Rough cost Oz 3 week 4 people

[camelia66]

DH, myself & DD x 2 (16,18) are hoping to visit Australia next year.

I'm guesstimating £700 return flights each, after a little research.

Has anyone done 3 weeks and is able to give me a ball park figure for accomm, if not any advice on whether accom & food is roughly similar in price to UK?

If you've been, which areas did you choose and did you hire a car? Are internal flights expensive?

I'm trying to get a handle on if we can even afford to do this. Any advice/help welcome! Thank you x

£700 for flights would be very cheap £1000 is more realistic.

We're also looking for next year and I'm budgeting about £1300 per person for a Singapore Airlines return flight, admittedly to include a stopover in Singapore on the way out.

The Aus $ is currently worth about 48p if that is any help with your calculations.

We've been a couple of times before and found the prices no more expensive than here but the range and quality of hotels was much better.

Have a look at JetStar for internal flights and also check out hotel prices using TripAdvisor. A lot can depend on the time of year you visit.

You really need to narrow down where you want to go before people can help with accommodation. Australia is measured in days of travel rather than miles (old joke) so you need to work out where you want to go and how much you want to travel around.

Flights will be around £849+ depending on when you go and who you fly with (booked MIL flight beginning of December 2015 for end of January 2016)

Flights don't need to be as expensive as some have suggested depending on when you go. We recently looked at going next Oct/Nov and flights were coming in at around £600-700 with Etihad I think. I didn't look extensively.

In terms of costs out there although you get $2 to each £, accomodation and food is expensive so try to ignore the exchange rate and expect to pay UK prices.

Wombat is right, Australia is vast and you would benefit fron understanding where roughly you want to spend time. There are some amazing trips you can make but it will deoend how far you are willing/can afford to travel. Are you planning to fly into Sydney? Personally I wouldn't travel South. You could travel as far noth as Cairnes but with 3 weeks you would need to fly. The Wit Sunday Islands and Great Barrier Reef are amazing and for me this was one of the highlights of our trip. But that's fairly far up the coast. A few days driving or a flight. Id give 4 days at least to Sydney. The blue mountains a short drive from Sydney are lovely but it depends what you are looking for.

In fairness it's a long time since I went and I was only in my 20's with a very tight budget, but we stuck to the east coast. We couldn't afford to get to Ayres Rock. You'd need to book a trip out there. I would have loved to have seen that and a bit of the outback, but time and money are inevitably always again at you.

What sort of things are you interested in seeing here?

You can check the cost of internal flights with www.webjet.com.au - prices aren't as cheap as Europe but you can get some good deals, especially with the current exchange rate.

What sort of accomodation are you thinking of staying in? Hotelscombined.com will give you indicative costs for Sydney hotels. There's a thriving airbnb scene here too.

If you want to hire a camper van or RV to drive up the coast book early. You can find good deals on www.drivenow.com.au.

Food is more expensive than the UK, particularly packaged - if you are happy cooking then I don't think you'll find it too punishing.

Have a look at some of the restaurants in Coogee for beachside cafe/restaurant prices too.

Wow I'm overwhelmed by the help & support already! Thank you.

I haven't spent hours and hours researching yet as it might be a non-starter budget wise, but def we want

A few days in Sydney
Visit GBR although we are not divers - can it still be appreciated?
Whit Sunday islands
Without wanting to sound cheesy, seeing kangaroos and koalas are a must! Not sure if wild or ?
I don't think we are too bothered about Uluru.
We like beaches, beautiful scenery, mountains, shopping and sightseeing! Def not into bungee, potholing, abseiling etc (just not adventurous in that way) We'd be more than happy to stay in hotels similar in standard to UKs premier inns, Travelodge etc.

Is £10-12,000 including flights sensible?

I would look at the Australian Reptile Park which is about an hour and a half from Sydney. You can actually walk around and touch Kangaroos as they sunbathe. Same with Koala's and other bits that you queue up and have photos with. If you go to Taronga Zoo on the island just off Sydney (the big one) they have MASSES amounts of animals that you can see. But you wont have any interaction with. The Reptile Park you could do a lazy half a day meandering around and spend as little or as long as you wanted. Taronga is a full out Howletts/London Zoo style which will leave you knackered.

If you're in Sydney I'd hire a car for a day or 2 and drive to the Reptile Park, and take a look at the Blue Mountains. There's some good trails you can do around those.

Internal flights look at Jetstar. The Whitsunday Islands... I stayed on Hamilton Island and it is expensive. Airlie Beach on the mainland is where you could stay and get boat tours out to the islands and maybe snorkle etc on day trips. If you can afford a stay on Hamilton, I'd do it. It's beautiful.

When I did the GBR I stayed in Cairns and did a tour from there to go diving. It was a small ferry type boat and the soul purpose was for Scuba.

I did my whole trip with my OH for around £2000 each excluding flights. But we're big drinkers, big party people and adrenaline junkies so we did sky dives and all sorts of things. We also ate in some pretty nice places. Australia is somewhere you can pick your budget - within reason.

Oh and my trip was 3 weeks. But I spend about 5/6nights of the trip with friends.

I'd say it depends when you go. I'm tied to school hols and couldn't find flights for much less than £1100 but then I only wanted 1 stop each way.

I would say that's more than reasonable although check the prices for the Whitsunday islands - flights and accommodation can add up.

You'll have no problems meeting Koalas and Kangaroos. Depending on where you stay you'll have them in your back yard (roos, Koalas you might well hear rather than see). Currumbin wildlife park is very close to the Gold Coast airport if you decide to visit there and is also a good place to see native wild life. I second a trip to Taronga and the Australian Reptile Park.

You don't have to scuba, there are plenty of cruises out to the reef from Cairns. Some lovely coastal drives all the way up the coast from Sydney.

Shopping is a bit meh if you're used to the UK tbh. I struggle to bring gifts home to people in the UK. Sightseeing is great though and the ocean beautiful.

Agreed with regi on the shopping front. Tourist stuff and a sheepskin rug from Paddys market was what i got. Clothes wise it's much the same here and not much cheaper

We did 3 weeks in Oz last August - and had a fabulous time! We had an idea of what we wanted to do as we lived in Sydney for a couple of years 20 years ago!

We flew Singapore Airlines to Sydney - it was about £900. We stayed in airbnb properties - and one holiday rental from an agency. The airbnb properties were great - this is one we stayed in in Manly a beachside suburb a scenic ferry ride from Sydney city centre and this is another. We were paying about between £100-£150 a night for accommodation - that was a self catering place with 3 bedrooms - there were 5 of us.

I wonder if Wombat is talking about Featherdale Wildlife park about an hour and a half to the west of Sydney? We went and it was a great small park with koalas to pat, and wallabies and roos to feed. We then drove an hour on to the Blue Mountains which you'd love if you like beautiful scenery - panoramic views and amazing waterfalls.

We then did an internal flight with Virgin Australia from Sydney to Cairns - the flight was about £200 return for each of us. We visited the Great Barrier Reef which is spectacular even if you're not a diver. We went with a company that had a pontoon at the reef where you could snorkel, dive or go on a semi-submersible (amazing) or a glass bottomed boat. The rainforest around Cairns is definitely worth visiting too.

We found that overall food prices averaged out about the same as the UK and eating out prices were similar too in the family type cafes and pizza places we ate at.

We hired a car for most of our time in Oz and rental for a large car (one was a Honda CRV) was about £30 a day.

Hope that gives you an idea of the costs involved. Ask if you've any queries - i like re-living my dream holiday!

Wow so much info esp Pannetone, thank you :) I really appreciate it

Hi Pannetone. No it's definitely the reptile park :) been there twice and googled it. It's very small and you can do it in a few hours.

I've googled now Wombat and the Australian Reptile Park(despite only having the word reptile in its name!) seems a similar set up to Featherdale Wildlife Park. And I entirely agree with you about Taronga - much more of a 'big city' zoo that you'd get all over the world - the smaller parks specialise in Aussie critters. I suppose it depends if you want to see African giraffes in Australia against a backdrop of the opera house and harbour bridge!

I did both to make sure I didn't miss out. But all I was interested in interacting with the animals and touching (naughty I know), so the smaller ones were def more for me. Kids would go either way I guess!