I am planning my first trip to Australia from South Africa in Aug/Sep 2009. I have done some research and have a basic idea of the shape that the trip will take.

I will start off by spending a few days with a friend in Brisbane to shake off jetlag, catch-up and see a bit of the city. Then, using Brisbane as a base, I would like to fly to a beauty spot, hire a car and spend a few days exploring that area. I could then return to base in Brisbane or fly on to another spot and repeat the process. So far the fly to and explore places that I have selected are:
- Uluru and surroundings (4 days?)
- Rainforests around Darwin (3 days?)
- Melbourne & the Great Ocean Road (3 days?)
- Adelaide and Kangaroo Island (4 days?)
- Sydney (no driving) (2 days?)
- Great Barrier Reef (2 days?).

I expect to take between 3 and 6 weeks over the whole trip.
My interest is mainly in nature, geology and scenery. I am not much into fancy eating, wine or cultural activities but I do like great architectural and engineering feats.
I would also like to fit in the place with all the dinosaur footprints and any impressive meteor craters.

Is there any 'must see' that I have omitted? Can I really do Australia justice in 3 to 6 weeks?

(For now I have excluded Western Australia because of time constraints. I could, however, try to fit it in by stopping over in Perth on the way home).

The further south you go the rougher the weather can be in winter. The Great Ocean Road can be rainy and windy and downright cold, with limited visibility - in other words, not worth the drive. But then again, beautiful crisp winter days could await you - who knows?

Three days for Melbourne and the GOR is skimpy - if you do the GOR make it two days or you're just putting the hammer down without seeing much of anything.

Two days for Sydney is equally skimpy. Four at least.

Not sure about Adelaide and K. island at that time of the year - better research some more.

Overall, if you can make it six weeks total, you can go with the flow - according to weather and how you feel (avoid burn-out factor from rushing around...) - and see a lot while actually seeing and experiencing places rather than rushing in and out.

DalaiLlama: Thanks for your valuable reply. I will adjust the times on the places you mentioned. I have added the Blue Mountains to the Sydney bit and stepped it to 4 days. I will now step it to 5.
I have identified a 'northern loop' that I would like to do in the last 2 weeks of August and a southern loop that I would like to do in the first 2 weeks of September.
Is the weather still bad in the south (Melbourne/Philips Island/Adelaide) in September?
How late can one leave the northern section (Uluru/Darwin/Cairns) before it starts getting too hot and humid?
I am trying to judge the right time so that the north is not too hot and the south is not too cold and neither is stormy

We spent 5 days in Adelaide/KI in late August and had fine weather. It was cold (got down to 40's F at night) but not rainy or stormy.

As a general rule for the weather at that time of year, start in the North and finish in the south. The best months for the great Barrier reef is winter, so August is perfect for a visit. One of the most scenic spots in the world for me is the Hilltop lookout on whitsunday island (http://www.ccy.com.au/images/aerial-whitehaven.jpg). If you only have a few days on the reef, my recommendation would be either the whitsundays as mentioned or Cairns.
personally I would try and have more than 2 days exploring the reef.
I'll leave it at that for mthe moment
good luck in your planning , sounds like it will be a great trip.

Looking good and as you say it's hard to fit WA in given the distances. But 2 days in Sydney and 2 in Cairns does neither justice. Do try are extend time spent there if you can.

And maybe it was a typo but there is no rainforest near Darwin just two glorious National Parks - Kakadu and Lichfield - definitely MUST SEES!

Cheers and happy planning.

yelpir: agree with your choice of destinations, but agree with others regarding the amount of time you are allowing yourself in each place. Going for quality rather than quantity, you may even want cut a destination or two depending on the total amount of time you have. If you have just 3 weeks, I recommend making some choices. Six weeks is much better.

A couple of other comments:

Dont overlook the many great places within a couple of hours drive from Brisbane - Noosa, Byron Bay, Moreton Island, the beautiful mountains and rainforests of the Gold Coast Hinterland (incl Lamington Nat'l Park, Mt Warning, Springbrook, Numinbah Valley). Within 5 hrs drive of Brisbane, you also have Fraser Island, and access to Heron Island on the southern end of the Barrier Reef (a boat trip from Gladstone - fantasic!). For geology/nature buffs, Girraween and Bald Rock Nat'l Parks a lie inland, maybe 3 hrs drive from Brisbane - excellent walks, lots of wildlife.

North Queensland (Cairns and surrounds) offers a LOT more than just the Barrier Reef. One could easily spend a week or more up there and not have exhausted the possibilities.

Though you have omitted West. Aust. from consideration, the Kimberley region, including the Bungle Bungle Ranges is, in my mind, in the very top tier of spectacular places to see in Australia.

Picking up on RalphR's comments about north Queensland. Nature and Geology abound here. Have a look at the caves in Chillagoe and then drive the back way to Undarra. There are good little books on the geology of both these areas and the Cairns district. The Atherton Tablelands is a volcanic area with a variety of landforms and lovely croater lakes for swimming. this is the area to see the wildlife in the wild.

For an overview of the geology of Australia, read David Johnson's The Geology of Australia
Cambridge University Press
ISBN 0 521 84121 6 (hardback)
ISBN 0 521 60100 2 (paperback)


A guide or tour will get you more wildlife than you will on your own but local information centres often know where they are.

Sorry but to see all the "essential" bits you are going to have to come back at least twenty times. Warning the country is adicitve, just look at what happened to porr Sally. She was a sane woman once and now she spends all her time dreaming about her next visit to Austraia, unless she is there of course!

Thank you all for your very valuable input

I am still trying to wrap my brain around the size of Australia. When I look on a map, things look close to each other. Then I refer to distance charts and my mind boggles.

Looks like I have 2 basic choices: Less places or more time

Given the distance between South Africa and Australia, I probably won't be able to make the trip very often. I therefore need to see as much as possible on each trip. Like a monkey with his hand in a melon, I don't want to let anything go, so I will have to allocate more time.

That said, I generally tend to spend very little time in cities. I love the wilderness areas. I never envisaged spending amy time in places like Darwin, Cairns, Melbourne or Adelaide. To me they were simply places to fly into and hire cars in. I would then immediately head out of the city into the wilderness. Sydney is the exception because of the harbour, the harbour bridge and the opera house. I figured a day to see those and then off to the Blue Mountains.

If I am wrong about the cities, please tell me. In Scotland recently, I never went near Glasgow and spent only one day in Edinburgh. I didn't go near any other cities.

I am 67 and not fit enough to go snorkling or diving on the reef, so I figured on just a boat trip or a helicopter flight over the reef. However, since there seem to be other wild places near Cairns, I will plan to spend more time in that area.

My main reason for choosing the Darwin area was to see Kakadu National Park and the other national parks in the area, maybe getting as far as Kathryn. Now I will have to consider adding the Kimberley area.

Wow! All those good places around Brisbane. I am currently planning roughly 8 days in and around Brisbane. We are going to do the whole trip in 2 loops: the northern loop (Northern Territory and Queensland) and the southern loop (Victoria and South Australia) with a 4 day break in Brisbane inbetween to catch our breath. The timing is up to a month already and climbing!

Once again, thanks so much for your valuable input.

Yelpir,
As has been imdicated and as you've discovered yourself, it does become a case of how far you can go in a given time and then not going so fast as for it to be of minimal value.

Brisbane is a good place to start in that you have a friend there and also the climate can be friendlier to older bones.

In addition to that the Queensland Museum has some dinosaur exhibits for you and http://www.qm.qld.gov.au/features/dinosaurs/ has link to the site out at Winton where a lot of the fossils and footprints have been discovered.

Certainly there are many national parks all along the Australian east coast and inland that can be visited, some having indigenous rock carvings and/or paintings, Ubirr Rock in Kakadu National Park being one of the more visited sites.

And while you are in Brisbane, do take a trip down to the Gold Coast and Burleigh Heads in particular for one of the tiniest National Parks in Australia but there is a surprising geological feature in there, very hard to miss if going in from the BH end (I will not ruin your surprise just in case you get there), and even more surprisingly to me it does not even have an explanatory sign!
And you also get a fantastic ocean outlook from the walk clifftop summit and every chance of seeing whales.

I think you're on the right track re organising yourself into a couple of loops, and do concentrate on the northern one for best weather and your interests, something like
Brisbane > Alice Springs/Uluru > Darwin via Katherine and Litchfield and/or Kakadu and then a tour into Kakadu from Darwin > Cairns for rainforest Chillagoe and the reef - if you can swim or even float 67 isn't too old to snorkel btw.

You're looking at a good three weeks + just to do all that and not rush it too much but you'll still be moving.

You mentioned hiring a car but with all due respect and it's not so much an age thing but even for driving from Darwin to Kakadu, you're looking at longish driving times and I was up that way in July this year, it still being about 30C which seems to be the areas minimum, and so still quite warm in the day, cooling at night, but on the driving, they have a high % of road accidents up that way (even a few tours involved) but you may still be safer taking tours than driving yourself.

There are numerous operators that do camp out type tours, a five day one ex Darwin for Kkadu, Katherine and Litchfield could be about ideal for you, and then for Alice Springs/Uluru they have similar ones and again a four or five day one would really allow you to get to more off road places you will not be able to do with a car.

A lot of the tours have people in their twenties and thirties and also in their forties or fifties and so do not be put off going because you're 67, and sleeping out under the outback stars is something else!

I think you ought to just keep dreaming of the Kimberley for another trip as it can take a lot of time, though I also did fly over that way, and you could do a flight to Kunnunurra, do a couple of trips there including a flight over the Bungles and a lower Ord trip for about $400 and then fly back to Darwin, taking about four days, but to see a lot more of it you really need 2-3 weeks just for there.

And on food, the camping type trips have just camping type grub and travelling around Oz generally, there are plenty of places to get just good wholesome tucker and your country pub with a counter lunch as we call it is no exception.

Have fun.

Yelpir,
I recently returned form a trip to australia in october 2008. I can highly recommend the great barrier reef area. We travelled to port douglas, a small beach town an hour north of cairns. From there we were able to do a snorkel tour onto the reef - definitely a highlight of the whole trip to australia. Also we went on a tour of the Daintree national park, which is an amazing rainforest. we went with "Tony's tropical tours" which we highly recommend for the quality and personality of the tour guides.
Its tropical there so the weather is always warm, so it might be a good area for your planned travel time.

Also in brisbane area we went to noosa and fraser island- which is a giant sand island covered with rainforest. We did go on a tour but you don't have to, you can just rent a 4wd and do it yourself easily. I just would not go on a rainy day- not worth it.

enjoy your trip!

Too right, Saltuarius, I DO spend all my time dreaming of Australia. It isn't a disease, though, but a way of life LOL. Yelpir, you have given us such a wide range of times! We did 3 1/2 weeks in July 2004: Blue Mtns (Jenolan Caves), Uluru, Darwin (Kakadu), Cairns/Port Douglas, and Sydney. We are snorkelers, and agree that it is worth it to try it out. Reef Magic goes out of Cairns and Quicksilver goes out of PD to a pontoon where you can go in a semi-sub as well as have supervised snorkeling with floaties if you wish. In 2007 we traveled again to Australia for 5 weeks and went south of Sydney (Narooma) for the whales and penguins, Airlie Beach for the snorkeling and scenery, and then the rest of the time driving around Cairns. Chillagoe--great esp. with a tour by Gary at Chillagoe Cabins. Tell him you like fossils and he will show you lots (small ones). There's a train tour that goes to both Chillagoe and Undarra (lava tubes) if you dont' want to drive. Laura and Cooktown have great Aborigine led tours. Atherton Tableland has animals and as Saltuarius said--great scenery. Daintree-facinating. When we went in winter, it was coolish in Sydney/Blue Mtns but later on in our trip it snowed in the BlMts, hot in Darwin, pleasant in Cairns but windy with somewhat rough water (get a patch from your dr. before you go if you get seasick--it's worth it). I read that the southern part of Australia was quite cold then so we didn't go. We kept meeting people from Adelaide and Melbourne taking a vacation from the cold in Far North Queensland! My daughter went to the Brisbane area and loved Noosa and Steve Irwin's zoo. I researched near there and really, really wanted to go to Carnarvon Gorge, but logistically it was to hard to get to. If your friend will drive you--check it out. You could stay your whole 6 weeks just in Queensland and see enough to warm your dreams your whole life. Ralph and Bushranger had some great ideas to get your research started. Try the search here and branch out. Have fun!
"poor" Sally in Seattle

Yelpir,
Had also thought about your loop and you will want to look closely at getting best flights to minimise time on that, for instance flights Brisbane to Alice Springs can be a longer winged affair going via Sydney.

So have a look at http://travel.webjet.com.au/webjetts...ryPoint=Flight and that does a scan of all possible flights on any given route/day other than for www.tigerairways.com.au that has flights radiating from Melbourne.

My gut feel is that you might be best for the northern loop to actually go B > D > AS(train a possibility to take in Katherine Gorge) > Cairns > Brisbane and then a separate trip to Winton Dinosaurs if deciding on that.
Kakadu is well into the dry out period by August and so that'll fit with getting in there as early as possible, the drier and dustier it is, the worse for the experience.

Just a thought on your flights . I was talking to a traveller in sydney last week and he mentioned he was flying from Alice springs to cairns direct. May or may not suite your Itinery

Enjoy

suit not suite

Yes, there are regular AS > Cairns flights (and that was what I was supposed to have had also) but still check on directness when booking.

there are dinosaur footprints in Broome WA which is a great location to tour from. Also lots of grey nomads in July around all Northern areas of Australia. "escaping the cold down south" -well maybe it used to be cold an dwet down south but it's all relative and September in melbourne is often in the 20's and as for wet we wish!!!!

If you are really keen on getting off the beaten track Stawell Aviation (near Melbourne) run air safaris. I am looking at one to WA - 2 weeks, but they also do ones right up through the centre of Australia

Once again, thanks for all the help

My current thinking is that I will split the trip in two, mainly for climate reasons. I am now thinking of doing the northern loop in July/Aug and the southern loop in Oct/Nov. This way I can also spend more time in each location.

Northern loop Jul/Aug:
Red Centre - 6 days
Top End - 6 days
Northern Queensland - 6 days
Brisbane - 6 days

Now I need to decide whether to include 6 days in the Kimberley or 6 days in Sydney. Should Sydney rather be part of the southern loop?

My friend and I are now leaning towards fly in and then guided tours at each location. I am, however, a little worried about cost. I picked up up a couple of brochures from APT and AATKings and doing a lot of guided tours could become very expensive. For 30 days we could be looking at a cost of about $15000 dollars each, which is going to be a bit rich for my blood. We may have to rethink that aspect.

Does anybody have any experience of getting from centre to centre by train instead of flying? Does Australia have a good rail network with lots of overnight sleeper trains?

Yelpir,

There are trains and it would be fun to take one. But you couldn't call it a "good network". The distances are so large and the population so small that services don't run every day. And to my way of thinking it's really expensive, which is a shame but there you go.

I have only done Alice to Adelaide on the Ghan - but in a seat, mind you. I have looked many times at other routes - most recently Sydney to Broken Hill. It's usually cheaper to fly.

You do know, I guess about the budget airlines operating here. Virgin Blue and Jetstar.

Re tours. This is horses for courses. You don't need an all-in tour when based in Brisbane, Sydney, FNQ or the Centre. Loads and Loads of day trips/2 day trips/3 day trips etc etc. And you can shuttle by road sometimes (keep distance in mind though).

The Kimberley is different and almost any option there will be expensive. So why not splurge on that and look at the other alternatives for the other locations. APT and AATkings are far from the only possibilities (and may not even be the options of choice for some people).

Have you done a google for budget or cheap or backpacker tours? I know you are 67 but if you pick carefully you can have a whale of a time on the less coachy stuff.

www.wayoutback.com
www.waywardbus.com.au

And in the Centre there's a hop on hop off bus that will take you to all sorts of intertesting places in the Alice; a raft of choices while staying in Yulara; Greyhound or other to get you from Alice-Uluru or VV, and my all time favourites:

www.outbackexperience.com.au

to take you to Palm Valley; the East Macs; and, best of all, their day trip to Chambers Pillar. Have done the latter twice. It changed a bit between 1998 and 2004, and may have changed again. But from my most recent experience I recommend wholeheartedly.

$15,000 for guided tours is crazy, and, to be honest, not at all necessary.

Cheers.