We had a spur of the moment and booked our Australia flights during our post-Christmas, January blues. We had seen the STA Travel offer on minimum flight deposits from £49 and took this as a sure sign we had to book and plan our trip! I was so excited to get the date in my diary and with my boyfriends family living on Australia’s east coast we had talked of the trip for a while prior to booking, and it seemed like the perfect time to book and plan our next adventure….
There were however a couple of elements we needed to decide on prior to our adventure, which meant that we needed to act quickly and do a little preparation. See below, the recommendations of things to do, before booking that big trip down under – the trip of a lifetime. Enjoy!
1 Know your destination. Firstly we decided on where we wanted to go – we knew that we wanted to stay with family close to Queensland’s Brisbane but also that we wanted to explore ourselves a little more further afield. We therefore decided to stay in Queensland and wander the Gold and Sunshine Coast with family for around two weeks, then head onto Sydney for week three, and enjoy our final couple of days in the New South Wales capital. This took us a little bit of time to work out than planned, so I would recommend you do your research and work out exactly where you want to go before looking at flights, as otherwise you might book the wrong flight – It’s also such a long way to travel to miss out! (Granted you’ll probably be able to change your flight if you realise there is another place you would like to see, but like anything, there will always be added expenditure).
2 Give yourself time. As we only had a maximum of three weeks, we had to be realistic on the amount we could cover in the short time. Australia as a country is massive so we knew we couldn’t see (unfortunately) see everything. Give yourself time, certainly make sure you make the most of it, but you don’t want to equally be rushing around and not able to take it all in – the trip is a long one, I would recommend not doing any less than a three week trip to Australia, it’s just such a long trip to get there… I honestly don’t think we realised this at first, there are so many amazing places to see that you will never have heard of!
3 Book way in advance. Our arrival and exit destinations affected our flights, so once we had made this decision, we called STA Travel asap to confirm this could be done and booked straight away over the phone. In order to get the full three weeks down under (the very maximum we could do) we needed our departure date from London to be only a couple of days before Christmas, this meant that flight prices would only increase the longer we left it to book so we had to move quickly, hence booking our flights in January for the end of the year…
4 Know the climate/season. A lot of activities are seasonal and not available all year round – for example if you’re wanting to do whale watching you will need to visit in Australia’s winter (this is something we missed, so I’ve told myself we must go back for this in the future!). We also went in the peak holiday season (Christmas!), which meant that not only is everything more expensive but again, we needed to book further in advance to avoid everything being fully booked. Australia’s Winter is also our Summer and vice versa, so make sure you take this into account!
5 Make a bucket list. We had a few big trips planned in prior to the trip (such as Fraser Island, Great Barrier Reef, Bundaberg Turtle Sanctuary etc.) but other family day trips we all decided on as a group – sitting around together to make sure we agreed and covered everything everyone would like to do. This was definitely the best way to do this for us. Also by doing it that way we all got to do a real mix of activities – the perfect way to really explore a new place. I guess we were also there to spend time with family (who were effectively our tour guides), so it’s slightly different to going to a complete new place or just travelling solo, but all the same it’s worth making that bucket list.
6 Travel requirements. Do you know the visa entry requirements for your trip to Australia? Being both British we had to get an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA). Easily obtainable on the Australian .gov website – I’d always recommend you do this prior to booking your flights! Another would be to make sure you have an update passport – it’s easily missed, and something you would hate to have…
7 Australian Dollars (AUD). I swear by using my Monzo debit card – I’ve mentioned this on previous blogs, but it gives a like for like on the exchange rate, changing daily, you also get a live update on your phone app as soon as you’ve purchased something using it, telling you exactly how much it was in your home currency (for me the UK). I know Monzo right now is only available in the UK, but there are similar banks abroad that do the exact same thing (for example N26 in Germany – where I am currently living) so it’s worth doing your research! It’s also worth noting most places will take card, so if you don’t need cash you can just use your plastic. Using Monzo or another card also limited me to using the amount I had set myself prior to the trip, which helped me to be careful, but equally towards the end of the trip treat myself with the remaining amount!
Bloomandwild.com – £10 off a beautiful bouquet of letterbox flowers
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