We are in the planning stages of a trip to the South Island of NZ along with Sydney, Alice Springs, Cairns in OZ. Any feed back on consolidators, tour companys, or is it cheapest just to piece it together ourselves????? Open to all suggestions.

Hi Winnie
There are many back packer establishments in New Zealand plus a good selection of YHA places to stay. One company that provides transport throughout NZ is called Kiwi Experience. If you put a search up for them, I'm sure you'll gets lots of info.
Also Intercity buses.

Hi Winnie

I'm not sure that Kathy read you correctly?

Are you looking for a top end tour, middle or cheapest? A lot depends on the age group you want to be with.

As an option to a tour were you proposing to drive yourself or were you looking for public transport?

Also how long have you got to do the South Island in? Sometimes an organised tour will allow you to see a lot in a short time.

A bit more information may make it easier to help you.

Warm regards

Kerry

We travel on a budget too and found in far north Queensland, including Cairns, if we didn't pre-book accommodation we saved heaps of money. This would only be advisable outside peak periods. Some places have signs out the front with standby rates and you can also book via lastminute.com.au or wotif.com.au etc . We got a great, new fully self contained apartment in Cairns, 10 min walk to the centre of town, for A$80 per night and also spent less than half the normal package cost for a few nights on a Whitsunday Island, by just turning up.
Generally, doing it yourself is cheaper than a tour but this doesn't appeal to everyone and is a lot more work (fun though!)
Kay

When we originally started planning our trip we looked into tour packages by Cosmos, Trafalgar, etc and then realized that we preferred to get up in the morning by our own alarm clock and not someone else's!

With that in mind, the internet, and Fodor's we toured Sydney, Melbourne, Ayers Rock, Tasmania, Cairns, and South Island New Zealand. In the area of South Island we used their tour buses to get from Christchurch to Queenstown to Greymouth and then took the train back to Christchurch. All that was easily done via e-mail before we left the states. We also used wotif and needitnow for last minute hotel savings as there are internet cafes everywhere in Oz and NZ. Hotel internet sites also offered some great rates that were better than we found and we used them for Sydney, Melbourne, and Palm Cove. wopuld I do it again? YES, easily and probably some other ideas added. We had a ball - used the boomerang pass and any other form of good rate that we could. If you would like to see it at your own pace - then that's the way you should go. We also used a consolidator for LA to Syd tickets. If you've any questions - just ask!