All the info has been quite helpful. We just need to decide how important seeing cities is vs seeing the outlying areas!

bdehning

Itinerary has been pretty much finalized and just want final opinions.

March 27 Arrive AM Sydney - Bridge Walk, Rocks area
March 28 Blue Mountains
March 29 Fly to Cairns
March 30 Snorkel trip to GBR
March 31 Skytam and train to Kuranda
April 1 Fly to Adelaide
April 2 & April 3 Kangaroo Island
April 4 - 6 Flinders Ranges up to Blinman and back to Adelaide.
April 7 & 8 Drive the GOR to Melbourne
April 9 Melbourne
April 10 Fly out of Melbourne.

The plan is to use the flying days as rest days after arriving at destinations.

Thoughts?

DownUnder

That is a great itinerary. You will visit some of the best areas of Australia. Have a wonderful holiday.

dave_261

I'm the master of cramming too much travel into a limited amount of time, but I wonder if you may want to cut something out.
I should mention that my wife and I aren't big on cities, and tend to do the "cliffs notes" version, but even so, only allowing 1 day in Melbourne and Sydney is really, really, pushing it.
As it stands, it looks like you'll literally have only your arrival day into Sydney, and the next day for the Blue Mountains. If you're arriving in the AM from a long flight, that first day might be a real lethargic day, and you may not see much of Sydney. Perhaps play it by ear, and if you don't see enough of Sydney on that day, skip the Blue Mountains to have a 2nd day to explore Sydney.

Also, given your schedule, I'll present another GOR option. Perhaps on the evening of April 6 you may consider flying to Melbourne, and then April 7 driving to Geelong and doing the GOR to Warnambool and back in 1 looong day.
That would give you 2 full days at the end in Melbourne.

Whatever you decide, you'll have a great time and see a ton in 2 weeks.

dave_261

As a follow-up to my post, here's even one more GOR option. The Melbourne GOR route would be a really, really long day if you wanted to return at night (although entirely possible). Perhaps you could even spend the night in Warnambool or Port Fairy, and return on the inland route early the next day so you'd have all afternoon and the full next day in Melbourne.