Affordable family holiday to Australia

[vincettenoir]

We are thinking of a family holiday to Oz in the school holidays next year.

We would like to go to 2 destinations (probably Sydney and Melbourne) but have no idea to go about it.

We don't know whether it's more affordable to do a package holiday or do it independently. I'm not even sure which cos offer package holidays to Oz. Can anyone offer advice please?

You can’t do a traditional package holiday to Australia like you would to say, Majorca.
but you can ask companies like trailfinders to put together a package for you depending on budget/time/where you want to go. You will get some protections that you wouldn’t do if you booked everything independent so is worth seeing what they can come up with

its an extremely expensive place to travel to at the moment and not cheap once there.

if going anywhere near Melbourne I’d recommend getting a car and driving round the vineyards and south on the great ocean road. It was lovely.

Ooh exciting. We booked everything independently. It took quite a lot of organising but the planning was half the fun!

Some thoughts/questions. Which school holidays? British summer is Australian winter so the south of Australia is not at its best. What do you like to do? Sydney and Melbourne are fine but they are just cities (apologies to those who live there) and it’s outside the cities that are exciting. So for example if it’s summer in Sydney then I would say a few days in Sydney with travels into the blue mountains and along the coast would be lovely.

You probably don’t need an agent and if you want 2 cities flights are easy to arrange (Qantas virgin jetstar or Rex are about the only providers and there will be 20 flights a day between Melbourne and Sydney or even a train for some fun)

if you mean British summer then go north- Darwin, far North Queensland etc will give you something very different and it would be a lot of fun with crocodiles and tropical adventures

m how old are your kids?

The flights in UK school holidays are astronomical at the moment, we have family there so we had to visit, but the flights alone in July/August last year were £2000/person, it may be marginally cheaper if you can fly out of Heathrow as we went from Manchester. I am all for organising everything independently, but worth getting a price from trailfinders and seeing how it compares. Phillip Island and Great Ocean Road good excursions from Melbourne, Blue Mountains good from Sydney and Sydney itself can fill several days. That said if I was flying all that way for a holiday I probably wouldn't choose 2 cities, I'd pair Sydney with the Great Barrier Reef or the outback (Kakadu or Uluru) for more of a contrast.

I’ll answer when I’ve stopped laughing at ‘affordable’.

Ok, more seriously, I’m not aware of packaged holidays to Australia from the UK but Trailfinders could put something together for you. Also consider STA Travel. They are less expensive/‘exclusive’ than Trailfinders.

You could also considering booking it yourself.

Australia is a big country. You could fly into Sydney and out of Melbourne (or vice versa) and rent a car to drive between them. Driving in Australia is much easier than the UK and it gives you the opportunity to see the country outside major cities. You could drive from Sydney to Melbourne in one day. But why would you? You could stop in Canberra (Australia’s actual capital city), Albury, the Yarra Valley. Or drive along the coast (not as nice as you would hope without making lots of detours).

Trains are also an option but they tend to be quite slow and crappy with the exception of https://www.journeybeyondrail.com.au and they are not really in the easily ‘affordable’ bracket.

Apartment hotels are quite popular in Australia. Try the Accor group, you will earn points and get discounts, and they have a lot of properties in Sydney and Melbourne as well as along that route. It is a good way to keep costs manageable as you aren’t eating out every night.

I am assuming you mean our summer, their winter next year. Based on 3 weeks in August this year, flights to Sydney are £1300 each return. You may get a deal from somewhere like trailfinders to include flights in and out of different airports. Best thing is to phone them and get quotes. Ditto with places like the flight centre and even Qatar, Singapore, Qantas etc direct. Where are you flying from?

You sound a bit vague about your reasons for Sydney and Melbourne. What do you want to see? Do you want to Hire a car, travel outwith the city etc?

Affordable!!!

Which 'school holidays'?
Flights will be £1000 each at least. In high season you can double or triple that.
Sydney is madly expensive. The Travelodge at Wynyard is £200 a night.
Work from there.
No such thing as a package holiday to Aus. Treat it like a city break booking. Trailfinders can put together an itinerary

This is a friend of a friend, we used her to book a holiday and I know she has a really good knowledge of Australia, hopefully she can help?
https://www.travelcounsellors.co.uk/kate.legate/

What is 'affordable'. Unless you have family to live with you'll need a budget of £10-15k.

Prices to Aus have gone up massively. We booked in Feb 21, so when Aus was still shut due to Covid, to go in Oct 22 and we paid just shy of £8k for 2 of us for 3.5 weeks. This was a trip organised by a travel consultant. We also spent another 4.5k while we were there. I dread to think how much the same holiday would cost now.

Melbourne and Sydney are quite different but they are both cities and I agree with the poster who says a lot of the interesting things are outside of cities. However, if it is cities you are after then they are a good shout. When you say affordable what is your budget?

Have a look for travelnation on Google, they have some very interesting ideas for inventories.
I'm thinking of trying to combine one of these with a visit to my brother in Sydney.

Agree with PP that Melbourne & Sydney in UK summer holidays are not ideal. I hated Melbourne when I went at that time of year because it was cold and rainy.

I also don’t think there is enough to do as a tourist in either city to warrant spending that much time there. They are nice places to live but mainly modern cities with not much in the way of sights. It’s a long way to go for a beach.

On the other hand, I loved the NT and the northern parts of Queensland and Western Australia.

I’d probably pick Cairns, Darwin or Perth as a base if I only had 2 weeks.

Three weeks in Brisbane, flights and hotel £ 6k (for just me, admittedly in premium economy). Also 🙄 at affordable. If only it was, I'd be out there a lot more.

I have just returned from Australia and agree with the other posters - it is not super affordable. Flights to Australia are at least £1k in economy. Accommodation is around £200-£300 a night (for a hotel anyway) but I thought eating out was similar to UK prices.

I think Australia is a bit far to fly to just to visit Sydney and Melbourne. Visit North Australia as it’ll be bearable in their winter. Sydney and Melbourne won’t be as enjoyable as it’ll be their winter! Rent a car and visit the countryside.

We flew into Perth from KL with AirAsia to keep costs down, then travelled overland. For cheaper accommodation, have a look at accor hotels in perth — they often do decent deals if you book early. We stayed at one near the CBD that was clean and had easy access to public transport, which made getting around really simple. Look out for family room options too, some slept all four of us comfortably.

We went out to Oz last year for 3 weeks in Oct/Nov. Sydney was the warmest, Melbourne and Adelaide were chilly. I agree with the other posters that there isn't enough to do in the cities to warrant staying there for that amount of time. You could consider a trip to Uluru, as the temp would probably be more bearable, when we were there it was about 38 degrees so too hot so we reworked our itinerary.
We flew into Sydney then an internal flight to Melbourne, hired a car and drove along the Great Ocean Road up to Coonawarra and then onto Adelaide and wine country. We organised our own itinerary and didn't use a travel agent. So if you do decide to do that here a few tips:
Internal flights have different luggage allowances so check those. I cant remember which one we used but I think Virgin had a strict policy and the one we used allowed us to purchase weight allowance.
If you hire a car in Melbourne, in CBD they have this weird hook turning, which we youtubed and then decided to hire a car outside of CBD, took a cab to the rental place and onto the motorway from there 😂
There are lots of travel blogs that give information on distances to towns on the GRO and where the petrol stations are so quite easy to plan where you will stop overnight. GRO is well worth doing and was the highlight of our trip.
Driving in Oz is really easy. most of the rentals are SUV's.
We did Air B'nb in Melbourne and Adelaide and Hotel in Sydney.
Eating out is cheap but overall it wasn't a cheap holiday.
Also if you are going in low season make sure that restaurants etc are open (especially along the GRO/ countryside) when we went in Coonawarra there was only one pub open when we were there. 😀

I think overall cost for us was about £12k or thereabouts but that included 2 nights in Singapore on the way back.

Book independently. I haven't seem any package holidays to Aus. It is not an affordable option unfortunately but you can do things cheaper/ on a budget.

Double check the weather for the holiday you want to go - its opposite seasons over there. We've been (Brisbane) in April and Oct/Nov and the weather is still fantastic for us! Oct/Nov was near 40 degrees when we went last time. Christmas is the most expensive time to fly. Our summer is their winter so not as expensive. Its still low 20's though in July.

Oct half term (plus a week) last year - for 2 adults and 2 children flights was around £5000K and we booked as far in advance as we could get. This included all the seat reservations (which was £400 alone!!!) and airport parking. This was one of the cheapest options.
Play around with the day you leave - we were tied to leaving on a Friday which made it more expensive. If you can go Monday it was a few £100 cheaper.

Car hire was cheap compared to the UK. around £250 for the whole 2 weeks for a mid size SUV.

Accommodation can be cheap if you skip having a pool (you probably wouldn't need if you went in Aus winter/our summer). Air BnBs are always good and then you can self cater rather than eating out all the time. We found eating out expensive but we find the same in the UK too so don't eat out often.

We went earlier this year (easter) Flights from Manchester with Qatar. Sydney for 3 days then on a cruise with Royal carribean. We did Blue mountains, Sydney harbour bridge, great barrier reef, daintree rainforest, Darwin NT, Bali and Singapore (2 days) then home. Was beyond amazing! 2a2c - 8k... 4k spending money so 12k in total.

Why Sydney and Melbourne? The cities are the least interesting part of Australia. If you are going all that way, go to Queensland and the Red Centre to see the things you cannot see anywhere else in the world.

This is a March 2024 thread.