EAST or WEST Australia for Dive Trip AND Site Seeing 50/50

[scubakimmi]

Good day, y'all! My hubby and I are planning a huge "blow-out" dive trip before we start a family and have to spend our resources elsewhere. Step one is done. We decided on Australia. Step two is almost done, we'd like to go between February and March. Now what???

:wacko: WHEN and WHERE??? We want to spend about 14-15 days in Australia mainly to dive but also to site see. What area is best for this combination? I am just getting the idea of how MASSIVE the continent of Australia actually is. It seems one could only cover a pen-dot section of the map in two short weeks.

So, I BEG of you for help!!! We like big marine life underwater, no demands or impossible expectations. Do we do the Great Barrier Reef on the East side? If so, in which "state" do we stay to be nearest the best diving? Cairns? Queensland? Or would we be better off on the West side? If so, in what region would we stay there?

Another question... Do we break up our two weeks to dive at both Australia AND New Zealand or somewhere near? Or would we be wiser to stick with just Australia? We've already been to Hawaii and plan to do the South Pacific (like Tahiti and Fiji) later in life.

PLEASE!!! I appreciate all guidance you can offer.

 

[Aquamaniac]

Let me help a little bit.
West Oz (my home) Is a big place, with alot to see, also has some awsome diving.
Take a look at Exmouth and Coral Bay, they are both on the Ningaloo reef, which is as good as, if not better than The great Barrier.
Dont try to do East AND west, or Oz, AND NZ, 14 days is just not long enough. Dont forget how far apart places are. Allow the first 2 days to recover from the jetlag, it is a killer.

If you base yourself in Perth, you can do a few "extended range" trips north, and a few day trips south. Great wineries, great sites, and GREAT diving wrecks.

If you want more specific info on West Oz, let me know, ill try to help where I can.
http://www.westernaustralia.net/

Feb- March is a good time of year, provided you dont mind the heat, it gets up to, and around 105-110 degrees at that time of year.

Dave

 

[DiveTub]

WOW Big Question
You are right Australia is a Massive Place
In WA (Western Australia) you have Reefs and Whale sharks but you have to go way North to get to them, typically fly from Sydney to Perth then Perth up to Ningaloo reef so three flights there and three flights back. No guarantee you will see Whale sharks around that time of the year

My advice would be stick to the East Coast
Fly into Brisbane then up to Cairns, for the best coral diving Book a liveabord out to the Coral Sea and Ribbon Reefs.
There is any number of Liveabords depending on your budget.

After a week or so on a liveabord head down to Sydney for some sight seeing and temperate water diving. Only Day Boats out of Sydney.

A word of warning between Feb and April is Monsoon season in the North of Australia that means it rains alot and you can expect tropical cyclons and bad weather on the boats.

 

[alcina]

If you decide on WA, then you will need to dedicate at least 5 days on the Ningaloo Reef to really make the journey worthwhile. I would split your time between Coral Bay and Exmouth. Manta Rays will be abundant from Coral Bay and both locations will have masses of marine life on the sites. This year the whale sharks have already started to pop up, so if you are planning to visit in late March you might get lucky!

Feb/March is a great time to dive all over the state of WA and we have only lost one day of diving due to weather/sea conditions on the Ningaloo Reef this year so far. By and large the weather & seas have been perfect here. One nice thing about the Ningaloo Reef is that the boat trips to the sites are very short...between 15 minutes - one hour only.

Albany in the state's south has some awesome, seldom explored sites as well as the HMAS Perth wreck; Dunsborough has the Busselton Jetty and the HMAS Swan wreck; Perth has Rottnest Island and don't forget the neglected (by most visiting divers) Marmion Marine Park...the diving there is very different to the rest of the state. You can do the southern diving areas in your other week here.

If you want contacts of friendly, professional operators in any WA locations, please PM me and I will send you a list. Happy planning!

 

[mchiapetto]

That is a huge question. But it is one that my wife and I have just started wondering about too. We are also thinking of a trip to OZ next year for both sight seeing and diving.

Given the size of Australia, I think this would be like someone saying they have 14 days and want to see the US. You could not possibly do it all in 14 days. That is just enough time to do some nice diving and see some of the sites in one or two cities.

Perhaps our Australian friends can comment, but I would think the first thing is to decide what types of things do you want to see. Cities (museums, historic buildings, cultural centers, thatrical productions, shopping, etc), country, parks, lakes, etc. Once you answer that question, maybe you can begin to narrow down what areas to go in order to see those things.

We were thinking about late March or early April. But I do not like it when it is really hot (over 90-95 degrees is really hot to me). What time of year is best to come to avoid monsoons and to find temps in the 80s?

We would like to see some of the cultural and historical aspects of Australia. We were planning to do a liveaboard out of Cairns (Mike Ball's trip to Cod Hole looked interesting).

What other city or cities would you suggest for cultural and historical interest? Also, if we only have 14-18 days, is it worthwhile to try to see some of the outback? Or does that just take too much time?

Besides the diving and the Great Barrier Reef, what other site or sites are "can't miss" type places in Australia? In other words, are there some things that we should absolutely make sure we see while we are there?

Thanks Scubakimmi for starting such a great topic. I am really looking forward to getting some good info to help us plan our trip too. And thanks in advance to all you experienced OZ people for helping out.

 

[DiveTub]

IMHO there are two great times to visit Oz

Easter is mild and dry and the water is still warm end of April and May

Spring October- November is warm but not HOT water is chilly south but still warm up north.

The must do things in Oz

The Barrier Reef Queensland get on a boat for a week and go to the outer reefs
The Desert Northern Territory
The Mountains West Of Sydney
Western Australia it is a long way to travel but also has some of the best untouched reefs with Big Fish
The Cities Sydney and Melbourne (Watch out for the Kangaroos)

The Oldest but coldest bit is down South, Tasmania amazing Kelp forest diving and buckets of history, bring a DrySuit

Best Wrecks Perth Western Australia, Townsville Queensland
Best Temperate diving anywhere on the East Coast
Best Coral Outer Barrier Reef and Western Australia

 

[bridgenet]

My wife and I are planning the same thing prior to thinking of starting a family. We are going for 3 weeks. Either the last week or last two weeks of December and beginning January 2004. Easier to get away from work over the Xmas holidays for an extended vacation.

Natasha and her husband, who runs some of the travel trips on this board has also expressed an interest so if enough people may get a group trip going. Either way we are doing the Coral Sea. Still iffy at the moment for Natasha but will be in Key Largo with her in May and will discuss it more then. Not sure if your dates are flexible but going with a Scubaboard group is alot of fun. I figure we will dive one week with the group and then tour diving some also. Have to figure out if 3 weeks is enough to hit both coasts. Have a feeling after flying all that time won't feel like flying to Perth as well but have heard good things about the Ningaloo Reef.

Kev

 

[scubakimmi]

Well, HUGE thanks to SydneyDiver, alcina, and Aquamaniac! I think the "questioners" of us have a good head start thanks to y'all.

Can anyone answer mchiapetto's question about the Outback? Is diving and seeing the Outback two tasks that would require a month to glimpse both?

We will definitely take everyone's suggestion about a liveaboard for one week and land-based diving the second week. I saw that there is a whole string of comments about Aussie liveaboards, so I'll leave those questions to that thread. If we do the lieaboard out of Carins, do y'all think we should split the remaining week between Sydney and Melbourne? We like to rent a vehicle everywhere we go and follow a "Lonely Planet" type approach, finding the cool stuff that many tourists don't bother searching for.

But, gee whiz, I'd LOVE to get the best of both worlds now that I've read these answers. It seems Western Aus is less visited and therefore may be healthier underwater. But then again, it seems the extra travel may take some valuable time out of our measly 15 days. What do y'all think?

And the weather. We certainly do not want to go in Monsoon weather, which is originally the time we had planned. Would January be better than February for the Eastern coast? I'd rather have warm water and temperatures than get rained on any day. It seems there are pros and cons to any time of the year depending on which region you visit. Woah is me!

Thanks guys.

 

[ColdH20diving]

It sounds like you got plenty of feedback. I spend 3 weeks in Australia traveling to Port Douglas to Lizard Island. I had a great time, did some sweet diving. You'll find the people there are very friendly and helpful, the best holiday I've had so far. I'm planning to go back in a couple of years, enjoy your trip!!

 

[Irishdiver]

Hi Scubakimmi/Mchiapetto - I spent four weeks touring the east coast of Oz with my girlfriend about three years ago and we still managed to see only a fraction of what we wanted to get round to! Believe me, two weeks will only allow you to scratch the surface, so you're right to plan well in advance.

We wanted to see as much as we could, so we decided to devote just a week to diving out of Cairns and stay dry for the rest of the time. We took a small liveaboard out of Cairns for several days - just six of us on a small yacht, unlimited diving on the outer reef, fabulous feeling of freedom - and then hooked up with one of the big commercial operators for diving closer to home the rest of the time. We found this worked quite well for us, though the seas were quite lumpy and seasickness was an ever present threat on the liveaboard!

The rest of the time we spent travelling between Brisbane and Melbourne and we had a ball.

We're heading back to Oz in October/November this year and hope to dive out of Perth this time, so I'm paying close attention to the advice in this thread and I'll be PMing some of the contributors for more details. Thanks in advance.