Australia :)

October 29th 2010 - December 1st, 2010


Australia is a really great country to backpack in. It is very similar to Canada and North America in many ways, but the landscape is quite different and there are very distinct flora and fauna. It is also a great place to meet a lot of young travellers from all over the world. Many backpackers who come to Australia stay for long periods of time. Most work to be able to afford the cost of travelling in Australia, so finding work and getting a working-travel visa is very easy. Because Ali and I were only planning on spending one month in Australia we decided not to get the rather expensive working visa. Instead, we got a three-month tourist visa and decided to spend the month travelling down the east coast from Cairns to Melbourne.

We booked our flight to Australia while in Bali for October 29^th 2010. Our flight was from Denpasar to Darwin and then to Cairns. We stayed in Australia until December 1^st at which point we caught a flight out of Melbourne over to Christchurch, New Zealand.

We did not plan out what we wanted to do in Australia at all. We instead listened to fellow travellers and got their advice about the best places to go to on the east coast. We decided the cheapest way to get around this country was to buy a "hop-on-hop-off" Greyhound bus ticket. This is the way most backpackers were travelling and it turned out to be the most efficient and economical way to travel down the coast.

Our destinations on the east coast ended up being:

Cairns
Airlie Beach
Hervey Bay
Fraser Island
Noosa
Brisbane
Byron Bay
Sydney
Melbourne