[Closed] Australia

Having lived there...
Long trains mostly go through places that have nothing slowly 😉
3 weeks less flights is not a massive amount of time to hop around a lot, budget a day for any state hop or big transition.
If you want to do more than one region then do North South or East West rather than both.
It's the end of summer down south, pleasant temps and less extreme stuff. Cities if your not there to see or do are great things to experience so more hanging out eating stuff.

Oh and tassie, none of the stuff listed but awesome hidden gem.

Personally, I'd go to NZ. Nicer country, nicer people and I dare you not to fall in love with it.

Maybe self drive from Brisbane to Cairns? Stop offs along the way, few days in Bris, head up the Sunshine Coast (avoid Surfers!), Noosa, Airlee Beach, Whitsundays (Hamilton Island is nice),visit the Barrier Reef. Then Townsville and Cairns.
Flight wise I did Hong Kong out and returned via Singapore.
I didn’t really rate Perth, was kind of just like any other city but in the middle of no where.
I had a six weeks when I did it but then I drove from Melbourne.

Slightly longer reply on logistics

If you want to do WA then it's easier out of Abu Dhabi or Dubai as it's a chunk closer and knocks some flight time off the 2nd leg, Singapore and certainly HK you have sort of overshot before heading back.

Travel time in WA to anywhere out of Perth is a big one and Perth is a city with an 80km beach on the edge of dry dust 😉 not my cup of tea but loads like it. Weather is generally more stable there though.

Bush Tucker Man - Sounds like Northern QLD or NT
Mad Max - the red centre - miles from anywhere!!
Kangeroos - anywhere but tassie
Crocs - Up North
Camels - Not local - see the middle desert bit past middle of ****ing nowhere

To get all of those into one trip will probably be a bit of a manic bounce around so depends how much you like your holidays to be relaxing or point to point snap and go.
Sport - still got some cricket, no AFl or Rugby league, motorsport possibly

Wildlife Plan B 😉

I’d go to NZ. Nicer country, nicer people and I dare you not to fall in love with it.

Always one 😉 I'd say different country, with different people. Same ideas and some friendliness available in both just need to be in the right places.

Start in Perth, then go North.

Stop at one of a billon beaches and take up surfing.

Retire.

Live happily.

You are welcome. 🤣🤳🏄‍♂️

Best bit about Sydney was the ghost walk & few beers around The Rocks area after.
Uluru was a tourist trap, The Olgas was better. TBH, it’s one of those you tick off, we flew in, Sunset - Sunrise, flew out again.
Cairns was good, chilled out. Look up Reef Teach, a cracking evening with an Irish marine biologist. Plenty of options for heading out to the reef. Don’t bother with Scuba, borrow a wet suit & spend the day snorkelling. The Atherton Table Lands were nice also.
The highlight for me (apart from meeting family), was Brisbane. Loved it there, would of happily stayed. The Gold Coast was awful, The Sunshine Coast much better. Your spoilt for choice.
If I went again I’d go Dubai - Singapore/HK - Sydney. Longer overall but the flight from Dubai to Sydney (in economy...) was just unbearable. Did two stops coming back & it was much better.
The place is enormous.

Wildlife has got to be Kangaroo Island, just off Adelaide. Also in that area are some of the best vinyards and some great aussie scenery around the Flinders Ranges. Week 1.
Then take a train from Adelaide through the industrial heartlands and red centre to Alice. Week 2 Check out Uluru and then fly to Sydney or Cairns for Week 3 and some beach action

@belfastflyer

Ha ha yeah I am an Aussie and would probably agree with you.

Camels and Crocs maybe head up to Broome and do some kind of NT / WA loop. Logistically probably the hardest part of Oz to see but would tick a lot of your boxes. Its big, red and full of weird stuff. And in March only moderately psychotically hot. Add in Ningaloo for the coral reef experience, maybe splash some cash and stay at El Questro in the Kimberley and then fly down to Perth for a few days good wine, great beer, and the legendary Quokka selfie.

Tassie is bloody awesome mind (My West Australian wife is less convinced) but its not 'classic' Australia In guess. Far too green and pleasant!

Far too green and pleasant!

Yeah know what you mean, add in the food, wine, best beer, gin whiskey and cider in Oz and it's a tough place to be 😉

Did a year in oz which consisted of some great road trips however the most memorable was Perth to Broome (WA). Places of interest on the way were the pinnacles, Wooleen Station (cattle station with great history and wildlife), Shark Bay, Exmouth (snorkelling at turquoise bay).
Whilst in Darwin we visited Litchfield national park, crocs, spider, birds of prey and swimming in safe waterholes. If you have long enough do the Kakadu trip instead though

Aussie is awesome, but chuffing huge so you're itinerary might be a bit ambitious. Me and the wife first went on our honeymoon, we had 3 weeks, did 3 days in Perth, overnight stop at Uluru, 3 days in Sydney and 10 days up at Port Douglas. the rest of the days were three in a HK stop over and travel and lost days due to time zones. We loved Sydney so much we went back the following year for 2 weeks and still felt we only scratched the surface of Sydney and its surrounding area. I still think Sydney is the best place on the planet...I just love the place for some reason.

I've done a quick visit to Brisbane with work and that seemed like a very nice place from what I saw and my brother has recently spend a week or so at Surfers Paradise and some time up at Cairns and had a great time.

I would love to go back and do Melbourne, the coast road from Melbourne, explore the Northern Territory a bit more and do a bit of the East Coast from Perth in a Campervan too. Each of those you can spend a good week or so each.

I stayed in Perth for 6 months then did a guided four wheel drive camping trip up North to Broome then to Darwin and back to Perth via the central rock.

Best thing I’ve ever done.

Done Sydney and Melbourne but WA felt like the Oz I’d imagined.

Following

Maybe self drive from Brisbane to Cairns? Stop offs along the way, few days in Bris, head up the Sunshine Coast (avoid Surfers!), Noosa, Airlee Beach, Whitsundays (Hamilton Island is nice),visit the Barrier Reef. Then Townsville and Cairns.

In three weeks? Are you serious??? You’d spend a week of it driving! We were in surfers last April (for the Commonwealth Games and family reasons) and longer trips (ie to Sydney and Whitsundays) were by plane. Shorter trips in hire cars but I wouldn’t want to drive that sort of distance in that time :-O

If I had 3 weeks I would base myself out of Melbourne and have a spell in Tasmania.

March in Melbourne coincides with the F1. Don't know if you think that a good or bad thing. Melbourne was my favourite city in Oz by miles. You could head to Philip Island and take a trip along the Great Ocean Road.

Tasmania is great. The hike up Cradle Mountain is fun. The beer is nice (Cascade rather than Boags).

Beautiful country, wish I had the time to see more of it in Jan/Feb last year.

Some highlights: Snorkelling at the Great Barrier Reef, absolutely mindblowing way to spend the day. I took the trip out from Cairns, although there's not a great deal else in the city itself so I shuffled up the coast a bit to Port Douglas/Cape Tribulation for a few nights. PD is a lot more touristy, nice spot.

Sydney - only had a couple of days there but it's a magnificent city, as cities go. Worth a wander about for a day or two if that's your thing.

Blue Mountains were pretty spectacular; I hired a hardtail and went exploring for the day.

I wish I had longer there, but I hopped across to New Zealand for the last 10 nights of my trip (which, too, was fantastic).

The beer is nice (Cascade rather than Boags).

Seriously!! For a place that has opened about 20 craft breweries in the last few years neither is worth bothering with at all!

Thank you all. I'm going to sit down this weekend to see if I can come up with an affordable plan.

There should be rugby union and league games in March, plus the F1 Grand Prix and local motorsport, if you're into that (but that means Melbourne will be booked out for the race). Probably plenty of other sport too, but that's some obvious stuff that comes to mind.

Seriously!! For a place that has opened about 20 craft breweries in the last few years neither is worth bothering with at all!

Educate me Mike. I was there in 2002, both were superior to VB, but I remember Cascade and Boags being much better. I did not think much of Boags though. What Tasmanian beer should I be looking for?

I'm there at the moment halfway through a 3 week trip. Gatwick-dubai-Perth is not too bad actually we are based in Fremantle near Perth with family but are currently on a week trip 13 hours drive north in Exmouth. World heratige site, national park Ningaloo reef has blown me away. Stunning beaches, warm aquamarine water and the most amazing snorkeling ever. I didn't know which way to turn my head once I got under just thousands of multicoloured, all shapes and sizes of fish, turtles, octopus, stunning coral formations all just a few feet from the beach. You'll need a car for this though as lots of driving about is involved. We also seen wild kangaroos and Emu's which visited our holiday house.3 years ago on a similar visit we went South instead and stayed in Margaret River which was a lovely quirky place and again awesome beaches, more surf down there and heaps of vineyards and lovely restaurants if you're a foodie. I've not seen the other side of Australia so can't comment on that but yes in WA there are long distances between things.

Hi. I live in Perth and have an obvious bias, but have also travelled around a bit.

Personally I think you're right to skip Sydney. I love it as a city and like visiting briefly, but I can't help thinking of it as a hot version of London, albeit in a spectacularly beautiful setting, but that's just not my thing. Similarly, you're probably not going to be up for Melbourne as that's a 'cooler' version of Sydney but without the tourist catchet. Both cities could be an OK base for travelling out of and seeing hills/country, but I reckon there's better options.

Adelaide and SA...? Not much going on, I'd skip it. Sorry!

Darwin / Alice / NT...? Certainly hits the bush part of your tick list and I reckon there's some spectacular scenery there, but it's just 'too' outback for me.

QLD...? Now that's possible. Fly into Brisbane and drive north up to FNQ? Rainforest rather than outback, but it is beautiful. Highlights would be the Great Barrier Reef and Daintree Rain Forest, but you'd need to hire a 4WD to make it worthwhile.

TAS...? Can't comment, never been, but it's not the quintessential Aus that it sounds like you are looking for.

Which leaves WA 🙂 If it were me, I'd fly into Perth and do some kind of loop out across the goldfields (outback, lots of it), then down to Esperance (beautiful beaches with just you and the kangaroos if you time it right), across to Albany and Denmark (amazing Southern Ocean coastline) through to Augusta / Margaret River (wine, caves, walking, coastline), head north of Perth all the way to Sharks Bay for dolphins and amazing scenery, then skip up further north to Exmouth for swimming with whale sharks (check the time of year). Finally head back into Perth for a few days chilling out on the coast and river, maybe catch some footie in Optus Stadium Probably the right balance of things to see, different experiences and driving. Possible downside is that all of those sights are low key, slow burners but they are something that not many people will see. Now, I'd never sell Perth as a tourist destination, but it is totally liveable if you like sunshine / exercise. food / beer / coffee without full-on city life. Fly direct from London, too.

Google image any of those WA names and see what you reckon!

As for the New Zealand comments, it's an amazing country too but it's different to Australia and won't scratch that itch if that's what you want.

Cheers

Neil

What Tasmanian beer should I be looking for?

Well. Start with the Winston, hobart brewing Co and kicksnare and the a bit of captain blighs and little rivers exporting to the north island now

NOt sure if you’re a diver or not but a ‘warning’ if you’re thinking of diving the barrier reef. I did this on our first trip when we were up at Port Douglas. For convenience we booked up with one of the big companies and they are only allowed to go to a small number of specific areas of the reef to try to protect the reef so those areas are very busy and not the best to see the reef and it’s wildlife. You can see other areas of the reef via smalller, and more expensive, specialist companies that have permits to go to other parts of the reef. If you’re not a diver and just want to see the reef, you’re best bet from what I can gather from others, is a helicopter flight over the reef.

Lord howe island is a 2hr direct flight from Sydney. Been there 3 times: expensive, but its the best place on the planet...... you're welcome.

best beers to start with are balters, bentspoke, pirate life iipa, mornington peninsula, and Hawkers.

Best beers to start with is the saving up to buy them in the first place :-O

BTW, the best beer I had when I was in Oz in early 2018 was a pale ale called Little Creatures - available here and it seems others agree with my entirely amateur opinion of it

Ohhh, available in Waitrose....

Best beer.... oh god now that's a can of worms! Although as an ex Freo local anything by Little Creatures always get a vote from me. Personally I reckon the Bright is the best.
Outside of Freo votes for Colonial Kolsch, Feral Hop Hog, Gage Roads Little Dove, Two Birds Pale and Stone & Wood Pacific Ale.

Yeah you are still on North Island beer there 😉 If you can't get the good stuff 🙂 Though $1.80 to the pound will make it a bit less fun

also to fly the SA flag a little, awesome wine, great food, wildlife, festivals, tour down under, biking will be good in March.

It's crazy that the Little Creatures beer (brewed in Oz and imported to the UK) is cheaper in Waitrose than it is in supermarket bottle shops in Oz

Crazy or just Tax, it's a different price a 6 Pack in each state

Actually when I left you could get it for $20/6 Pack in some palaces which is £11.10 so £1.85 a bottle, prices got better out east when they set up near Geelong

I was buying beer and around Surfers' and Airle Beach in the Whitsundays but to be fair I don't think I bought that particular one in bottles as I was just trying to find the cheapest ones I could (I was drinking it draught in Twin Waters Resort, Noosa so paid hotel tax on top)

I used to ride on a Sunday morning.
While I was waiting for everyone to arrive I would call my mum.
The sun would be warming my back , the kookaburras calling and on the other side of the world people were stuck in the dark watching ****ing casualty on telly.
I never felt so blessed as those moments.
A fantastic country full of amazing people.

Most of your list - crocs, camels, red centre and outback - are central and north Aus. March is not a great time of year for those, its the wet season in Darwin, stinking hot in the red centre, and stinger season in north Queensland and across the top end (there are stingers all the way to Ningaloo Reef).

Aus has 3 general types of places (ignoring the cities): the red centre and sandstone barren outback; the tropical north rainforests and reefs; and the middle and south coastal strip, which have wildlife and beaches. With 3 weeks, you need to choose just 1 or accept a lot of travel time. E.g. getting to uluru will take 1 to 1.5 days in each direction. If you want to see it, commit to a week around there and Kings Canyon-watarra and accept the high accommodation costs and early mornings to avoid the heat. You can see farmed / ranched camels near uluru.

I would recommend flying in to Adelaide, spend 2 weeks self driving (camping or campervan) Ikara-Flinders Range and Alligator Gorge for sandstone, red kangaroos (Wilpena Pound), emus and goannas (Mambray Creek), then swim with dolphins, snorkel, see koalas, eastern grey kangaroos and possibly echidna on Kangaroo Island and Deep Creek. You could go one way to Melbourne via The Grampians for more wildlife and hiking, or the Great Ocean Road for views. Then have a few days in Mel or Sydney to chill before flying home.

As suggested above, West Aus has a similar list of places for beaches, bouncy wildlife and enjoying the coastal life, but is missing the red sandstone gorges afaik.

Or spend the 3 weeks in Queensland to laze on beaches, splash out on an overnight reef trip, see the rainforests, and see the crocs in a reputable conservation park like Australia Zoo.

ALL of the wildlife will either try to kill you death, eat you, sting you or bite you. Except maybe Koala bears.

Except maybe Koala bears.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drop_bear

WA all day, from the forests of the south west to the deserts, beaches all the way, up to snorkelling at Ningaloo you should cover all your areas of interest. I'm not sure I'd travel that far just to see a croc or a camel, the overall experience offers so much more than ticking off those two. Catch a footy game in Perth. I've driven most of the west, south and east coasts of Australia and WA was by far the stand out area for me, though Victoria is pretty special, eg the Australian Alps.

Don't think of Perth as a "city" as such. Perth Metro is big. I think something like 6500 square kilometres. Then there's "rural" Perth..... Down South (Margaret River, Bussleton, Denmark, Albany) or up north Lancelin, Jurien Bay..... Coral Bay, Shell Beach, Pink Lake..... Then there's RIGHT up north.... Broome... Cable Beach..... Further? Territories!

I might have some bias to my approval......

Don’t think of Perth as a “city” as such. Perth Metro is big.

Yep a ride along the beach from the North (or what was the north) to Freo is a good day out, though rural Perth!! Albany is nearly 5hrs away!!

As those of us out east would say, Perth it's like Australia but 4hrs closer to Europe