HELP Planning Eastern Australia for first timers
 

Hello,

My wife and I booked our flights to Sydney (landing Feb 5th, 2012 and Departing February 24th 2012).

I have a high level of an idea of what I want to see, but not sure if it is the best way to go about it and am looking for help planning my trip (and most importantly, planning our travel b/w cities)

Here is what I have so far:

Feb 5th, arrive Sydney in the AM; climb the bridge, do a wine tour, see the blue mountains, shop

Feb 9th, Depart Sydney and head to Brisbane (here we have a friend we can stay with)
take a day trip to Byron Bay/Surfers Paradise etc,

Feb 12th AM depart for Fraser Island (bus trip?), where we will rent ATV's and stay overnight somewhere (not sure where)

Feb 13th PM depart Fraser Island and head up the coast to the Whitsunday Islands. Do a sailing tour of the islands and spend Valentines Day doing something nice....

Feb 15th, depart Whitsunday Islands and head to Cairns (not sure how, bus/fly?)
Spend 2 days in Cairns snorkelling and relaxing beachside/shopping

February 17th, Depart Cairns via plane and head to Melbourne

Spend time in Melbourne, shopping, wine tours, site seeing etc... (what else do you do here)?

Feb 20th AM Depart Melbourne and fly to New Zealand (not sure where), but stay in NZ Feb 20th - 23.

Feb 23rd Depart NZ and Fly back to sydney to prepare for our flight back home.....


Any help with this itinerary would be much appreciated... We are not intereseted in seeing Ayers Rock....

Thanks!

Hi bwhizz

You certainly are trying to pack a lot into your Australia / NZ experience!

I don't know where you are travelling from, but assume you will arrive on one of the 6am flights into Sydney.

Unless your flight in is the first of the day, you can experience some delays at immigration/baggage pick up. You probably need to allow a couple of hours from landing time till you will be clear of the airport.

Will you then need to check in to a hotel? I assume so; you'll at least need to be able to drop luggage somewhere before you take off on the bridge climb.

So that will take care of the morning. Where do you plan to do the wine tour?

Trips to the Hunter Valley (wineries) and Blue Mountains would each take a half day minimum - perhaps you need to decide between the two here, if that's all the time you can allocate.

There are others on this site who can give better advice than I can for Brisbane and points north; my only comment would be that you should look at an on line map, and us it to calculate driving times between points . . . most people just aren't aware how large Australia actually is.

Your current itinerary looks like a lot of travelling time between points to me, with not enough time to actually soak up what you are seeing. Di

bwhizz
Sounds like you have a lot on your plate I just want to offer a couple of suggestions for your consideration. In March I spent about a week in and around Cairns. From Cairns, Daintree and Karanda are an easy drive up the coast and well worth spending a day or so. Absolutely beautiful. Also the Atherton tablelands is worthwhile as a return to Cairns.
MY strongest suggestion is for New Zealand. I was on a RTW trip for the first half of this year, and one of my stops was NZ. I flew into Auckland, at the suggestion of someone on this forum, changed planes and flew on to Queenstown - South Island. I dont know whether you are wine lovers or winery lovers or not, but if you are, the Central Otago region is incredible. The weather, the scenery, the Pinot Noir, and the people made NZ one of three favorite places of all the places I visited. I dont know how much time you want to spend in NZ, but you will be blown away by the Central Otago region. Google it!

Shrink

bwhizz,

A big ask in a very short time frame. Imagine if you would (assuming you're from the you ess of aaaaaa)

Arrive NYC am, do Niagara Falls, Long Island and New Jersey, the head to California that p.m. and see San Diego Sea World, as well as Disneyland/California Park/Universal Studios in the evening etc...

It all sounds a little hectic, so you really need to sit back (maybe even have a look at google earth, or an atlas) and determine how many kilometres/miles you need to cover between destinations, first.

One day here, two days there, don't cut it in OZ....so try allowing for a days' travel between points of interest, and then one day (minimum) to check out the local attractions, first.

Shrink has the best idea....visit NZ...and you can see the whole lot (except for the GBR/Whitsundays/Sydney Harbour Bridge etc..) in a few weeks. This would give you a pretty good insight into life in the south pacific....in a laid-back lifestyle. Just don't try to rush it o.k...?

Australia is a damn big country, and you need a bit more than two weeks to appreciate the diversity here. NZ, is more compact, but you can have a great time over there (with a lot more variety) in the same amount of time. Just a thought.

Cheers,

Rick
Cairns, Qld, OZ

Thanks!

We are flying from Canada via Vancouver and not sure what time we arrive actually....

Lets put it this way, what are the MUST see's given our short time span in Oz?

for me it is Whitsundays, Fraser Island, Melbourne, Sydney

and of course NZ.... i was thinking of the north island....what are some major differences b/w north NZ and south?

we will probably travel via air for all of our hops.... i was thinking sydney fly to brisbane, from there we can take day trips to fraser island/coffs harbour etc..... then fly brisbane to proserpine to see whitsundays, then bus from their to Cairns... fly cairns to Melbourne and then Fly to NZ

a lot of flying, i know.

A lot of time in airports.

bwhizz

A check on Google Maps will show you that a trip from Brisbane to Coffs Harbour will take 5 hours, one way. That's 10 hours of travel, and no time to see anything except the scenery en route! Even if you fly, by the time you get to and from airports, allowing for sitting-and-waiting-time for flights, you'll find that half a day slips away very quickly.

If your must see list is Whitsundays, Fraser Island, Melbourne and Sydney, then why not just limit yourselves to exploring those places more thoroughly? This will give you a much better picture of Australia and Australians, rather than spending so much time getting from place to place! Di

Thanks for the advice Di.... but what about Cairns and the GBR... i heard there is a point in Cairns where the rainforest meets the GBR.....

and everyone says, you can't go to Australia without seeing new zealand!

:(

We're leaving for our 4th trip to Oz in a few weeks and have yet to see Whitsundays, Fraser Island, Melbourne, GBR, Uluru, Cairns, Hunter Valley, or New Zealand. We have seen the inside of Sydney airport and many wonderful places too numerous to mention. We are resigned to the fact that the list of places we have been will always be shorter than the places we haven't. Do it all in one gulp if you must, but keep in mind it is not what you see, but what you experience that makes the trip rewarding









fraser Island, elobourne or Sydney (unless you cound the inside of the airport.

ooops, an unintentional tag line there

As others have already suggested, I would be realistic in terms of what you can reasonably accomplish in the time available - try to do too much, and it will just become an endless slog from place to place. New Zealand is certainly worth it (though I've never been .. yet) but if you feel you really must go there, then I would cut out some of the other destinations. Except for short distances (that you can drive in an hour or two) you need to fly - distances can be great but the roads may not be. I'm not sure why you want to go to Cairns and to the Whitsundays and to Fraser Island and to Surfers Paradise - certainly, they are all worth a visit but I would drop one or two of them. Surfers Paradise can be done as an easy day trip from Brisbane (it's about 1 hour+ to get to Surfers, as it's good motorway most of the way). I would try to combine the rest into a single part of the itinerary. If you want to go to the reef, see some rainforest etc, then heading up to Cairns makes sense (though I personally wouldn't stay in Cairns itself - Palm Cove or Port Douglas is much nicer). I would think about cutting out the Whitsundays and Fraser Island - yes, they're worth it but you can only do so much.

Sydney - when I first saw your post, like an earlier responder, I though you were going to get off the plane and go and climb the bridge! I then realized that it was just part of the things to do during your planned 4 days in Sydney. I would certainly not do it the day you arrive. Other things to do during your stay -
Take the ferry to Manly, walk up the Corso to the beach, have breakfast/coffee/lunch, depending on the time of day, take the ferry back. No need for a "harbour cruise" - you'll see plenty from the ferry.
Take the ferry to Taronga Zoo - well worth a visit. You can buy a combined ferry/zoo ticket.
Hop on and off buses - there used to be a "Red Explorer" and an "Blue Explorer" bus, though I think they may have now been combined (or at least modified). Not necessarily the cheapest way of getting around but certainly an easy way to see many of the sights of Sydney in an easy way, with someone else doing the driving. The Blue Explorer goes (used to go?) to Bondi. Other than getting off there, you may just want to stay on an do the circuit and identify places to re-visit later. Probably an easy thing to do on your first day.
Blue Mountains - a day trip. Probably easiest to sign up for a tour as getting about once you're there is not easy if you don't have a car.
Winery - Hunter Valley when you're in Sydney or the Yarra Valley when you're in Melbourne? I would suggest the Yarra Valley (but then I'm biased). It's an hour or so drive from Melbourne. Several wineries can provide a good lunch (for example, TarraWarra, De Bortoli, Domaine Chandon, Yering Station).

Sydney has the Opera House and the harbour, the glitz and the glamour - Melbourne has everything else. It's the sporting / dining / shopping / cultural capital of Australia. The central area is very easy to get around, though much of Melbourne is "hidden" in its lanes and alleyways - lots of bars and restaurants that are up a grungy staircase, down in a basement, off in an alley somewhere or behind an unmarked door - trying to find them is half the fun. The Queen was here to day and apparently enjoyed it (what little she saw of it in her 4 hour visit...) - hope you do to.

Whatever you decide to do - enjoy!

Do let us know what you decide and how it works out. We'll be in Sydney for four nights in mid january and it will be fun to compare notes.

I know.... Whitsunday is something i refuse to cut out of my itinerary... Maybe the answer is to cut out Cairns or spend less time in Brisbane?

I really want to go to NZ so will see. I was also checking out hotels.com for rooms in Sydney, and it looks like the average is $200/night.... does this sound right?

Brisbane - a nice city (I used to live there once upon a time) but if you're already going to Sydney and Melbourne, there's no particularly compelling reason to go to Brisbane - except to see your friend? You can also fly to the Gold Coast (Surfers Paradise) (OOL - Coolangatta airport) from Sydney if that makes any of the logistics easier. That said, Surfers Paradise is an overbuilt concrete jungle full of high rise apartment blocks and other than the beach (and the beaches up and down that stretch of coast) doesn't have much to recommend it. If you're going to the Whitsundays, Fraser Island and Cairns, I'd be inclined to give Surfers a miss. However, if you do go and drive from (or to) Brisbane, do stop for an Australian delicacy - an Aussie meat pie. None finer than at the Yatala (that's "Yat - ler") pie shop -
http://www.yatalapies.com.au/

If you do go to Surfers, the Gold Coast hinterland is a nice part of the world - stay at Binna Burra or O'Reilly's -
http://www.binnaburralodge.com.au/
http://www.oreillys.com.au/

bwhizz: absolutely concur with the notion you're trying to do way to much with too little time. A few thoughts:

With the time you have I'd limit yourself to 3 areas, e.g., Sydney, Cairns, NZ or Brisbane, Whitsundays, NZ.

Three days is way too short for NZ. If you go,I would focus South Island for at least five days.

Why Melbourne? Another big city. We have those in North America too.

Fraser Island is fantastic, but it is large and relatively out of the way. Two full days on Fraser would be needed to see the major sights. I'd allow at least 3 days to go there and back from Brisbane - it's a ~4 hr drive north, along with a ferry ride.

The Gold Coast, while built up and commercialized, nonetheless has gorgeous beaches and is a great base for visiting the gorgeous hinterland and the less developed coastline to the south.

In my opinion, you'd be better off spending time around Cairns rather than the Whitsundays in terms of the variety of things to see and do.

"Why Melbourne? Another big city. We have those in North America too."

To each their own - but that makes about as much sense as telling someone who's visiting New York that they don't need to bother going to San Francisco - "it's just another big city" (and having lived in both of them, I know how different they are).

Yes to each his own. However, my point was, with the possible exception of Sydney, cities are not what makes Australia unique as a travel destination. Seeing two or more of Australia's largest cities in a short trip of less than 3 weeks does not seem like the right balance to me.

For that matter, if I were to comment on a short itinerary for someone visiting the USA, I wouldn't be recommending a visit to NY and SF. It would be something like SF, Yosemite, Yellowstone and Canyonlands.

We have Melbourne on their just incase we decide to move, Melbourne is on the list of possibilities.

you will be spending 2 days in Melbourne and on those grounds you will make a decision about future living. I fI was going to think about living in a new city I sure would want to spend more time there.
I'd skip NZ this time and spend more time in Australia. Remembering that many of your days will be taken up by travel eg Cairns to Melbourne virtually one whole day.

"and everyone says, you can't go to Australia without seeing new zealand!"

i always wonder who these 'everyones' are and if they've actually been to the places they offer this kind of advice about.

we happily spent 5 weeks in our trip down under and went nowhere near NZ!
but also took 2.5 weeks driving from victoria to toronto a few summers ago; well we did have to stop in Wawa to see the giant goose!!

its a wonderful world down under ; i'm sure you'll have a great time regrdless of where you go; you can sleep on the long flight home :-)

cheers
AndrewDavid