General: Australia

Australia is popular with all travellers, from budget backpackers to luxury holidaymakers, and it isn't surprising considering anything you could possible want to do on a holiday, you can do here. If your idea of a perfect holiday is sunbathing on the sand and the most energetic thing you do is walk to the cocktail stall you can do it here, if you perfect holiday is skiing or snowboarding you can do it here, if your perfect holiday is shopping in the big cities you can do it here, if you enjoy sightseeing, bushwalking, hiking, camping, adventure holidays, getting close to nature and seeing ... more

On 25 April 2004 I was in Sydney with a few friends. We had just been to the wedding of a friend from back home (Scotland) and had 3 full weeks to go. What to do next? Drive the 2,500 kilometres north to Cairns obviously! This is the story of that journey and why I would recommend the places I visited to anyone, just don’t drive! We had 13 days to see a bit of Australia and get back to Sydney before flying to New Zealand. Loads of time we thought! How wrong was I. The funny thing was when we eventually got back to Sydney I noticed how cheap the internal flights are in Australia…we could have ... more

As Marilyn Munroe once purred to an eager camera lens: "Ever notice that 'what the hell' is always the right decision?" Well, with the news that around half-a-million public servants will eventually be downsized over the next four years to bring down the deficit and so half-a-million private sector workers sure to follow its time to get out of town if you can afford it or you are young and adventurous enough to try and enjoy life whilst we all flounder back home. Their minimum wage is one of the highest in the world and their unemployment rate is at its lowest for 30 years. Britain is broken ... more

As I have a mate who is currently doing the whole 'year in oz' experience, I thought it might be a good opportunity to go see what all the fuss is about. So I booked myself 5 weeks off work and got myself a flight and headed on down. As I decided to go during the busiest season (xmas & new year) my flights were about £860 with emerites but even this was booked 6mths in advance, so it was quite expensive to get there. The flight itself is NOT as bad as I thought it would be, though it did take about 26hrs in total to get there but will do a seperate review on emirates at another point. Once ... more

On the 7th of February 2006, I travelled to Perth, Western Australia. I had no idea what to expect, I was terrified that I would be back on the plane home in a fortnights time as a failure. I have never done anything on this magnitude before and had no idea where to start when I arrived at my destination. By the time I left on the 1st of November 2006 and arrived back in my hometown, I knew I made a serious mistake, I was back in my home town for one hour and I said to myself 'I need to get out of this country'. Since then I've been getting my life together and making it my goal to get back to ... more