What we would skip in Australia

Here is what we take out, written the way we would say it on the phone.

The big ones

The fifth region

The single most common thing we remove from a draft somebody sends us. Two weeks covers two or three regions properly. Every additional one is a flight, a hotel change, a check-in, a hire car return and a lost half day, in exchange for roughly a day and a half of actual seeing.

Cutting from four regions to three usually improves a trip more than upgrading every hotel in it. The arithmetic is in how many days do you need in Australia.

One night at Uluru

The second most common. A single night at Uluru buys a sunset, a bad night’s sleep and an airport. Three nights buys the base walk at dawn, Kata Tjuta’s Valley of the Winds, Kings Canyon and a guided morning with an Anangu guide, which is the part that changes how you understand the place.

If three nights genuinely will not fit, we would rather cut the red centre entirely from this trip and give it a proper visit on the next one than sell you the airport version.

A cheap day boat out of Cairns, chosen on price

Reef day boats out of Cairns range from genuinely excellent to a hundred and forty people at a fixed mooring over tired inshore coral with a queue for the slide. They are sold from the same marina with similar photographs and the price difference is under $150.

What we look for: under 40 passengers, two or three sites chosen on the morning’s conditions rather than a single fixed mooring, named outer reef sites rather than the phrase outer reef, a marine biologist doing a proper briefing, and guided snorkel groups included rather than sold as an extra. The full checklist is in which Great Barrier Reef trip is worth the money.

The red centre in December or January

Not a preference. Daytime highs regularly pass 104°F (40°C), and the park authorities close the main walks from mid-morning when the forecast reaches around 97°F (36°C), which in those months is most days. Everything you came to walk is available to you for about three hours, and the rest of the day is air conditioning.

We will build it if your dates are fixed and we will tell you all of this first. Otherwise we move the red centre to a different trip and give you Tasmania and the southern coasts instead, which are at their best in exactly those weeks. The month-by-month picture is in Australia month by month.

A long-distance train leg bolted onto a two-week trip

The Ghan and the Indian Pacific are experiences rather than transport. They are slow, expensive and genuinely enjoyable if the journey is the point of the journey. Adding one leg to a fortnight costs you a day and several hundred dollars for a distance a flight covers in three hours, and it usually forces a worse route on everything around it.

If the train is the reason for the trip, we build the trip around it. Bolting it on is the mistake.

The Great Ocean Road as a day trip from Melbourne

It is about 150 miles (240 km) to the Twelve Apostles and the day-trip version is thirteen hours in a coach to stand at two lookouts in the middle of the day, which is the worst light and the largest crowd. Two nights on the road, stopping at Lorne, Apollo Bay and Port Campbell, with the Apostles at dusk after the coaches have gone, is a different thing entirely.

Also worth knowing: there have never been twelve apostles, and there are fewer standing now than there were twenty years ago.

Perth, the Top End or the Kimberley added to an east coast trip

Each of these is five hours of flying from the east coast, or close to it, and each is a trip in itself. Ningaloo, Margaret River, Kakadu and the Bungle Bungles are all excellent and none of them belongs on a fourteen-day Sydney and reef itinerary.

Australia and New Zealand in two weeks

Three weeks minimum, and we would rather it were four. Australia is a flying country and New Zealand is a driving country, and splitting a fortnight between them produces two half trips that both feel unfinished, with two international flights and two hire car contracts inside them.

The ones with conditions attached

Cairns as a base

Cairns is a functional city with a lagoon and a lot of tour offices. Port Douglas, an hour north, is closer to the northern outer reef, quieter in the evening and better for the operators we work with. We put people in Cairns when they are diving out of it or flying in and out on tight connections, and in Port Douglas otherwise.

Koala photographs and hand-feeding

Holding a koala is permitted in some states and prohibited in others, which tells you something. The better encounters are with rehabilitation centres and sanctuaries where a keeper explains what the animal is doing there, and with wild koalas in the trees at Kennett River or on Raymond Island, which cost nothing.

We will book a well-run sanctuary. We will not build a day around holding an animal for a photograph.

The bridge climb in Sydney

A real experience, honestly enjoyable, and a real cost. If the appeal is the climb, do it. If the appeal is the view, the pedestrian path across the bridge is free and gives you most of it, and the money is better spent on three hours in a small boat on the harbour.

The Whitsundays

Beautiful sailing and one of the great beaches in the world at Whitehaven. The snorkelling is good rather than exceptional. Choose the Whitsundays if you want a boat holiday. Do not choose it if the coral is the reason you came, and do not add it to a trip that already has Port Douglas in it.

A hot air balloon or a helicopter over Uluru

Spectacular, and not better than the base walk at dawn. If the budget is unlimited, have both. If it is not, walk.

Byron Bay in peak season

A pleasant coastal town that has become extremely busy, expensive and hard to park in over Christmas, January and Easter. In May or September it is lovely. In January we would send you somewhere else on the same coast.

Kangaroo Island, with expectations adjusted

Genuinely worth going, and it lost about half its vegetation to the bushfires of 2019 and 2020 and is still visibly regenerating. Sea lions, wildlife and a very good food scene. It does not look the way older photographs show it, and we say so before you book rather than after.

The small ones

• The aquarium in Sydney, when you are flying to the reef in four days.
• Darling Harbour as a place to eat. It is a convention district.
• A harbour dinner cruise, when the public ferry crosses the same water for a few dollars.
• The Sydney Tower Eye, in a city whose views are at water level.
• A day trip to Canberra, three hours each way. Two nights or nothing.
• The Gold Coast theme parks, on a two-week trip that came twenty hours for the reef and the desert.
• Hotel breakfast, in the country that invented the modern cafe.
• The novelty meat sampler. Crocodile is chewy, emu is unremarkable, and the kangaroo on tourist menus is usually overcooked.
• Fitzroy Island and Green Island as your only reef day. Pleasant, close to shore, and not the reef you flew for.

What we would do with those days instead

Tasmania as the alternative week. Our favourite substitution in the whole country. If you have snorkelled somewhere good before, take the reef out of a two-week trip and put seven days in Tasmania in its place: Hobart and its art museum, Bruny Island, Freycinet, the Bay of Fires and Cradle Mountain. Two internal flights rather than four, better walking, better food, and a region almost nobody builds into a first trip. It works best December to March. Our walking and wild route and the southern half in 21 days both do a version of it.

A second reef-capable day. Wind cancels boats. The single best use of a spare day in the north is another chance at the water.

A guided day with an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander guide. In the centre, in Sydney, in the Daintree or in Kakadu. It is consistently the day people mention first when they come home.

A night in the Blue Mountains rather than a day trip. The valley at dawn, with the coaches still in Sydney.

Nothing. An empty day in Port Douglas or Sydney with a swim and a long lunch is not a wasted day. We build them in deliberately and we defend them when asked to fill them.

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Keep reading

• Australia: the complete guide to planning your trip
• The best two-week route through Australia
• Which Great Barrier Reef trip is worth the money
• How many days do you need in Australia?
• Australia in 21 days, the southern half
• All our Australia trips

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