Travel to Australia

[SuDZ]

Hey guys.

I am looking at heading down to Australia around April or so. It will be me and my family. My sister is going to school down there for a few months, I don't know if it is a well known school or not but it is the University of Wallengong about an hour north of Sydney.

My family is looking to head down there for about two weeks or so and was looking to visit the outback or perhaps the Great Barrier Reef.

Basicly I am looking to see if you guys have any recomendations of either two for a visitor or also if you have any travel agents you could reccomend. I was curious if maybe there were some travel companies that are popular or have a good reputation there that we might not have looked into yet. We still have some time to go but are trying to figure everything out now.

Any help would be great, if you have any other questions that might help let me know too.

SuDZ

[Zedrally]

Use www.qantas.com.au as a gateway.

Woollagong [& I don't think thats the right spelling either] is south of Sydney, maybe some locals can chime in now!

Enjoy your holiday, I now that you will enjoy it here.

[Brett240]

yeah i think you mean wollongong. its a bit under an hour south of the airport, 25 min from my place.

theres 2 ways down there, the freeway or the old road which runs along the coast fill of twists and perfect for a nice datto. its a good uni, i have lots of mates there. how long you comin to oz for?

[biker]

Sudz

Guys are right about Woollongong (pronounced wool-on-gong). It is about 50 miles south of Sydney. Best way to get there is by train or driving. right on the east coast if you are into beaches. A drive down the coast to the sleepy little fishing villages is good. Say from the "the gong" to Eden on the Victorian border.

If you are using it as a base then you could branch out to the capital Canberra" about 2 hours driving time. Nice way to get there is through Kangaroo Valley.

From there you can get onto the Snowys (about another 1-1/2 hours south of Canberra) and travel a bit around there. 2 choices from there is either heading down into Victoria (about 2 hours from the heart of the Snowys to the border) or alternatively head into outback New South Wales. Personally, I have travelled around these pats on a bike a fair bit and I would head for Victoria.

Just realised everything is about 2 hours:ermm:

Best way to do it IMO is via car. Hertz Rentals can do it or you could look at hiring a campervan from a company called Britz This is the website http://www.bluedtravel.com/bdte/prodAU01.htm

If you want to get to the Barrier Reef, then it is a 2 hour ( ) flight from Sydney and your best step off point would be either the Whitsundays (Hamilton Island) or Cairns.

Weather should be good around April as it is mid Autumn here.

A lot will depend on the length of time you have and how many readies (money) you have got.

Start practising your Gidday's, Crikeys and "Stone the crows" slang.

Biker:classic:

[Ben]

It's a big place to see in a couple of weeks, but I'll see what I can come up with....

The Blue Mountains are nice (west of Sydney)

(Ok so it was 25 years ago that I was in that neighbourhood....)

If you get a chance, get a drive along the Great Ocean Road in Victoria (allow 2 days for that). It's BETTER that the Big Sur Coast in California (no offence California, it's a nice stretch of road, but ours is better ). Try to visit the Gold Coast, or the Sunshine coast in Queensland, and if time permits, get up to Cairns & do a reef tour. If you're into wines get yourself to the the Barossa Valley/McLaren Vale regions in SA & the Hunter Valley in NSW. About 3000km away is the spectacular landscape of the Kimberly-region in NT/WA. And then you have Uluru (Ayers Rock) right in the middle.

This is a SHORT list & there are dozens of other places (naturally) that are great to see.

Somewhere in there, find some Z & GT-R owners & get a few rides in!

Almost forgot, the Clipsal 500 is run in Adelaide on March 18-21, so if you want to see the city streets carved up by dozens of race-cars, be there! http://www.clipsal500.com.au/

[nixcars]

SuDZ,

I actually live in Wollongong & I'm only 10 min away from the Uni.

It would be great to see a fellow classiczcar member from overseas, so when you get here, look us up.

Nick.

[Bruce Woolmore]

cos the news is full of the fact that the cheeky bloody aussie tourist bureau warns aussies that NZ is "in an earthquake zone"

jeez mate, welcome to the pacific rim!! course some bright spark pointed out that the last fatal earthquake was in fact in Newcastle!

anyway I digress - I really want to warn you about being bitten by rabid koalas! it's RIFE mate, so don't be taken in by their sleepy appearance !!!! :-}}}

[SuDZ]

Originally posted by Zedrally

Use www.qantas.com.au as a gateway.

Woollagong [& I don't think thats the right spelling either] is south of Sydney, maybe some locals can chime in now!

Enjoy your holiday, I now that you will enjoy it here.

Thanks for the reccomendation I will pass it on to my family. We will have to put them in the "review" colum.

SuDZ

[SuDZ]

Originally posted by Brett240

yeah i think you mean wollongong. its a bit under an hour south of the airport, 25 min from my place.

theres 2 ways down there, the freeway or the old road which runs along the coast fill of twists and perfect for a nice datto. its a good uni, i have lots of mates there. how long you comin to oz for?

It looks like we will be down there for about two weeks. My father doesn't want to be away from running his buisness for too long and also my little brother can not miss a whole lot of school. So this is the range we are figuring right now.

SuDZ

[SuDZ]

Originally posted by biker

Start practising your Gidday's, Crikeys and "Stone the crows" slang.

Biker:classic:

Okay i get the Gidday and Crikeys but anyone want to help a kid out with the "Stone the crows" part ?

SuDZ

[SuDZ]

Originally posted by Ben

Somewhere in there, find some Z & GT-R owners & get a few rides in!

I was telling some friends of mine I HAVE to find a way to get myself a ride in a GT-R and take some pictures. I mean since I have about a one in a million chance of even seeing a real one here never mind getting a ride.

SuDZ

[biker]

Stone the crows is basically a verbal exclamation mark like

Hillbilly says " I just dropped a SOHC 4 cylinder in my Zed to make it lighter"

Ozzie replies "Stone the flippin' crows mate, are ya bloody mad!!"