Which locations did you hit in Australia? We are headed there next Aug. The plan is to fly into Sydney spend the night, take a flight to Cairns and 3-4 days, see the Great Barrier Reef, fly to Brisbane and maybe go up to Coff’s Harbour for a night or two and then drive to the Gold for 2 nights spend a couple of nights driving to Sydney then stay in Sydney 4-5 nights at the Park Hyatt Sydney before heading back to the US.
I was trying to post tips etc along the way on the reddit planning thread, but when I realized I was posting in the wrong place on Reddit I gave up ha ha!
We were in NZ for a few days, did the Rydges SYD airport hotel for one night, continued our flights the next day to Alice Springs. Did Kangaroo Sanctuary tour and a night in Alice, went to Kings Canyon and did one night there, went to Yulara/Uluru/KJ and did 2 nights there, drove back to Alice and did 1 night before catching flights the next day.
Girls and I flew from Alice Springs to Cairns, DH popped back to the states for a few days to check on our farm. My mom flew in and met us in Cairns. We stayed in Port Douglas, didn’t bother staying in Cairnes. We did NOT do the reef, totally my own personal opinion but right now I felt like the best thing we could do was NOT pay tour boats money to go out there and disrupt things, I sort of feel like tourism is really hurting the reef. I also do not love the ocean, and my girls have been very lucky to snorkel in some beautiful places, so we skipped that. I totally understand others doing differently, that is just an explanation for our personal choices that we made.
We stayed at the Sheraton Port Douglas and LOVED it. Great little town (although the resort is not right in town), beautiful beach to walk along (the resort IS right on the beach but swimming is further down towards town). It WAS stinger season and they also have salt water crocs, so you can only swim in the ocean where there are nets, but we just stuck with the resort pools...plenty of pool space there!! We had one of the rooms on the bottom floor where you could swim straight from the back porch, my girls loved that! We also did the Skyrail in Cairns one day and hiked Mossman Gorge one day, so we felt we had plenty to do to keep us busy instead of visiting the reef. Pretty much everyone assumed we were there to do the reef though, so it certainly is common!
From there we just worked our way south to Sydney. Stopped in Airlie Beach, which I love, but we had really stinky weather this time. Did a trip out to famous Whitehaven Beach (using UR). Stopped in Rainbow Beach, the main reason for that was to go horseback riding for my girls. Also did the Carlo Sandblows there, was super cool to walk around, although very hard to explain how a bunch of sand is really that cool. I think the views of the coastline there were the best views we had the entire trip! It was also a really busy paraglider day, so was cool to watch them take off and fly.
From there think we went to Brisbane and my mom flew back to the states and DH arrived back in from the states, stayed there for 5 nights. I like Brisbane, I have spent a decent amount of time there and we have family there. We did Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary this time and LOVED it!! It is VERY different from Australia Zoo, but it fit the style of my family better. (Also used UR to buy those tickets, but if you are going to go that route message me because we definitely had some drama trying to redeem and I can explain it all to you more).
From Brisbane, we battled the horrible wildfires that were ravaging the East Coast and had to change our plans around a bit. We were supposed to do Port Macquarie and Koala Hospital, but ended up at the very last minute literally turning around on the highway and heading back to Coffs Harbour. At which point, we were pretty much only left with a very overpriced hotel because around here and NZ it is not uncommon for most places to have their reception/check in not open at all hours. So we stayed at the only place on UR pints I could find that was still open at 9pm. Our hotel in Port Macquarie was great and refunded us our non refundable rate due to the circumstances.
So all I can really say about Coffs Harbour is that we were hardly there except for about 14 hours, and that we reeked of smoke by the time we left. I think our hotel was actually on the beach, but we were anxious to get on the roads before things got worse. We were lucky to be able to get through back roads around Port Macquarie to get to Sydney, but trying to plan around wildfires and highway closures in a foreign country not knowing at of the points of reference given in news broadcasts was not the easiest experience I have ever had!!
Sydney was ok, I had never been to Sydney (despite multiple trips to Australia ha ha) and it really wasn’t my favorite. Overall, I think I did a pretty good job of planning this trip, but in literally every place we stayed, I felt that we could have stayed longer. EXCEPT Sydney ha ha! Different strokes for different folks, but I can’t see me ever going back there again. Park Hyatt will be great I’m sure, the location certainly can’t be beat! We just did a lot of wandering, which we are totally happy with, since at that point we had ticked most of the boxes of “must do’s” so we didn’t need to do Zoo, aquarium etc. We took the ferry out to Manly Beach one afternoon/evening, but sadly it was pretty smoggy due to fires. We also did the coastal walk over by Bondi, it was nice but after all of the really “natural” hiking we had done at Kings Canton, Valley of the Winds, Mossman Gorge, it had too many people and houses around for my personal preference (but obviously I’m not a city girl).
We definitely did NOT need the car in Sydney, I should have returned it on arrival into the city and just arranged a shuttle to the airport. Would have been cheaper that way. Oh well.
Sydney airport - not sure if you saw my attempted Reddit post (apparently in the wrong place ha ha) but Amex Priority Pass did not work anywhere, I had no problem with Chase PP though. Also used it in BNE airport during a layover. My husband did find the Amex lounge in SYD though, and they let us in twice (once just him when he flew back to states and second time all 4 of us on our way to Fiji) on his BGR card, which I am fairly sure is not a “platinum” card and should not have been eligible. Even worse, I had literally cancelled his card the night before we flew out to Fiji because the AF hit and we didn’t want to keep his employee card, so I’m REALLY hoping we don’t eventually receive a bill of some sort charging us for the visit because although they ran the card for entry it was technically cancelled. He legitimately did not know that I had cancelled it, so we weren’t trying to be dishonest, my husband just misunderstood what I told him about the card.
I hope some of that was helpful and not too boring, I have a hard time being succinct, so I hope that wasn’t too much for everyone!