Advice on family holiday to Australia. 1st travel agent let us down, 2nd agent trip was unsuitable.

flaneurs_lobster

twopenny said:

Any reason for Melbourne? It's on the other side.

Are you thinking of Perth? Melbourne - Sydney is about 1h20m on a plane.

And Melbourne is a brilliant city. 

Yawn

I would narrow it down to a single state, trying to do the entire east coast in 16 days is undoable - and nice as all those cities are (I actually really like Melbourne!) you're not flying to Australia for a string of city trips. Don't forget that the jetlag will take a week or more to recover from!

twopenny

Oh yes Flaneurs. Obviously I hadn't woken up enough 😉

Neil49

Yawn said:

I would narrow it down to a single state, trying to do the entire east coast in 16 days is undoable - and nice as all those cities are (I actually really like Melbourne!) you're not flying to Australia for a string of city trips. Don't forget that the jetlag will take a week or more to recover from!

Personally I would stick with 2 destinations, Melbourne and Sydney. Any more than that and you will be sitting in airport terminals and aircraft instead of enjoying the lifestyle out there. 

mgdavid

Yawn said:

I would narrow it down to a single state, trying to do the entire east coast in 16 days is undoable - and nice as all those cities are (I actually really like Melbourne!) you're not flying to Australia for a string of city trips. Don't forget that the jetlag will take a week or more to recover from!

It should not / will not take the average fit healthy person a week to recover from jetlag. Approached sensibly you can be up and running in 12 to 24 hours. I flew into Sydney one afternoon and was firing on all cylinders in business meetings the following morning.Nowadays we visit son and his family in Brisbane once a year and after a lie-in on day 1 we are fine.

saajan_12

Multi city is usually hard to do as a package, so if you're booking it DIY, then you don't need to wait until everythings confirmed before booking. Its a busy time anyway, and sounds like you're in fairly mainstream places with plenty of availabilty, rather than anything niche you have to work around. 

I'd get the flights booked by using a comparison site and arrange the holiday with everyones jobs. Then you can finetune the itinerary and get accommodation booked in. 

silvercar

mgdavid said:

Yawn said:

I would narrow it down to a single state, trying to do the entire east coast in 16 days is undoable - and nice as all those cities are (I actually really like Melbourne!) you're not flying to Australia for a string of city trips. Don't forget that the jetlag will take a week or more to recover from!

It should not / will not take the average fit healthy person a week to recover from jetlag. Approached sensibly you can be up and running in 12 to 24 hours. I flew into Sydney one afternoon and was firing on all cylinders in business meetings the following morning.Nowadays we visit son and his family in Brisbane once a year and after a lie-in on day 1 we are fine.

People who say they don't get jet lag, should really say they haven't had jet lag...yet. Have travelled at least 10 times to places with a large time difference and was of the same opinion.... until a return from Japan, where we were both knocked out for 10 days.

lady1964

We have a trip to Australia planned for next year, during our springtime, although we’ve tagged Bali on to the end.

We booked our flights a couple of weeks ago, flying into Melbourne and back from Bali but we haven’t booked anything internal yet or the flight to Bali.

We have loosely decided on 20/21 days for Australia and intend to see Melbourne, Adelaide and Sydney, we’ve been to Sydney a few times so only planning a week there, maybe 8 days. 

I would definitely get your flights booked but honestly, I think 16 days isn’t enough for the 3 places you’ve mentioned OP.  Yes, the internal flights aren’t long but add on travel time to the airport, the hour or two you’d need to be there prior to take off then getting your bags etc on arrival and travel into whichever city will add time. Basically, although travelling between these cities wouldn’t each take a day, add them all together and you would be looking at losing a day of your 16 at least on travel, and it could be pretty exhausting, more so given how hot it is very likely to be in December/January.

Just to add, Trailfinders are excellent, we recently used them for a trip to Asia and just made a few tweaks to the itinerary they did for us and it worked well. 

Google ‘things to do’ in each city and work out your most important things to do/see and go from there; this is what we’re doing for Melbourne and Adelaide as we haven’t been to either place before.

Troytempest

All good advice.  We have travelled to Australia many times and if it were me and I only had a fortnight then I would do Melbourne and the Great Ocean Road and the rest in Sydney as the greater Sydney area has some lovely places all very accessible.....

PS - not sure the OP has been back since asking.

Hoenir

Worth pointing out that's it's the Ashes down under between November and January. Internal flights may well be busier than normal as a result.