In 2012 my sister, Allison, was studying abroad in Australia. I had been working at the Bench for a little over a year, hadn’t yet bought Bones, and had no idea what to do with server money after working minimum wage retail jobs for the previous six years. So when she suggested I come visit, I laughed at the absurdity of the idea. But then I took a look at the stack of cash on my desk (because apparently putting money in the bank was too hard?) and asked myself when I was ever going to have the opportunity to tour Australia with my sister again (probably never). So I took a semester off of school and planned a two-week trip for September, which is springtime in Australia. Now keep in mind, I had more money than I was used to, but it’s not like I was rolling in it or anything. So I’m going to break down how I traveled to Australia on a budget and share my favorite experiences in a series of posts (because it would be one hell of a long post if I tried to include it all at once). In this post, I’ll give the cliff notes of where we chose to go (and why) and how we got there for (relatively) cheap.
Locations
First, I’ll share with you the four different cities we spent time in, and why I chose them. I flew into Sydney. I feel like it’s unnecessary to explain why you want to go to Sydney. It’s what everyone thinks of when they think Australia. The Opera House is there. P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way Sydney is there (actually it’s not. You know I checked). It’s got this interesting mixed history that includes Aboriginal culture, the country’s convict roots, and this exciting sense that there might be something magical or bizarre around any corner (we’ll talk more about that later). Plus it’s usually the cheapest airport to fly into from the US.
We visited Cairns. This is where you go if you want to snorkel the Great Barrier Reef (hint: you want to). Cairns has this relaxed surfer vibe. No one is in a hurry. You are expected to sit in a restaurant for a few hours while you eat and talk and laugh. There are beaches and zoos and half of the city looks like it belongs in a botanical garden. This is where I would live if I didn’t live in the US, hands down.
We visited Ayers Rock. This is literally a tiny resort smack in the middle of Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, which is smack in the middle of the Australian bush and smack in the middle of the country (seriously, Google it). It’s a little expensive to get there, and a little expensive to stay there, but it’s an amazing experience. If you want to really get to experience indigenous culture, the bush, and you really want to see how many stars there are without light pollution, this place is second to none. It is also home to Uluru, a UNESCO World Heritage site and Aboriginal sacred site.
We visited Newcastle. This is a city on the coast about 3 hours north of Sydney by train. It is also where my sister lived and went to school while she was in Australia, so obviously we stayed here for a while. It feels similar to Cairns in that it is very relaxed, but it also intermixes some college town vibes and some more down-to-earth energy that I attribute to its industrial roots, which you can get a feel for at the Newcastle Museum.
Plane Tickets
I spent about 3 months searching for a plane ticket to Sydney from Detroit. This was before the dawn of Scott’s Cheap Flights (which is awesome and I highly recommend if you haven’t already subscribed to either the free or paid version), so I had to do my own digging to find a good deal on a flight. I ended up paying about $1400 for a round trip ticket. These days you can find a ticket for $1200-1300 if you’re flexible about your travel dates, but you can easily spend a thousand dollars more than that if you aren’t so flexible. That flight was easily the biggest expense of the whole trip, but obviously necessary. Then, we had to secure travel between Cairns, Sydney, and Ayers Rock. I went back to digging around for the best combination of flights for our money. I ended up using Kayak.com’s multi-city tool to book from Sydney to Cairns, Cairns to Ayers Rock, and Ayers Rock back to Sydney for around $600. Not too terrible for three flights, especially since just a round trip to Ayers Rock from either Sydney or Cairns can cost you more than that! So all in all I ended up spending about $2000 on flights for this trip. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but you could certainly do worse for five flights, and the real savings on this trip is yet to be revealed. Stay tuned for the next post in this series, about our time in Sydney, including accommodations and entertainment on the cheap!