My husband & I will be on a cruise out of Sydney beg Jan 7 with a day over in Sydney on the 8th, next stop Melbourne, then Hobart.

We love wildlife & hiking & are experienced travelers & we find the ship's pricing to be outrageous. Surely we can get from port to interesting places & back to port in time to meet the ship by 6PM without messing things up too much. Can anyone help us plan (1) a trip from the Sydney port to the Blue Mts with time to do some walking; (2) something interesting in Melbourne; & (3) seeing the taz devils out of Hobart?

We're fit & will be eager to walk & experience but how to get from ship to shore to destination?

Thanks for your help!!!

Have you discovered cruisecritic.com? The site is huge and a bit overwhelming at first, but not too hard to figure out. Find your cruise line, your ship, and your specific voyage. There will be a thread with posts by your fellow passengers for your specific voyage. You can "meet" each other prior to the cruise and plan excursions outside the offers of your cruise line.

If you have problems finding this info on Cruise Critic, post your voyage info here and I'll walk you through it.

My experience with cruisecritic - which I like v much - is that generally the recommendation is that you should take the ship's tours. I know that I can do better, price-wise, than our ship's tours & make them better tailored to our needs but I need to make tracks & that said may need to fall back upon the ship's tours - which would not be my first choice. Thanks for your info - but can you expand on it, for Sydney/Blue Mts?

Hello shedrit

I googled 'Sydney to Blue Mountains tour' and came up with a number of companies that do day trips.

Often these tours pick up from hotels (and I assume ships). You would just need to make sure that they plan to return in plenty of time for you to re-board your ship before departure.

Perhaps if you look at these sites, then ask specific questions about the company you are interested in, there may be someone who can give experienced responses.

Happy travels, Di

There are a couple of tours of the Blue Mountains, http://www.tourstogo.com.au/tour.611 and also http://wildframe.com/ , one that CarolM had a good time with - see post not far below on Blue Mountains overnighting.

The first one looks as though it would be too long as it's 1.5 - 2 hrs Sydney Circular Quay liner terminal to Blue Mountains and the secons would I suspect not get you back in time either.

What you can do though walk to Circular Quay, a few hundred metres and there's a train station there and if you cannot buy a Sydney to Katoomba Blue Mountains Explorer combination ticket there just get the cheapest one to get you up to Central Station and buy one there.

http://www.131500.com.au/faresandpasses/fares_link.asp and http://www.explorerbus.com.au/

Get off the boat as early as possible and have a walk around the Rocks area before heading up to the BM.

For Melbourne there's a couple of options, and one is you can do quite a bit of walking right near the CBD itself, there being world class botanical gardens and surrounding parklands on southern side of the Yarra.
There's a tramcar service that leaves from near Staion Pier, just a few hundred mertres away and probably signage for it - buy a ZONE1 allday ticket and it 'll run up Collins Street and hop off at Swanston Street where you head to your right which will be south.
The stop itself will be where the city square is and a block south you have the Flinders St Railway st., can't miss it for it's fampous "meet me under the clocks" Yound and Jacksons pub, St Pauls Cathedral and some buildings on other corner you'll either love or hate - that's Federation square and Yarra River is about 100 metres further south and parklands to the east on southern side - walk through them and you'll find the botanical gardens, government house etc.
Over on north side of the yarra you'll see the tennis centre and a foot bridge across to the MCG and keep heading north through carparking parkland and you'll across a little bridge over a railway line and on opposite side of the adjacent road is the Hilton Hotel and back towards the city is the south east corner of Fitzroy Gardens which has Captain Cooks cottage in it and a little tudor village, tea rooms etc. and then heading still back towards the city you have the smaller Treasurey Gardens and the old treasurey has a museum in it now and you'll be on Spring Street.

If you wait at the tram stop there, within a few minutes, a long will come a maroon coloured older looking tram and it will be a Free City Circle Tram that takes about 45-50 minutes to do a full circuit of the city, going past a lot of the historical places like old Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton Parklands on north east corner of CBD, old Melbourne Gaol where Ned Kelly was hanged, Queen Vic Markets, and old Dockyards and railways area now been redeveloped.

You could do all that in reverse by staying on the 109 tram from the pier to ride all the way up the "French" end of Collins Street to Spring Street where you'll be opposite the old Treasurey Building and Treasurey Gardens to your right.
Might be better going the other way though as you can get yourself a map at a Visitor Information Centre downstairs at Federation Square.

If you want to break up the gardens hiking with a rural feel and some rowing, then grab a taxi and head to http://www.fairfieldboathouse.com/?_page=2

If you want to get out of town completely, jump on a train from Flinders or Southern Cross Railway staions for Belgrave, buy some rolls, cheese salami or whatever and some drinks and head into Sherbrooke Forest -http://www.parkweb.vic.gov.au/1park_display.cfm?park=49 for a picnic and see if you can find a Lyrebird and no doubt plenty of Rosellas about.

You could walk from Belgrave through to Ferny Creek end or Sherbrooke itself and then Ferny Creek and get a bus or taxi back down to Ferntree Gully Railway Station for train back into Melbourne or reverse it.

At Belgrave, there's also http://www.puffingbilly.com.au/ if you fill inclined.

Tasmanian Devil - get another couple interested and hire a car for the day - http://www.tasmaniandevilpark.com/story.html
www.drivenow.com.au

You'll need to return with more time.

Unbelievably great information! Please continue as we need all the help we can get, particularly as to connections out of our port cities & times to navigate around...we are interested in private guides as well as public transport...

As already said, it's about 1.5 hrs from Central Station in Sydney to Katoomba and much the same for Melbourne to Belgrave.

If you allow an hour for exiting the ship, walking to station and getting ticket and up to main stations you'll be somewhere near the mark and say a half hour on return as no need to buy ticket etc.

So say 4.5 -5 hours travelling all up to take out of your leave/return time available + i hr. for do not miss the boat contingency.

The explorer bus is on a loop for hop on hop off and so just a case of watching the watch re timing on that and much the same for whatever you do in Melbourne and for the hours drive each way for Tassie devils and again allow say an hour for getting a vhicle and another for return and return to ship.

You can google up city maps that'll show you detail of the ship berth locations, Sydney being just near Circular Quay but towards Sydney Harbour Bridge and Melbournes down near the mouth of Yarra River but south a bit - pier about a half mile long sticks out like dogs balls!

So to be more specific with times/getting about, you need to be a little more choosey on what you want to do!

For Melbourne if you would like to do something out of the ordinairy look at www.hiddensecretstours.com which has small intersting tours of secret and unusual things in Melbourne .

Hi shedridt

If you want me to find the fellow travelers on your voyage, tell me your cruise line and ship. I understand you leave Sydney on 8 Jan. If you give me a little more info I can find a thread on Cruise Critic that will have been originated by people who will be on the same cruise. You could post on that thread that you're interested in getting together do do some excursions in various ports, but you don't want to book through the cruise line. There may already be posts by your fellow pessengers who are looking for people to do the same. It's done all the time!

We are sailing on January 28- Diamond Princess from Sydney to Auckland, 12 days- how do we find on cruisecritic the passengers who are also sailing on this cruise and recommendations for excursions in the various ports? I went to the website but couldn't figure out how to find that particular cruise? Thank you.

Hi there, some valuable information - Cruise Critic has a thread - Shore Excursions and they will have one for Australia which will have all sorts of people commenting on many different kinds of private tours you can take. I am a travel agent and i will tell you that that i am planning a trip right now and i am finding the day trips such as to the Blue Mountains expensive compared to say the Caribbean.

Meme, just happened to see your post. Before you start surfing Cruise Critic, figure out a user name and password and join the site. I have no commercial interest in your doing this, but the site works better if you're a member. You'll see the letters UCP on the left hand side after you join. That's the User Control Panel and you can configure your page in lots of different ways. You can even remove those annoying (to me) signatures that folks there love to post.

To find your cruise, here's what you do: Go to www.cruisecritic.com, click on Boards, scroll down to ROLL CALLS--Members Only, click on Princess, click on Diamond Prices and scroll down until you find Sydney to Auckland Jan 28/2010. The thread was started in August 2007!

I followed the directions above and found the link to your fellow passengers:

http://tinyurl.com/or9nco

Bon Voyage

PS: There's tons of info on the CC site, but there's a little learning curve to figure out how tp access it. It's well worth learning.

I think the Blue Mountains and hiking is a bit optimistic - it's a long way to travel for a short hike - considering it's essential to be back by 6pm.

I'd be inclined to look at say the Spit to Manly walk - bus to the Spit, walk to Manly, couple of hours, ferry back and you're already at the Quay, if that's where your ship is.

I did join Cruise Critic yesterday but have not received the confirmation e-mail back yet. I sent a separate message concerning this so hopefully will hear soon. I was able to get to the board and read the messages from specific people on our cruise- that was fun and interesting. Thanks so much Betsy- hopefully I can begin posting replies once I am confirmed. I appreciate your help very much. This is such a great website.

Hmmm...Meme, I can't remember that you need a confirmation email before you post. Maybe they started that since I registered a couple of years ago.

We're not rabid cruisers, but we went through the Panama Canal last year and had a great time. If there's a sign up for a CC gathering aboard, be sure to join in. On our cruise there were three CC events, one was a "cabin crawl" where CC folks were were willing to let others briefly visit their cabins; one of the CC members organized it. We ended up in the Penthouse Suite, where we were served a light lunch complements of the cruise line.

I have been on cruise critic faithfully and found our exact cruise and comments- thanks so much. I will keep reading as I want to find recommendations for private tours and things to do in each port. I appreciate all the great tips and information. Meme