Australia’s always been a dream and the land down under clearly lived up to its hype! When it comes to Australia though you are bound to spend a large proportion of your savings and yearly holiday. So planning ahead will save you lots of money and time.  This post is about making sure to make the most out of your first trip to Australia. At the end we also summed up some of the things we would have done differently and the minor mistakes we’ve made so you don’t have to 😉

For advice and help pre planning your East Coast Australia trip – go to www.ratpacktravel.com – as the better rated, more affordable trips don’t leave every day it’s good to get an idea of how your dates would work. Send your dates over to the RatPack Travel team via this link and they can get back to you with a calendar plan – they can also discount any trip by 10% using the promo code RatPack10.

How to travel?

You don’t realize how big this country actually is until you get there and become aware that point A and B is not a 3 hours drive but rather 7 hours. There are so many places to see and it’s also about the journey not just the destination.

For your trip of a lifetime the question is how to travel by car; campervan / motorhome; or by flying. If you’re tight on time and not so much on money, flying might be a good option. However, you might end up missing the lesser known and remote parts of the country which the Australians refer as “the bush”. As you can see it’s not a straightforward answer. In the next blog post we’ll list all the advantages and disadvantages of both ways of traveling, so you can better decide which one’s for you.

When to go?

Take into account the time of the year you will be travelling. In summer (December – February), it gets very hot and you most likely won’t see a lot of rain regardless where you are. However, this is also the time where it’s most crowded which means tours are sold out way in advance and prices are higher. Summer is also the time where you’ll surely see those big black spiders or even the smaller deadly ones. For these reasons I think summer is not the optimal season for your first trip, since other seasons have pretty good weather too. We travelled Australia at the end of winter in August and had nice and warm weather the whole time, especially in our first two weeks in Queensland. Melbourne was the only place in our 5 weeks trip where it was cold and rainy, though Melbourne is regarded as Australia’s most changeable city so you never know 🙂

How to even begin planning?

The next step is to ask yourself what you are really most interested about and start prioritizing. If you visit Australia for a few weeks, you won’t see it all. If you visited one new beach in Australia every day, it would take more than 27 years to see them all! 🙂 Bottom line is, that you should pick destinations that make the very top of your list.

In our case we decided to focus on the East coast and its natural wonders, the cosmopolitan cities of Sydney and Melbourne and the beautiful Kangaroo Island in the south. Even before our trip we’ve been awed by sights from Tasmania, Uluru, Esperance and Western Australian but made a conscious to decision to leave those places for next time.

Having been on the road in the past 7 months we knew how to approach our Australia trip planning for our 5 week trip. We looked for inspiration on social media and channels such as Instagram and Pinterest, we asked friends who’ve been to Australia and read many itineraries from fellow bloggers and looked for some inspiring less known places.

Making it happen

We started to save the places we wanted to visit in Google Maps but were not sure if this is doable. Moreover, we weren’t sure whether how long in advance some trips would need to be booked for the Fraser Island, Whitsundays etc. It was pretty clear that we needed a second opinion.

By surfing the web we came across a local agency called RatPack. The great thing about those guys is that there are really there to give you local insights whether you end up using their services or not. What they did for us is prepare an itinerary on what they think would work best for us based on our time, budget and preferences. It was more or less what we had in mind. This is the draft itinerary they prepared back in summer. 

On top of that we got many different tips for the tours. For instance for Fraser Island the better rated tours tend to get booked up to 5 weeks in advance in peak season. Having travelled half of the world it would be a shame to miss out and take the low rated tours. Based on a questionnaire and conversation, RatPack understood our preferences and was able to provide the best package according to our needs. We ended taking the Fraser Island tour with them and it was a super fun trip!

Our final plan

We wanted to see as much as possible without getting the feeling to be rushed and taking it slow if needed. If  you’re aiming for something similar, do read on.

Day 1 – 4: Tropical North, Queensland

What an introduction to Australia that was. Beautiful remote beaches, waterfalls, as well as other scenic places such as the Daintree Rainforest, Cape Tribulation and Mission Beach. Read all about our wonderful experiences in Tropical North Queensland Highlights blog.

Day 5: Drive from Mission Beach to Airlie Beach

About a 6 hours drive along the coast with short stops including in Townsville and Bowen. If you’re still into seeing more waterfalls, Wallaman waterfall is supposedly really nice but you will lose at least 4-5 hours to get there and back to Airlie. We also decided to skip it since it’s not easily accessible by road.

Day 6 – 7: Whitsunday Islands and Great Barrier Reef

Just an epic experience by flying over the Whitsundays and the Great Barrier Reef. Along with Kangaroo Island the highlight of our trip across Australia.

Day 8 – 9: Cape Hillsborough – Agnes Water – Hervey Bay

Admiring kangaroos and wallabies playing on the beach at Cape Hillsborough just before dawn is the ultimate Australian experience. We had to pinch ourselves a few times! 🙂 Even without kangaroos jumping around the sunrise on Cape Hillsborough is pretty spectacular.

You can take a tour but it’s actually with the local guide. It’s not necessary, since ranger Sam is super friendly and answers all your questions even if you’re not part of the tour.

Agnes Water is a nice holiday town with beautiful sandbanks. Definitely a worthy stop on the way further south.

Day 10 – 11: Fraser Island

You’ve probably heard of Fraser Island, but it is in fact the world’s largest sandy island! Fraser Island is very diverse and you’ll find rainforest, eucalyptus forests, mangroves, swamps, creeks and large dunes all within a few minutes’ drive. You can read all about this beautiful 2 day trip on the Fraser Island – How to Travel and What to See.

Day 12: Noosa – Gold Coast

Packed day full of nice beaches and stops along the way. Our favorite was the Fairy Pools within the Noosa National park. The Fairy Pools are beautiful natural tidal pools which is kind of your natural infinity pool. It reminded us a lot of the natural infinity pool Angel’s Billabong at Nusa Penida close to Bali.

It’s quite a challenge finding it, so better sticking to Google Maps and you’ll be fine. It’s a 5 km walk there and back and it will take at least 45 minutes each way. It’s quite slippery on the rocks so make sure to have solid footwear.

On the way to Gold Coast we drove through Brisbane to get a feeling of it. It made a good first impression on us, but we had to leave it for next time. Even if you take 5 weeks like we did, you cannot see everything so except Sydney and Melbourne we decided to skip longer visits to the biggest cities despite passing by them (Adelaide, Townsville, Canberra etc.). We arrived to Gold Coast at night.

Day 13 – 14: Gold Coast & Surfers Paradise

The Gold Coast was kind of our getaway from our busy travels and Surfers Paradise is an ideal place for relaxing, shopping or partying. In our case it’s also a great stop to recharge your batteries. After being on the road and staying in a motorhome for so many days, it was so nice staying at a great hotel and have a more premium experience. We stayed at Surfers Paradise Marriott Resort & Spa. Enjoyed all of its facilities including room service, the gym and the bath with a view.

Otherwise Surfers Paradise is quite the opposite of what the name suggests. There were not many surfers on the beach and surfing was even not allowed in some areas! Surfers Paradise is now much more renowned as one of the most visited places in Australia and a large shopping area and a party town, so go for it if you like either one of those.

Day 15 – 17: Byron Bay

After 2 weeks of exploring Queensland, Byron Bay was the first stop in New South Wales. Byron Bay is a lovely surfing town 2 hours south of Brisbane, 1 hour from Gold Coast and an 1.5 hour flight from Sydney. It is the perfect weekend getaway and the place to chill. Luckily for us Byron Bay is home to many healthy eating cafes serving local produce. After very much enjoying our relaxing time at Surfers Paradise, we found our relaxing haven. This is not your typical touristic city where one has clear attractions for visitors. In Byron Bay it’s all about getting the feeling and the vibe of the town. Visitors come back to Byron Bay especially because of these positive vibrations. If you’re looking for a place to stay, check out Atlantic Byron Bay. You’re welcome. 😉 We were completely blown away by this place.

Day 17 – 18: Killen Falls & Hunter Valley

Killen Falls is a nice stop on the way further south. Hunter Valley is one of the country’s most renown wine regions. Since we were traveling in winter the vineyards were quite blend, so the landscape is not as spectacular as in the other seasons. However, you we still decided to spend a night there and have some wine. We also made new friends there 🙂

Day 19 – 24: Sydney

Turned out to become one of my favorite cities in the world; definitely among the top-5! It’s funny how some cities seem homy and not as big as they really are; we felt at home from the very start. There are many things to do and see in the city and the surrounding areas. We particularly liked Bronte beach where you can take beautiful walks by the beach. I can say that Sydney makes it to most must sees in your trip Australia and rightly so. I will publish more about our highlights in Sydney soon.

Day 25 – 26: Sydney – Cape Jervis

After Sydney we set for Kangaroo island (Cape Jervis is the port on mainland). To Cape Jervis it’s about 1.600 kilometers (1,000 miles) to get there and 16 hours of driving from Sydney according to Google Maps. In fact it took us 2 days and there are not many spots on the way there. If you didn’t quite understand what the Aussies call Outback we got it now 🙂

Day 27 – Day 31: Kangaroo Island

A true jewel not many tourists know about. You have to take an expensive ferry to get there but very worth it. Kangaroo is just about kangaroos, but all different animals Australia has to offer. The landscape is fantastic with beautiful sandy beaches as well as hard cliffs. People are one of the nicest and most accommodating we’ve ever experienced and there are many cool things to do: sandboarding, wine-tasting and our favorite gin tasting 🙂 Yes, Kangaroo Island is also officially home to Australia’s best gins the Kangaroo Islands Spirits. This trip to Kangaroo Island totally awed us so we’ll be posting a detailed itinerary in the upcoming weeks to show what makes Kangaroo Island so special.

Day 32: Cape Jervis – Great Ocean Road

It takes about 800 km, 9 hours to reach the Great Ocean Road, so this day was a driving day all the way.

Day 33: Great Ocean Road 

One of Australia’s most renown sights, the Great Ocean Road posts dramatic landscapes. There is so much more to see than the 12 Apostles along the way so take at least one full day to explore the area. Make sure to stop at Sparkes Gully, Loch and Gorge, the Razorback, Gibson Steps and many more random stops with scenic views on the way.

Day 34 – 36: Melbourne

Melbourne was our final stop in our trip around Australia. Unfortunately, the weather was pretty bad and as opposed when it was raining in Singapore we did not find so many different things to do in Melbourne. The city constantly ranked among the top-5 cities in the world to live in, though from visitor’s perspective we liked Sydney much more.

The city is still nice and is most lively by the Yarra river and Melbourne Park. If you’re a sports fan you can visit Melbourne Park and even play on the Rod Laver arena which hosts the Australian Open, one of the 4 tennis Grand Slams.

A nice trip further south are the colourful boxes you might have seen online that are called the Brighton Bathing Boxes.

What would we have done differently?

Congrats on making it until the end 🙂

Well for starters, the trip was awesome, we saw so many things, there’s no doubt money and time were well spent! This is what we would have changed though:

• Fly between some destinations. Sometimes it’s just better to take the easier route. For us it’s the trip from Sydney to Kangaroo Island (Cape Jervis) and then back to Melbourne (where we had our flight). We lost at least 3 days and well, flying would have been better in this case.
• Change expectations of Melbourne. I’ve heard it so many times; Melbourne is better than Sydney since it has more charm, better food, people are more down to Earth… From our experiences, Sydney has so much more to offer than Melbourne. Sydney blew us away and maybe our expectations were just too high.
• Bring enough warm clothes / have a warm jacket. South Australia in winter is cold and often windy so not having something warm at that time is a no no.
• Do not worry about mobile data. We’ve been warned that mobile data doesn’t work in most areas, that you should really have everything offline if possible and the best way is to get yourself a satellite phone! From our experience, we had no problems whatsoever and took the best and most expensive network provider, Telstra.
• Dive in the Great Barrier Reef. Not sure why we skipped that one and “settled” for snorkelling. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity and even if you don’t have a certification, some agencies do offer shallow dives on the reef.

I hope that helps making your trip as awesome as ours was! If in doubt reach out to me or find advice from locals on site.

You can go to www.ratpacktravel.com – as the better rated, more affordable trips don’t leave every day it’s good to get an idea of how your dates would work. Send your dates over to the RatPack Travel team via the link below and they can get back to you with a calendar plan – they can also discount any trip by 10% using the promo code RatPack10. https://www.ratpacktravel.com/free-calendar

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