Australia-a little of this a little of that

[buff]

Sorry folks-

I know this is all covered somewhere in teh Scubaboard logs but I honestly don't want to look for it..and don't have the time.

Girlfriend(like's to dive but it's not the only thing) and I(God, I love to dive, and for me it could be the only thing) are going on vacation.

We(well, she, to be exact) were thinking of tahiti or fiji or honduras or belize(last two places probably ruled out due to hurricane activity-right?). And then I thought AUSTRALIA!

But it can't be ALL diving(tears flowing here)

Who can we book through and will it be a hassle to explore the island and dive-I mean it is an island it can't be that bad. Would you rank this above the other places to dive that I mention in paragraph one?

Thanks for the imput
Mike

 

[alcina]

Mike -

Australia is roughly the size of the continental US so the diving here is extremely varied from tropical reef systems in Queensland to kelp forrests in Tasmania and pretty much everything in between!

As most of the cities and tourist areas are on the coast, there is diving in virtually all major centres.

Your best bet is to figure out what type of diving you like to do,what type of land based things you want to do and then narrow your choices down from there.

The East Coast is far more accessible than the West Coast. The East Coast has a lot more divers than the West Coast, too. But the West Coast has almost everything you could want (the grey nurses are better bets off NSW, great whites and sea dragons are more abundant from South Australia, etc). If you have the time, I'd go to the West Coast (mildly biased here ) but you'll need a solid two weeks plus flight times to really get any sort of a taste - things are just that far apart here.

Almost all of the diving is very different here to the places you mentioned, FWIW.

 

[TSandM]

We just spent two weeks in Australia, of which we spent three days diving. We spent time in Sydney, which is a DELIGHTFUL city, and in the Hunter Valley, which is one of the wine making regions and is lovely, full of wineries, fine restaurants, great cheeses and olives. Then we went to Byron Bay, which is a charming hippie-ish tourist town on the coast, which has lovely restaurants, a gorgeous beach, good hiking, and fabulous diving (you can read about it here). Plus the people speak English, you can read the signs, and everybody is amazingly friendly. They just drive on the wrong side of the road

 

[alcina]

They just drive on the wrong side of the road

Most of the time

 

[RonDawg]

From someone who just spent 3 weeks in Australia, if you plan on driving, make sure to allot PLENTY of time.

As already pointed out, Australia is roughly the size of the 48 contiguous US states. Driving between Sydney and Cairns, for example, is the equivalent of driving from Boston to Miami. Except there's no I-95 connecting the two; except in the Sydney and Brisbane metro areas, it's all two-lane road with occasional passing areas. So if you get stuck behind a slowpoke (and Queenslanders tend to drive about 20 km below the posted limit, based on my experience), it could take you a while to regain your speed.

Even when the road is clear, don't think about speeding as many Australian states utilize photo radar, both stationary and in mobile vans. Distances are VERY long between the major metro areas; for example, Sydney to Melbourne is for the most part an all-day drive. Sydney-Cairns is a minimum 3 LONG DAYS (as in 12 hours each day, no stopping except for fuel and quick bite to eat) of driving. Uluru (aka Ayers Rock) is a minimum two day drive each way from any point in the east coast, and further from the west coast.

If you've never driven a right-hand drive car, that takes some getting used to. At least unlike other RHD countries like the UK or Ireland, most rental cars in Australia have automatic transmissions. "Petrol", when I was there in late September-early October, was about US$4.00/gal when it was about US$2.75 in the LA area.

If time is short, I recommend flying to your destinations. QANTAS has a special package that includes round trip airfare to Australia, and up to 3 domestic flights within the country; prices will vary depending on time of year, number of flights, and where you go within the country.

The diving is good but Australia is much, much more than that. Sydney alone is easily a week, and that doesn't include any diving you want to see.

 

[Darnold9999]

Australians get a kick out of those who come to their "island" and include in their two/three week holiday a side trip to New Zealand. As someone pointed out Austraila is big. Would be like someone from Europe visiting the USA for a couple of weeks/ as opposed to maybe Florida.

We went North to South just north of Cairns in a place called Palm Cove - my partner loved it, nice quite resort town. Fairly expensive, but very nice. Booked four days ended up spending two weeks. Great diving, lots to see and do.

We then flew to Brisbane and rented a car - drove from there to Sydney over the next two weeks, Hunter Vally - very nice lots of wineries one excellent restaurant in Singleton(may be more, but this was special), Byron Bay (way to touristy for my tasts we stayed in a little town about 30 min south, again nice very quiet.) Did not dive in Byron Bay - kicking myself for that one, but my partner does not dive so we did other things. She didn't even go in the water the entire time we were there - go figure.

Australia is huge - you can pretty much take your pick re kind of diving things to do. Would go back in a second. Would probably do longer liveaboard north of Cairns as my first choice, but I can do kelp and cold water anytime.

Caveat - plan your trip around weather. Cairns and north in the dead of their summer is hot, humid and wet. They also have a storm season. Sydney and south in the winter can be brisk.

 

[RonDawg]

Australians get a kick out of those who come to their "island" and include in their two/three week holiday a side trip to New Zealand. As someone pointed out Austraila is big. Would be like someone from Europe visiting the USA for a couple of weeks/ as opposed to maybe Florida.

It's possible, you just have to plan your itinerary accordingly. You'll need to limit your cities, do a lot of air vs. ground travel, and limit what you can do. But it can be done.

A 3 week holiday to AUS/NZ isn't difficult. A week in Sydney, a week somewhere along the GBR, and a week in NZ isn't all that outrageous. In fact that's my next trip Down Under.

 

[AndyNZ]

Even when the road is clear, don't think about speeding as many Australian states utilize photo radar, both stationary and in mobile vans.

LOL! Slightly off topic, but there's a great story about this from a few months ago.... the mobile vans have a GPRS link, so they snap your photo when you are caught speeding, it's digitised and sent over the link and the ticket is in the post the same day, often with in minutes of you being caught.

So, the story goes, four lads stopped by the mobile van. Three of them got chatting to the operator, asking questions like "how does it work", "how many people do you catch" etc. Whilst the operator was distracted, the fouth lad unscrewed the front number plate of the van....

... which they then ran away with and put on the back of their car and sped through the speed trap 17 times in under an hour. The van duly issued itself 17 speeding tickets...

 

[AndyNZ]

A 3 week holiday to AUS/NZ isn't difficult. A week in Sydney, a week somewhere along the GBR, and a week in NZ isn't all that outrageous. In fact that's my next trip Down Under.

Possible, but you are just scratching the surface! I could spend a month in Tasmania alone, a good few weeks are Melbourne and easily six weeks surfing and diving around Perth.

And as for New Zealand, I've been here for nearly three years and haven't run out of things to do on a weekend yet....

 

[RonDawg]

Possible, but you are just scratching the surface! I could spend a month in Tasmania alone, a good few weeks are Melbourne and easily six weeks surfing and diving around Perth.

And as for New Zealand, I've been here for nearly three years and haven't run out of things to do on a weekend yet....

You are correct, my itineraries are best called a "sampler" because you are only seeing a small sample.

However, I wanted to be able to experience as much of Australia as I could in the short amount of time I had. I would rather do that then blow my entire holiday on just one or two areas.