Here's what people told me before I went to Australia; Australia is not a cheap country to visit. Even visa application alone is close to $100, depending on the exchange rate, flights fare are on average about $1300 give or takes. And with the time constraint I had, I wanted to see as much as possible. So, I picked 3 cities that I wanted to go and then spread out my time there: Sydney (because we have to go), Cairns(to see the Great Barrier Reef) and Melbourne (for the famous the Great Ocean Road, which didn't disappoint, and the Penguin parade). In order to save time, I flew into Sydney and flew out of Melbourne.
Australia itself is divided into 7 states:
- New South Wales aka NSW
- Victoria - beautiful state. Melbourne is in this State and a trip to the Great Apostle via the Great Ocean road is one of the must
- Queensland - known for beautiful beaches and sunshine coasts and a way to get into the Great Barrier Reef
- Western Australia
- Northern Territory
- South Australia
- Tasmania
Different people prefer to go to see different things in Australia. Since I had limited time, I decided not to visit the Outback, which is mainly in the Northern Territory. I also am more of a beach person than a dry land person.
With as big of a state like Australia, I chose to fly between the above three cities. Inter-cities flight prices are pretty reasonable, with an average cost of $100 for one-way. I used Expedia and Priceline to search for air tickets. Buying in advance always help when it comes to flight tickets.
When traveling, I try save as much as possible by trying not to go overboard on the accommodation. Since we are going to be out most of the time anyway, there is no point to spending $200 a night unless you have no other options. So, with that in mind, we stayed in only hostels. Australia is very backpacker friendly and even though I am at my point in life where I don't want to stay in hostels, I must say that some hostels are not bad at all. In Sydney, we stayed at a proper hotel because I had some points which I could use for free. However, in Cairns and Melbourne, we stayed at hostels, which cost us $188(for 2 ppl 2 night) and $388(for 2 ppl 3 nights). When it comes to international hotel booking, I like to use booking.com as I feel like their international inventories are better. But I definitely recommend you to search around.
The trip cost us $3500 without the airfare for two people. This number includes food and any other tours/activities that we booked. For example, I did my first scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef and my sister did her first Skydiving in Cairns.
