Two couples will be traveling to Australia the last week of January and will be leaving near the end of February. We will be arriving in Sydney. Some suggestions include two days in Sydney, a flight to Adelaide (four days), car rental, travel to Melborne with a night stayover in between Adelaide and Melborne, turn car into Melborne, Ferry to Tasmania, rental car and stay for four days, flight to carins, a 5 night stay in the Carins area. Rental car, and then work our way back to Sydney for our departure in late February. Does anyone have any comments or suggestions. Particularly, is there some condos or rental places available in the Carins area that someone could suggest. Any suggestions or hints to limit unnecessary costs will be appreaciated.

Have a look at the comments on "trip down under" on this thread. Almost doing an identical trip.

BTW - Cairns.
For accommodation, try www.wotif.com.au. It will give you an idea of what's available and you can contact the properties direct & do a deal for end of January (rates should be less as school holidays have ended).

If you do a search on this Forum, you will see lots of recommendations for the Cairns area.

Thank you Bokhara. We are on the same trip. I was just providing more detail. Thank you for your response. We are just looking for as much help as possible.

Aahh ! I had visions of two lots of people trailing each other LOL

Do have a look at the posts on here for Cairns, though. It's a popular destination and there are some great recommendations & reports.

Bokhara - Great sense of humor. I love it. We have two sets of dogs trailing each other indeed. Problem is, establishing the lead dog. Thanks for the tips. Still LOL.

Are you selling tickets to the muzzling & harnessing to the sled? I'll be "mush master" if you like

Willowhaven, a note from the resident pedant (well, one of them anyway):

* the spelling is Cairns, not Carins. The '-air-' bit in the middle is pronounced like the 'eah' in 'yeah', if that makes sense - the 'r' is not sounded.

* And it's MelboUrne with a 'u', like the city in Florida but pronounced MELB'n, not mel-BORN.

You have made me a much wiser man. Thanks, and believe it or not, it is tips like this that will make my trip much more enjoyable. And my typing is terrible, but you make excellent points. I will not forget. Others would just let me continue to do and say stupid things.

Stupid, no way. Do I know how to pronounce Dubuque?