Ok, If I was to plan a big holiday to Australia with a nearly 4 year old, what should I keep in mind??

[notyummy]

We have relatives in Southern Australia (near Melbourne) who we have said we will try and visit. To keep costs down, it would be good to do it before DD starts school next year. We could travel May 2010 when she would be 3.10, thus avoiding school holidays and higher prices.

Maximum time allowable would be 3 weeks. I like the idea of stopping off en route and breaking the LONNNG plane journey.

Any ideas please? Good stop offs? PLaces that we must visit in OZ with a child that age? Don't want to spend all the time travelling, but obviously would like to see the place having travelled so far.

Or are we just mad travelling so far with a relatively young child? DD is pretty good and we travel a fair amount....but we thus far have avoided long haul.

Bump

lots of people on here have flown to Oz with young children. We first went when dd1 was 9 months and stopped in Hong Kong. I thought I would hate it but I really loved it.

Last time dd1 was 3.9 and dd2 was 13 months and we stopped off in Dubai which was also good although for some reason the jet lag felt alot worse.

We are going again in December (6 and 4 now) and haven't yet decided what route to take and I will take the dd's by myself and dh will join us later.

Not familiar with that part of Aus as I have relatives in Brisbane so we go there.

why May? It will be winter there, but appreciate you may want to avoid the heights of summer

As someone who has twice taken my children to Australia to visit relatives (also in Brisbane, although we also made the point of visiting other parts of the country while there) the one thing I think you should keep in mind is that, aged 4, your dd is very unlikely to retain more than a very hazy memory of the trip.

If you waited a few more years, she would remember it with perfect clarity.

Just a thought.

Mmm food for thought. Thanks folks. The resan I had plumped for May was to try and avoid full Winter in Aus, (June/July/August I was told). I didn't want to go earlier because she would be even younger and less likely to remember anything (Dumbledoresgirls point) plus may not cope with the travelling. Because we wanted to go for 3 weeks we thought we should prob go before she started school, as we didn't want to be forced into taking her during the summer holidays here.....full winter in Aus.

Not sure what I think now though!

notyummy, with regard to going in school holidays, what we did (had some school aged children both times) was tack our holiday on to a school holiday but also taking a few days out of the school term. Actually, in both cases it was the Easter holiday and the weather was ok in Australia though obviously not the best. Anyway, as we were visiting relatives, we did not have difficulty obtaining permission from the headteachers involved to take the children out of school. And I am definitely of the opinion that my children learnt more on their trips that they missed from school iyswim.

than not that

3 weeks isn't very long.

We went for 6 weeks (without kids) and felt we only just scratched the surface. We were knackered when we got back and when we 1st arrived, we did do a lot though.

Also research the weather. We went in July Aug and it was perishing in Melbourne. I took no warm clothes and froze my arse off until we got up to Cairns.

It was a fantastic experience though, will definately take the kids but will wait until they're older(they're 5,5 and 4) so they can remember it all and dp and I can cope with the flight and 3 dc

We did Langkawi on the way there and KL on the way back. I agree to try to stretch it to 4 weeks. Dont worry about DC ages, just enjoy the family time and they can always view the photos.DC 7yrs and 13mths
Previous trip DS 2yrs to NZ took 5 1/2 wks and did around the world. South Africa Perth, NZ, Fiji and San Francisco.