Due to an unexpected set of circumstances, wife and I will be going to Sydney for a couple of weeks in August. Now, usually when we travel we like to do lots of advanced “scouting” and locate places/things/events of interest. Unfortunately, we only have a few weeks to plan, prepare, and get our butts over there (under there?) this time, so I am asking for help. Any Dopers with Australian experiences to share wit a couple of Yanks making their first foray into the Southern Hemisphere?
August?
Good luck finding somewhere to stay. Isn’t that around Olympics time?
You’ll have a great time, though. I spent a year there and it’s the only city I’d be happy to up and leave to at a moment’s notice.
I can recommend a day trip or weekend in the Blue Mountains – Leura, Katoomba etc – and a drive up to Palm Beach (one of the more peaceful and expensive northern beach suburbs). I’m sure there are current residents who can give you more detailed ideas, though.
I’m in Melbourne Spiritus Mundi, but fire away and I’ll do my best.
The suggestion of the Blue Mountains is a good one, they are lovely. The harbour in Sydney is famous for a reason. You could do worse than tool around on commuter ferries for a couple of weeks.
The most important thing to remember is the place is big, with lots of pretty empty spaces. You won’t get to see much. Melbourne and Brisbane look fairly close to Sydney, but each are a good 8-10 hours drive.
Hoping that you are one who lives to eat rather than eats to live, Australia is good for a feed. Sydney seafood is second only to Japan (and much cheaper). You will also find good Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Italian, Greek and French food if you look. If you like wine, you are in luck. Australia is well sorted for wine, and there is very good value at atround A$12 a botle for chardonnay, sauvingion blanc, cab. sav., pinot noir and shiraz.
Your dollar is very strong at present. You will have fun.
picmr
matt:
Pre Olympics, I’m afraid (or maybe I’m glad – who needs the crowds and prices.) Place to stay is arranged and paid for, which is the reason we are doing this now on short notice. The Blue Mountains sound great. Wife and I both love nature/hiking/water/etc. So we are definitely looking for some good natural setting to explore. The Great Barrier Reef is one thing I was thinking, though I am now really wishing I had learned to scuba. (We snorkel and are both strong swimmers – will that be enough?)
picmr:
I love to put on a good feed. Seafood, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, etc. are all winners. Guess I’d better pack the jump rope, too. I drink wine occassionally, but I’m more likely to partake of beer and whiskey.
I know things in Australia are farther apart than the outsider’s view imagines, but I was hoping to find some affordable “in country” excursions/flights – maybe get to Ayers Rock and/or Tasmania. Is that realistic? I will be there 2 weeks – wife will get an extra 8 days (&#@& vacation policies!).
~Ducks in.~
~Sees no Aussies to poke~
~Ducks out, still hopeful for the future~
Spiritus, I didn’t get to visit half the places that I wanted to when I was in Australia, so I haven’t got a lot of first-hand knowledge… but I’ll pass on a few comments that I got about places to visit/things to do:
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I would not recommend flying halfway across Australia just to see Ayers Rock (Uluru). I have seen it, and it is indeed quite a sight… however, it is an extremely popular tourist destination, so camping areas are often crowded, and I think that ruins the wonder of the place. There’s another place nearby called (I think) King’s Canyon, which I have not seen but have been told is a more scenic spot to visit than Ayers Rock, plus less crowded. However, once you’ve seen those two places, there’s not much else to see or do in the Alice Springs area that’s suitable for a relatively short visit. If you had a week or more, you might consider going on a camel trek into the Simpson Desert, or spending some time at a dude ranch just outside of Alice.
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If you and your wife are really into hiking and would like to get a feel for the countryside, you might consider following the Heysen Trail in South Australia for a few days. I’m quite familiar with the part that runs through the Flinders Ranges National Park, about 300 miles north of Adelaide - it’s lovely country, not too swamped with tourists outside of the main campground at Wilpena. You can also go a bit further north to the Arkaroola Wildlife Preserve in the Gammon Ranges - a unique sort of place, privately run, where you can settle within the main campground (if you want to be close to amenities) or you can hike out into some rugged (if not high elevation) countryside that’s still pretty wild.
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Tasmania is supposed to be a lovely place for outdoor activities, if perhaps a bit damp - I think Ireland might be an appropriate analog. (There’s a running joke about Tasmanians being born with webbed feet.) A retired schoolteacher I met had traveled widely within Australia, and said that Tasmania was one of his favorite places to go for long hikes and camping, although you need to be careful about surprise snowstorms at higher elevations.
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If you don’t want to spend lots of time in transit, I’ve been told that the Gold Coast of Queensland is lovely, especially good for beach-related activities, although lodging may be a bit expensive. And while you’re at it, you can visit Steve Irwin’s zoo!
If you’re interested in hearing more about the Flinders Ranges option, feel free to email me; I spent about nine months there in total, and can give you lots more details. Have a great time on your trip!
Whereabouts are you staying in Sydney?
The Blue Mountains is definitely a trip to try if you like walking. I can highly recommend “Oz Experience” as a tour bus company (I travelled all around Australia with them) – they’re aimed more towards young backpackers, and use small minibuses with a very laid-back atmosphere. If roughing it with backpackers isn’t your cup of tea, there’s a million and one bus companies that run one or two-day tours up to the area. You can also catch a train to Katoomba easily enough from Sydney.
The Barrier Reef is a bit optimistic, I’m afraid. Magnificent though it is, it’s a very long way from Sydney to Far North Queensland (I once did it in about 3 days on a fast bus on motorways). If you have the money to fly I’d recommend that – you might be able to squeeze it in, but it’ll take up at least half of your journey, I’d think. A lot of the most beautiful areas are realtively inaccessible – Cape York in north Queensland (a tropical area), Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory etc.
Alice Springs is easy to fly to, but allow a few days – Uluru (Ayers Rock) is several hundred kilometres away along mostly unpaved roads.
I’d recommend a decent guidebook – the Lonely Planet guide to Australia was my bible for a year.
As for Sydney, picmr is spot on. Eating out and going out generally are so cheap compared to places like London that you should really splash out. Good restaurants include A Restaurant in Five Ways, Galileo (in the Observatory Hotel – extortionate but lovely), The Summit (top of Australia Square), and Oh! Calcutta (nouvelle Indian – e.g. kangaroo curry) in Darlinghurst.
Watsons Bay is a very pretty harbour suburb – get a ferry from Circular Quay (ferries are as recognised a form of transport for Sydney commuters as buses and trains, and all are covered by the same tickets) and enjoy the views on the way. The botanic gardens in the city are beautiful (and very peaceful) too.
I’m so jealous – can you tell?
You’re jealous? I see people posting about having 9 months or a year, and I think “2 weeks! How am I going to make even a slight dent?”
the apartment we’re booked into is in Chatswood, NSW. Afraid I have no idea where that is yet. I’ve gotten a couple of guide books, but have barely had a chance to crack the covers. I’ve seen the Lonely Planet guide referenced more than once, though, so I will certainly be looking for it, too.
One thing I did see is that we will be near the peak season for humpback watching in a bay about halfway between Sydney and the Barrier reef (don’t have the book with me, and I forget the name – near a very large sand island, I believe.)
Wife has already made it clear that we will be going to both the Botanic Gardens and the Chinese Gardens, which is more than fine with me. Thanks for the restaurant tips – kangaroo curry, I can hardly wait!
I am resigned to blowing far too much money on this trip – it is the only resource available to make up for too short a time. It is our 5th anniversary, so I figure “what the hell”. We should have it paid off before our 10th.
Fillet:
Thanks for the advice. I don’t think we will make it as far west as Adelaide. Personally, I would love to get to Kakadu, but I think that is unrealistic. sigh
I would love to make it to Tasmania, but wife may override that one – I love cold, rainty hikes through rough terrain, but she has had frostbite twice and feels no need to experience that joy again.
We do love walking/hiking, though (bushwalk – my new favorite word). Wish I thought the Flinder’s Range would work, but I’m afraid time will be too short to get that far west and still have time to see/do anything. Any details about the Blue Mountains?
Steve Irwin’s zoo! He’s my hero/idiot of the month. Where in Queensland is it?
Okay – enough rambling for now. Thank you all. Any additional details/experiences about Sydney/NSW will be dearly appreciated.
Spiritus, Two weeks does indeed make it hard to get around much & still enjoy things. That just means you’ll have to go back again some time (that’s what I tell myself, anyway). 
Unfortunately, I haven’t been to the Blue Mountains, and don’t know what to suggest there.
A trip to Steve Irwin’s place might be doable as part of a drive up the coast. The Australia Zoo is in Beerwah, which is supposed to be about a 45-minute drive north of Brisbane. You can time your visit to catch various exhibitions. http://www.crocodilehunter.com/australian_zoo/welcome/index.htm
I loved it when I was there & really hope to get back. You’ll have a blast, I’m sure!
P.S. The trip from the east coast of the U.S. to Sydney will probably take you about 24-26 hours traveling time, with the L.A. to Sydney segment alone lasting at least 12 hours or so. In order not to get killed by jet lag, I found it useful to sleep not more than 5-6 hours in the air, and to stay awake until at least 8 or 9 pm on my first day in Oz. You’ll be wiped out at the end of that first day, but then you’ll sleep very soundly and wake up pretty much on Australian time. I didn’t do that on my first trip there (I tried to sleep most of the flight time), and I ended up completely out of whack for nearly a week… you don’t want to ruin your vacation that way.
Excellent advice. Luckily (or perhaps not) I habitually function on just a few hours sleep for days at a time. As a result, I have never noticed jet lag to be any different from my normal state of incoherence.
Now to get down to the really important issues – any local inebriants that I just have to sample while I am there?
Avoid VB (Victoria Bitter) like the plague.
I found that, in general, Australian beers were so loaded with chemicals that the hangovers were godawful. Locals I spoke to confirmed it.
However, the good stuff: wine, in general. I didn’t have many bad wines while I was out there (excepting the 4-litre casks at parties). There are some nice beers: as lagers go, Toohey’s Dry, Toohey’s New and Toohey’s Red, as well as Resch’s and Hahn Ice are all fairly standard, decent pub beers. Resch’s Smooth is a quite nice Guinness clone.
The different states go for different beers – Victorians are big on MB (Melbourne Bitter) and Queenslanders often stick to XXXX (Castlemaine Four-X). The glass and bottle sizes are different in each state, too. The standard beer glass in New South Wales is the schooner, which is about 3/4 of a pint. In Victoria it’s the pot, which is about 1/2 pint. They also use each other’s terms to refer to different sizes. Very confusing. Beer bottles start at the standard “stubby” size.
There’s a couple of good real-ale pubs in Sydney, both in The Rocks (around the south end of the Harbour Bridge, a short walk outside the city centre). The Lord Nelson brews its own, and The Australian Hotel also brews a few types. It does the best gourmet pizzas too – I’ve had kangaroo, emu, crocodile and roast beef in red wine pizzas there.
Note: many pubs in Australia are called hotels, regardless of whether they offer accommodation.
Spiritus,
I briefly covered some of the highlights of things to see down under in Ask the Aussie.
It’s hardly a definitive list but a nice overview. As already mentioned, the distances need to be borne in mind. Queensland (my home state) is lovely but quite a drive from Sydney. If you plan to visit either Qld or Victoria then consider flying - the current exchange rate will make it dirt cheap and Virgin Blue is opening early August between Sydney and Brisbane making it even cheaper.
The idiot’s crocodile place is indeed in Beerwah at the Sunshine Coast.
Enjoy yourselves. Shout if you’re in the area.
The whale place you speak of would be Harvey Bay.
VB is not as bad as it’s cracked up to be, but as with all Australian lagers, it must be very cold. Try Cascade Pale Ale, Coopers Extra Stout and Resch’s.
The Barrier Reef, Uluru and Tasmania are all doable if you fly and have several days. In the Centre, things are generously spaced. It’s a good 3-4 hours from Alice Springs to the Rock, and there’s nothing in between. The Olgas, King’s Canyon etc are all about 2-3 hours from each other.
Tasmania can be “done” in a week, don’t bother if you have less time. The South Coast, the North East Coast and especially the “Wild Rivers” region of the South West are worth seeing.
The Reef is fabulous, and even if you have 3-4 days, can be worthwhile. Be aware that the reef proper is 90 minutes offshore by boat, so seeing it properly takes a whole day from Cairns or (better) Airely Beach.
If you are going to do any of these things, you must fly. It really is a long way.
You might be as well sticking closer to Sydney. Day trips from there will keep you interested.
I’d recommend the new Bill Bryson book Down Under. It will give you a very good feel for the place, from an American’s perspective.
If you can, book internal flights, accomodation etc from where you are - we have a new sales tax and you don’t have to pay it if you book from abroad.
picmr
Australia is a vast, largely empty place, about the same size as the United States (minus Alaska and Hawaii). This means that getting from one state to another, even by airlines, takes about half a day to get from one point to the next, particularly if you want to get to the major tourist attractions.
To get maximum value out of two weeks, stick around Sydney and The Blue Mountains. You might also venture slightly further out for daytrips. If you like wine, a trip to the Hunter Valley, one of Australia’s premium wine districts, is within reach.
I would agree with the other posts that Tasmania is a great destination. My SO and I shared our honeymoon there, on a self-drive tour. My advice is to not give yourself anything less than two weeks - that’s how long we had, and we still missed out on some of it.
Yes – Harvey Bay, thanks. Is it a worthwhile place to visit aside from the potential for cetacian sightings?
Thank all for the beer recommendations. The only Aussie beers I have tried to date are Fosters and Castelmaine (Castlemaine is better). I look forward to broadening my experimentation.
I don’t drink a lot of wine, but I will definitely sample a glass or two. Any domestic whiskey?
mattk:
I have been searching south florida in vain for a decent pizza. Perhaps I will have better luck with emu. (Though I have a friend who is raising emu in Oregon – perhaps I’d better not tell her.)
DM:
I dearly wish that I could extend my stay beyond 2 weeks. It was hard enough getting that much time away from work, unfortunately. Have you any favorite spots in Tasmania and/or the Blue Mountains to recommend?
Spirit: I posted again on the other thread for you but won’t repeat myself. But another word of warning - apparently castlemaine (XXXX) tastes a bit different over here. Their brewery btw is in Brisbane if you’re a real fan.
Hervey Bay is a great place for whales and alas not much else. No waves, small beaches, only one real nightspo. Nice people but a quiet county place with some tourit slants installed (I used to go there a bit in my travelling Advocate days). Depends on your style and desires really.
I can’t speak on personal experience for the Blue Mountains, but the local TV travel shows are forever showing little vignettes of the variety of scenery and attractions to be found there.
As for Tasmania, my favourite attraction is the former penal colony at Port Arthur. I was there three years before the massacre occured, so my memories might not quite line up with what’s there now. Allow yourself at least half a day here, and make sure you get a guided tour to really appreciate the history and infamy associated with the convict days.
That’s probably the only unique thing that I can remember. I found the scenery fantastic, but I come from a much drier climate, and am not used to seeing large rivers, lush rain forest and soggy landscapes. These things may not be so magical to someone from North America.
And before I forget it, the Cadbury chocolate factory was well worth a visit too.
Tassie has many attractions but they are probably not so unusual that you wouldn’t see similar stuff elsewhere.
My question: it won’t be summer down under during the Olympics? Shouldn’t they have been held January-March?
Is it Northern Hemispherian hubris that forces them to be held in our summer?
OR…<conspiracy>did they hold them already and are delaying the results for 6 months!?</conspiracy>
AWB, my WAG on the Olympics is that it is the Northern Hemisphere bias, because to hold the games in our summer would mean your athletes competing out of season.
But it would not be wise to hold them at the time you suggested, because January-February is the hottest time of the year in Australia. Temperature and humidity in Sydney would be decidely unfriendly for both competitors and spectators, as indeed it was in Atlanta.
The most ideal time would have been during April. Autumnal weather in Southern Australia is idyllic - fine mild days, and little wind or rain.
[highjack off]