Australia
Too big to see in one holiday. The art is choosing your Australia, and joining the parts together well.
Australia is a continent as well as a country, and no single holiday takes in all of it. The flight from Sydney to Perth takes around five hours; the reef, the rainforest, the desert and the great cities are each a journey apart. That is not a drawback. It means there are several quite different Australias, and you can choose yours.
For some people it is the harbour, the beaches and the food of Sydney and Melbourne. For others it is the Great Barrier Reef and the tropical north, or the red desert at the centre, or the wine regions and wild coast of the south and west. Most good itineraries pick two or three of these and give each enough time, with the travel between them planned so that it does not eat into the holiday.
Auria Travel is an independent UK travel agency, and we arrange holidays to Australia of both kinds: an escorted tour or a ready-made itinerary from a tour operator, booked for you, or a tailor-made journey that links the places you choose, often with a stop in Singapore on the way or New Zealand added at the end.
How Auria can help you plan Australia
Planning Australia starts with what to leave out. Tell us what you picture when you think of it, how long you have and how you like to travel, and our travel professionals will suggest which regions to combine and, just as usefully, which to save for another visit.
If a tour operator already has a holiday that does it, such as an escorted tour of the main sights or a set itinerary with flights and hotels, we will find it and book it. Many first visits are served very well that way.
If you want a route of your own, we can put the trip together: the international flights and any stopover, the flights within Australia, hotels in each place, car hire where a road trip makes sense, and the days out that are worth arranging ahead.
Where it helps, we work with trusted local experts in Australia for the parts that need local knowledge: a transfer waiting after a long flight, a day on the reef with a good boat, a guided walk at Uluru with someone who can explain what you are looking at, a rail journey, or a small-group tour through country that is hard to see alone. Those are run by the people whose business they are. Our part is to choose them well and fit them into the route. A week in Sydney needs very little of this.
Ways to see Australia
- Multi-centre holidays
- Two or three regions linked by flights within Australia, with hotels and transfers arranged in each. The most common shape for a first visit.
- Escorted tours
- A planned route with a tour manager, covering a lot of ground with the travelling taken care of.
- Self-drive
- Road trips suit a region, not the whole country: the coast of Victoria, the south-west, Tasmania, tropical Queensland. The roads are good and, outside the cities, quiet.
- Rail journeys
- Long-distance trains cross the continent, among them the Ghan between Adelaide and Darwin and the Indian Pacific between Sydney and Perth. Days on board, with stops along the way.
- City and beach
- Sydney or Melbourne, then a week on the Queensland coast or on an island.
- Family holidays
- Wildlife, beaches and easy-going cities. It works well with children if the flights within Australia are kept to a few.
- Luxury
- Small lodges on reef islands, among vineyards and in the outback, and hotels with a view of the harbour in the cities.
Tailor-made and multi-centre Australia
Almost every Australian holiday has more than one centre, so the question is who joins them up. A set itinerary does that for you, and suits many people. Planning around your brief lets you choose the regions, the pace and the kind of place you stay in, and decide where to fly and where to drive.
The combinations below are starting points, not packages.
Sydney and Queensland
The harbour city, then the reef and the rainforest, a flight of around three hours to the north.
Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road
A few days in the city, then a drive along the coast of Victoria, and on to the wine country or back the way you came.
City, rock and reef
Sydney, the Red Centre and the Great Barrier Reef: three very different places, linked by air. The classic first visit, and a full one.
Australia and New Zealand
Two or three regions of Australia, then across the Tasman Sea for a week or two in New Zealand. It needs time, or a firm hand in keeping each part short.
A stopover in Singapore
Two or three nights in Singapore on the way out or back, to break the journey and add a city that is nothing like Australia.
The west on its own
Perth, Rottnest Island, the Margaret River wine region and the coast beyond: a holiday in itself, and the part of Australia nearest the UK.
Combines well with: New Zealand, Singapore
Choosing your regions
The parts of Australia a visitor from the UK most often chooses between.
Sydney
The harbour, the Opera House and the bridge, ferries to the beach at Manly and coastal walks from Bondi. The Blue Mountains are a day trip inland. Three or four nights is a comfortable start to almost any itinerary.
The Great Barrier Reef and Queensland
The reef runs for well over a thousand miles along the Queensland coast, and is reached by boat from places such as Cairns, Port Douglas and the Whitsunday Islands, or from an island on the reef itself. Onshore are the Daintree Rainforest and long tropical beaches.
The Red Centre
The desert heart of the country: Uluru and Kata Tjuta, sacred to the Anangu, their traditional owners, with the gorges of Kings Canyon and the ranges around Alice Springs. Most people fly in. Dawn and dusk are when the colours change, and the middle of a summer day is fiercely hot.
Melbourne and Victoria
A city of laneways, coffee, galleries and sport, with trams to get around on. Beyond it are the Great Ocean Road and its sea stacks, the penguins of Phillip Island and the vineyards of the Yarra Valley.
Western Australia
Perth is sunny, relaxed and a long way from the east coast. Nearby are Rottnest Island and the port of Fremantle; further off, the Margaret River wine region to the south and, far to the north, Ningaloo Reef and the Kimberley.
Tasmania
An island of mountains, forests and empty beaches, with good food and a small, historic capital in Hobart. Compact enough to drive around in a week or so.
- The Top End
- Darwin and the national parks of Kakadu and Litchfield, in the tropical north: wetlands, waterfalls, rock art and crocodiles. Very seasonal.
- South Australia
- Adelaide, the Barossa and other wine valleys, and Kangaroo Island for wildlife.
- Wildlife
- Kangaroos, koalas, wombats and a great many birds: in the wild if you are in the right place at the right time, and in sanctuaries if you would rather not leave it to chance.
When to go
The seasons are the reverse of the UK’s, and there is more than one climate. The southern half of the country has four seasons. The tropical north has two, a wet and a dry. So the right time depends on which Australia you have chosen, and a trip that combines regions usually means accepting that one of them will not be at its peak.
- The south: Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Tasmania
- Summer runs from December to February and winter from June to August. Summers are warm to hot; winters are mild in Sydney and Perth and cooler in Melbourne and Tasmania. Spring and autumn are comfortable for touring almost everywhere.
- The tropical north
- The dry season, from about May to October, has warm days, clear skies and open roads, and is the busy time. The wet season, from about November to April, is hot and humid with heavy rain; some roads and parks in the far north close, and there is less choice of tours.
- The Great Barrier Reef
- Visited all year. The drier winter months are the most popular. In the warmer months, from about November to May, marine stingers are present along the tropical coast, and swimmers wear full-length suits, which the boats provide.
- The Red Centre
- The cooler months, from about May to September, are the comfortable ones, with cold nights. In summer the heat is extreme and some walks are closed during the day.
- School holidays
- Christmas and January are the Australian summer holidays, when the coast is busy and prices are at their highest.
Planning your trip
Australia is easy to travel in. The planning is all about distance.
- Choose two or three regions
- Not five. Every extra stop costs most of a day in travelling, and the places are worth more than a night or two each.
- How long
- There is no rule. As a guide, two weeks suits two regions seen properly, and three weeks or more opens up a third, or New Zealand. With less time, one region and a stopover is still a real holiday.
- Fly the long legs
- Between regions, fly. Sydney to Cairns is around three hours by air and several days by road; Sydney to Perth is around five hours.
- Drive the short ones
- Self-drive comes into its own within a region: the Great Ocean Road, Tasmania, the south-west, the coast north of Cairns. Australians drive on the left, as we do in the UK.
- The flight from the UK
- About a day of travelling to the east coast, with one stop, and rather less to Perth. Most people break the journey, and Singapore is the stop many choose.
- Arrive in one city, leave from another
- Flying into Perth or Cairns and home from Sydney, for example, saves a long flight back to where you started.
- Booking ahead
- Island and outback lodges are small, the long-distance trains run on set days, and Christmas and January sell out early. A year ahead is not too soon for those.
Related holiday types
Thinking about Australia?
Tell us which parts of Australia you have in mind, or simply what you want from it: cities, coast, wildlife, wine, the outback. Tell us how long you have, roughly when, and who is going. We will suggest which regions to combine, how to travel between them, and whether New Zealand or a stopover belongs in the plan.
