Need help with Australia trip planning
 

We are planning a first trip to Australia in mid Oct this year. Including in the party is my mom with a bad knee, so mobility is bit of an issue, and our 10 year old girl.

Planning to do 10 days excluding travel to and from Sydney.

Rough itinerary is as follows

Fly into Sydney
Spend 2-3 nights
Visit Blue mountain area - can this be a day trip from Sydney? How handicap friendly is this side trip?
Maybe a day at the Gold Coast
Fly to cairns to visit Great barrier - no divers in the group, in fact not even good swimmers othervthan my daughter in the group, so realistically what can we expect to experience?
Fly back to Sydney and back home

Is this too much for 10 days? Should we add anything else to itinerary? Western Australia sounds interesting, should we try to squeeze any of that in?

Please help with this itinerary!

With 10 days, I would choose one of the following itineraries: 1) Sydney--5 days, Cairns--5 days or 2) Sydney--3 days, Gold Coast--3 days, Cairns--4 days. A good "rule of thumb" is that each added destination subtracts 1/2 day from sightseeing, so it doesn't make much sense to go to the Gold Coast for only 1 day.

We've been to the Blue Mountains twice (and yes, you can do it as a day trip from Sydney), but I don't think it's a very good destination for someone with mobility issues. Lots of walking and lots of elevation changes, i.e. hills.

If you go to Cairns/Port Douglas (which I highly recommend), I think your best choice for a day on the Reef would be with Quicksilver (Port Douglas) or Reef Magic (Cairns). Each of these boats go to a fixed pontoon. There is snorkeling available (and the less-than-good swimmers can use floatation devices to help with snorkeling). They also offer glass bottom boat rides, semi-submersible rides and an underwater viewing area for those that want to see the Reef but do not want to get in the water.

There is a lot to see and do in Cairns/Port Douglas besides the Great Barrier Reef. I think all of you, especially your daughter, would enjoy visiting the Wildlife Habitat in Port Douglas. Our kids especially enjoyed going there for "Breakfast with the Birds".

Finally, there is no way that you can squeeze Western Australia into this trip. It's a full day just to get there.

Thanks for your input. I too realized that I probably need to cut out Gold Coast from the itinerary. So I will redo the itinerary splitting it between Sydney and Cairns, no point rushing from place to place.

Is it best to fly back to Sydney from Cairns to take the international flight or are there other better options? Our destination is Singapore.

You may be able to fly out of Cairns or Brisbane. Check it out.

After some more reading and research, we are now thinking that it would be worth extending the trip by another 3-4 days so that we can make a trip to Kangaroo island. From the description in Frommer's it sounds like an awesome place that my daughter would really enjoy.

So, itinerrary now looks like this:

Day 1-5 - Arrive in Sydney and stay 5 nights
Day 6, 7, 8 - Fly to Adelaide and on to Kangaroo Island for 3 nights
Day 9, 10, 11, 12 - Fly to Cairns and explore GBR, Port Douglas, Kuranda
Day 13 - Back to Sydney, stay 1 last night
Day 14 - Fly back home

Please share your thoughts on this revised plan.

Your itinerary sounds reasonable to me. It really depends what's on your "Must See" list as to whether Kangaroo Island is worthwhile. If you just want to see native animals in their natural habitat, you can achieve that without shlepping over to KI. There's lots to see and do at all your other stops - not so much at KI, IMO.

By the way, I just want to endorse longhorn's comments about the GBR. The big operators, like Quicksilver, are very used to dealing with non-swimmers, people with limited mobility and those that just don't want to go in the water ('cos a shark will almost certainly eat them!) A day on the Reef is not to be missed.

Hi, thanks. Yes, I looked up details of Quicksilver. That sould like the perfect option for us. What kind of weather can we expect in mid October? Hope not choppy seas!

It appears that mostly people are not that impressed with KI, so I am inclined to dropping it. Now that we have added a few more days to itinerary, should we then use it for Melbourne and GOR? GOR sounds a lot like the Big Sur in California which we absolutely loved, but having done that journey should we try to include GOR now or are there other places to consider for this trip?

There's good wildlife viewing in the Atherton Tablelands (near Cairns) if you decide to skip KI. For our first trip, we did Sydney, Cairns, KI and a bit of Tasmania on a slightly longer than 2 week trip. We absolutely fell in love with Tasmania.

Giving up so soon on Kangaroo Island? We've been there twice with our kids and we enjoyed it very much as a family. What we've seen are seals, sea lions, kangaroos, emus, wallabies, an echidna, pelicans, penguins and koalas...all in the wild. (The echidna was a lucky sighting, but who knows, you might be lucky too!) There's also a neat cave, some amazing rock formations that are fun to explore, and sand dunes where you can sled (We hiked at Little Sahara, but did not sled. I understand sleds can be rented in Vivionne Bay.)

I definitely think that KI is much more interesting than the GOR and Melbourne.

We saw several echidnas on KI. The only other place we saw one was at Narawntapu on Tasmania. Here are my KI pics share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=0AZNnDlk5YtmbEDA

Hmmm...that was my initial impression of KI, that it offered a lot more interesting things as compared to GOR. Also probably the Melbourne-GOR leg would require more time than the 3 days?

Hi Patty, lovely pictures! Did you do your own driving around the island or did you join any tours? I hear self driving can be a bit tricky on some of the roads.

Thanks! We drove ourselves and tried to limit any driving after dark. That's the primary reason we split our stay between 2 places as we wanted to do the night walk at Hanson Bay and the evening penguin tour in Penneshaw. Many of the roads are dirt but that wasn't really a problem. It's the wildlife you have to watch out for, particularly between dusk and dawn. As a matter of fact, our rental car company had an extra deductible on top of the regular deductible for accidents between dusk and dawn. The amount of roadkill is unbelievable.

I also plan to Australia trip.

Patty, which 2 accommodations did you choose for your stay in KI. Could you please share the details, maybe we will go for the same.

Couple of places in Emu Beach looked interesting, not sure if that is a good location to base ourselves?

We stayed 2 night at a cabin at Hanson Bay http://www.hansonbay.com.au

And 1 night at the Seaview Lodge in Penneshaw http://www.seaviewlodge.com.au/

Our main reason for staying in Penneshaw was to take the evening penguin tour and not having to drive far after dark. I believe you can see penguins in Kingscote too.

The cabins at Hanson Bay are rustic but we loved the location. Saw several kangaroos and wallabies walking around the area. We did their nocturnal tour and went back the next day to see the koalas again. The location was very convenient for visiting Flinders Chase NP.

Other places we visited on the island were Murray Lagoon, Little Sahara and Seal Bay.

I'm not sure if Emu Bay would be a convenient location. It seem like most of the interesting stuff to see was on the southern part of the island.

We flew from Adelaide to Kingscote and picked up our car there.

Very useful post.