Flying to Australia for 10 days - is that mad?

[sqweise]

I know everyone will say you need 3 weeks minimum or something similar, but the fact of the matter is, that I can't get that amount of time off, and won't be able to for years.

I have 12 days off coming up and would like to visit Sydney and maybe a couple of nights in northern Queensland. So with a day of flying each way, I could have 10 days on the ground in Oz.

Has anyone else done such a short trip?

Yes, I have done a week before too.

I do enjoy flying though, and find it very easy to sleep on the plane.

I have done 10 days or less a couple of times (excluding travelling days). But I am Australian so never a one off holiday for me. You would only be able to see a couple of cities (e.g Sydney , Melbourne)or one state (e.g. QLD, NT) properly

Sydney to FNQ, the flight time is 3 hours 10, add in the sitting around the airport time and that is another 2 days gone. You would be better off looking at day trips from Sydney.

Also would you be travelling in the Australian summer? FNQ can be very hot and humid.

It took me 2-3 days to recover from jet lag flying to Sydney. Yes, we did stuff but it was exhausting. You’ll lose another day travelling from Sydney to QLD where you might fly into Cairns but have to travel onwards from there.

I think it would be OK if you base yourself in one spot and chose your season wisely (again, it could take a while to get used to the heat/humidity).

I would do it for a wedding or something that I wanted to attend but not for a holiday, the flight is looooooooong

I agree that internal flights would eat into your time so as a previous poster suggested, I would focus on Sydney and do a couple of day trips etc. maybe the blue mountains?

I guess it depends on what you enjoy doing and when you go. Bear in mind winter in Sydney can be quite cool so don’t expect tropical weather.

I was living in Sydney and flew to the UK for a wedding for less than a week, it was kind of exhausting but don't regret doing it. Now living in the UK, but we go back to Sydney to see family fairly often and usually it takes the best part of a week to get over the jet lag, that's in UK summer when the time difference is 9 hours not 11. That said I would absolutely go for 12 days if it was just me, but just be prepared for the timezone changes particularly when you have to work when you get back at this end. Also remember that if you fly out lets say on a Saturday morning you don't land in Sydney until Sunday night Australia time. Obviously works in reverse coming back, so if you leave Sunday afternoon/evening you will land in the UK early hours of Monday morning. If you want to see both Sydney and Cairns then try and get an open-jaw flight so you go back to Asia from Cairns and don't have to back track to Sydney to return to the UK.

Flights from the U.K. to the Far East and Australia do not tend to leave until evening so around 9.00pm and later.

It takes the best part of two days to arrive in Sydney so if the aircraft left Heathrow Saturday evening you would arrive into Sydney at around 5;30 am on Monday.

With this amount of time I’d stick to only Sydney and the surrounding areas if you still want to travel there.

These aircraft will stopover on the way to Australia either in Dubai or further afield like Singapore. This also enables crew changes together with refuelling and cleaning the aircraft.

I did it for 9 days once, my best friend lived there and I got a stupidly cheap deal on flights that was too good an opportunity to miss. As long as you know how to manage jet lag you’ll be fine.

A weekend might be too little but ten days seems perfectly fine. My DH once flew to NY just for a lunch meeting (expensive clients).

Not a chance in hell for me. I am Australian and have done the trip too many times. It's a four week minimum for me.

The jet lag is just too brutal for me (in my early 50s).

Top tip to minimise jet lag: if you can, get a morning flight. With a short stopover, around 2 hours say, you’ll arrive in Sydney in the early evening. That means that if you haven’t had much rest on the flights, you can have a couple of hours to unwind/eat/have a drink, and then go to bed at ‘normal’ time.

I’d definitely go!

My DD lives in Melbourne and holiday allowances meant that I could only go for ten days (allowing myself a couple of days when I got back in case of jet lag). It's perfectly doable, but the way I do it is to fly so I will arrive around 7.30pm Melbourne time. I can't sleep on flights, so I'm awake and in transit for around 24 hours, arrive, say hello and have some food and then fall into bed at about 9pm and sleep until the following morning, when I can be fairly sociable. A couple of early nights thereafter sorts out the jet lag and I can have a perfectly nice time. Then I fly back, have a day or so to sort my head out and go back to work.

Ten days is plenty in Oz if you don't want to be jetting about internally and want to just see one or maybe two cities (I've flown up to Sidney a few times without ill effect but I wouldn't want to fly across too many time zones).