I plan to visit the East coast of Australia during the month of November 2008.?

Question

Can anyone advise me the best way to tour the area and it's attractions at a reasonable cost. For example internal flights, hotels/hostels. Is there an all in package deal on the market for what I am looking for? If anyone has experienced this I would like to hear your views and advice on the matter.

My starting point will be Sydney.

Thanks.

Answer 1

the east coast is about 3000kl long a idea of what you want to do/see & how long you have to do it in will help a lot to get a good answer

a few details please

Answer 2

1. All in holidays are available, but they are expensive and you will only be able to visit the places they go to.

2. Join the YHA before you leave UK and use the membership to stay at the YHA accommodation is Australia. They are excellent value for money, plus you meet hundreds of people who have been to hundreds of places so you can pick their brains for your favourite laces to go.

3. Travel depends on your budget, the coach system is excellent with the YHA's offering free pick up from the coach stops and they will also take you to the coach stop for free. Not always the most convenient way to travel, but certainly the cheapest in the long run.

Start by booking a room in the Sydney (city centre) YHA as there is a mine of information there. There is also a better than even chance you will find someone travelling your way and you can share costs.

Answer 3

Your most convenient way to see as much as you want is to hire a car and stay at back packer hostels or motels. Or look for discount hotels on the internet at www.wotif.com.au . But you can look at fares on jet star or virgin blue from Sydney to Coolangatta [Gold Coast] or brisbane. Virgin have a happy hour between 12 noon and 1pm here where you can get a bargain but dates are limited. Once here you can hire a car or fly to Proserpine then short bus ride to Airlie Beach, gateway to the WhitSunday islands. or fly to Cairns. There are often package deals advertised for the gold Coast  Google package deals gold coast australia for several sites

Answer 4

Hey, I went several years ago at the same time you will be going.  I went with two other people, and we found hotel deals online through the hotels themselves.  We found one that had a deal for stay three night, fourth night free.  We were in Australia for about 2 1/2 weeks and decided to get hotels that had kitchenettes to cut down on the cost of food.  It did help, but we ended up finding a lot great food cheap!  It seemed the cheaper, the better actually.  In Sydney, we stayed at the DeVere.  It's in Potts Point which borders on Kings Cross.  Kings Cross has a reputation as not being all that safe, but we never had a problem, and it's lit up 24/7 with people on the street at all hours.  We kind of thought the rep was unfounded.  There is a train stop right there to get you around the city and was a short walk from our hotel.  Kings Cross is where there are a lot of hostels as well.  

We just found the areas we wanted to stay in, found hotels that could accomodate three, and had the ammenities we needed (including laundry facilities to cut down on the amount of clothes to bring), and then checked their websites for the best deals and what looked like good hotels.

For Sydney, we took the train and bus most places.  We got weekly passes.  We also took the ferry.  We used cabs a couple of times.  We never bothered with a car.

For internal flights (we flew to Melbourne), I think we just booked something online as well.  If you go to the airline's websites, you can sometimes find deals that expedia and the like don't have.  I took the train back from Melbourne to Sydney to stop over at a town I wanted to see.  

We knew a lot of things we wanted to do already and found other things to do from travel books, but also word of mouth or just wandering the cities.  We didn't do any sort of package deal as those can sometimes limit what you do and when so I don't have any information on that.  We just did A LOT of online research to find deals and got some advice from the staff at our hotel or people we met.

If you have not gotten your ticket to Australia yet, check out www.skyauction.com.  I don't know where you are, but the site auctions airline tickets.  I can't remember if it's from the US only or not, but check it out.  We got round trip from LA to Sydney (had to get ourselves to LA, but that was another online deal through the airline) for under $900, not including taxes and fees and whatnot.  Add in our flight to LA, and the whole thing was about $1100 - $1200 dollars - a steal!  You have to be patient with the auction, but we got the second or third tickets we bid on.  If you're going with others, read carefully about the auction.  It is possible to win one ticket in a pair and lose the other.