Australia nutshell

Australia isn’t a country, it’s a continent. On the other hand, vast areas of Australia are pretty much empty. There’s plenty enough to see but it can take a long time to get there. Civilised but expensive is the way to describe travelling through Australia. In fact in most ways its comparable in price with time spent in England; B&Bs, eating out, trains and car hire, etc. This may come as a surprise, but right now it is definitely cheaper to holiday in America than Australia. At the time of this nutshell 1 Australian dollar = £0.66, or in other words £10 = $15.

Accommodation

Except for one chilly B&B in Victoria we didn’t stay anywhere in Australia that was uncomfortable. On the other hand, we never found anywhere to stay that cost less than $80 per night. I can think back to our first week in south-west Australia when we passed up on a nice looking farm cottage because it was $100 per night and we were still hoping to hit our £100 per day budget. Now at the end of our trip we grab a place if it’s $120. We like staying in places with a bit of character, and Australia has loads of them. Farm house cottages, city loft apartments, cosy B&Bs, stylish motels. But you won’t find them any cheaper than the UK.

We tried a few backpacker places too, though only when they had ensuite rooms. However these are typically closets with nothing more than a bed, a bedside table and a cubbyhole bathroom attached. And underheated for the winter. It works if you only want the cheapest bed available for a night, but it gets old quickly. Next cheapest would be a generic motel, lacking in character but always perfectly well equipped and usually around $100 or more in touristy areas.

Food

It’s easy to find good food in Australia almost anywhere, and easy to self-cater as well. Though I never understood why avocados in supermarkets were more expensive than the UK and never anywhere near ripe. Self-catering is definitely the way to eat cheaply in Australia, as there are plenty of self-catering places to stay. Step into a restaurant and you’ll probably be looking at $50+ for a meal for two with a drink. Oh, and beware of portion sizes. Some places serve enough on one dish for two people, others serve a perfectly decent portion. In some places you could order two entrees (read: starters) and that’s plenty, other places the entres will be more like a starter in England. Safest is to ask the waiter’s advice on how much to order.

There’s a bit more about food in Australia in this blog.

Drink

Coffee is no problem in Australia. Sure, I had some crummy ones but there’s nowhere in the world where you won’t get the odd feeble coffee. Generally it’s great. My own tipple is the flat white, which I think has exported to the UK now so I needn’t explain it.

I’ve also been sold on Australian wine, though with caveats. I still think that a lot of mass-produced mediocrity reaches the UK; tasteless crispy dry whites and juvenile fruit-juice reds. But the small wineries we visited offered excellent wines crossing all varieties, and I even found a Sauvignon Blanc to love. Restaurants right up to fine dining in Australia typically only bother to include one or two old world wines on their list if at all, and quite right too. If I compare our wine tasting in Australia with our wine tasting trips to France, the average level of quality is definitely higher here.

Transport

Unless you’re only interested in city life, you need a car to explore Australia. And you probably need to take flights within the country too. The whole of Europe fits snugly inside the outline of Australia, so if you intend to explore more than one state then you’re looking at huge road mileage.

Driving is easy in Australia. They drive on the left, the roads are wide and excellent, and the Australian drivers stay fairly close to the speed limit and are generally fairly cautious. No worries, mate, as they might say. We ended up on a lot of dirt roads too, and most of them are fine for a normal 2WD car as long as you stay alert for sudden corners, potholes or corrugation-n-n-n-n-ns!

Car hire prices are probably on a par with the UK. Based on our experience with The Ghan I would say that long-distance trains in Australia aren’t worth your time and money; cheaper and quicker to fly, and you’re not even missing out on a special experience. Wish I didn’t have to say that, but there it is. The couple of cities that we spent time in, Sydney and Melbourne, have pretty good public transport and certainly modern if not super-cheap. But neither of them are metropoli and so you can get around a lot just walking.

Weather

Don’t imagine that all of Australia is wall-to-wall beach weather all year ’round. It’s worth restating in almost every section of this nutshell: this island is a continent. We were here in autumn (October and November equivalent in the UK) and on Tasmania we were always in fleeces and often in rain jackets. For that matter we were always in fleeces in Victoria and South Australia too, even when the sun was shining. Heck, even around Alice Springs in the red centre we needed our warm gear when the breeze got up or when the sun went down around 6PM. Sydney was the only place we visited with consistently good weather, typically T-shirts though a jacket was useful. Oh, and one very, very rainy day.

No doubt it’s very different in the austral summer.

Scams and hassle, crime and security
We didn’t find any scam, hassle or crime in Australia.

Hiking and wildlife watching

Australia has wacky wildlife; the platypus, the kangaroo, koala and echidna too. An awful lot of it is nocturnal though, so mammal-watching at least typically begins an hour or so before dusk and then involves spotlighting. The usual point about distances applies as well – there’s nowhere in Australia with a “complete” suite of mammals, just about the richest variety is found on Tasmania and that’s perhaps sixteen species.

On the positive side, if you have notes on where to try (see mammalwatching.com and of course this blog) then you don’t need to be hiring local guides, you can do it yourself. All the national parks are typically left open 24 hours a day, a refreshing change to the situation in other countries. Then again, who is going to poach a platypus?

Hiking is easy in Australia. It’s a pass time enjoyed by the locals, so parks and reserves often have a network of trails including anything from a 30 minute ramble through a 4 hour hike to a 3 day trek. And the quality of the trail itself and the signs along it can be astonishingly good even on long hikes.

Regional variations

Australian society is a lot more homogenous than almost any other equivalent sized chunk of the planet. There are surely differences, stand-up comedians must have a huge stock of regional stereotypes, but the amount of time we spent in each state it could easily be that the differences we saw were just down to the particular places we went and people we met.

As far as the landscape goes, the area around Sydney is almost but not quite tropical and very verdant. Tasmania is damp and wild like Scotland on a much bigger scale. Victoria is more temperate than Sydney but still pretty Mediterranean, and as you get into South Australia it gets more arid the further north of Adelaide you go. The red centre of the Northern Territory is desert, though you’ll see a lot more arid plants struggling to survive than you will empty Arabian sand dunes. Western Australia runs from kindling dry forests in the south to desolate arid heath as far as we got north.

Conclusion
Australia met or exceeded some expectations and fell just shy on others. The amount of time spent travelling between areas can leave you feeling that you’re having a patchy and disjointed trip unless you allow yourself enough time to explore. This happened to us a bit. Then again, some areas really just don’t have much to explore; their charms are low-key and you run out of things to do in just a couple of days. The cities of Australia are excellent, very liveable environments with no points against them at all. Some of the landscapes are phenomenal, others really don’t deserve their hype. With almost half the states untouched this trip we are definitely coming back.

We liked best:

• Watching Tasmanian Devils on our veranda in the Tasmanian wilderness
• Cafe culture in Sydney, browsing around the sunny neighbourhoods
• Hiking around King’s Canyon in the verdant red centre
• Cuddling a wombat at Trowunna on Tasmania, and seeing them wild at Narawntapu
• Marvelling at the spiky Echidna who wandered our way on Kangaroo Island

We liked least:

• Grumpy in the Grampians, just nothing much worked out at all
• Rainy day in Hobart
• The cyclone that stopped us getting to the Ningaloo Reef

Related Images:

This entry was posted on Monday, May 23rd, 2011 at 5:02 am and is filed under Australia, Country Summary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.