Hi Katy,
That's great to hear that Australia is on your list! 🙂
Some 2021 tour dates will be in our September brochure, however this may only be for the first half of the year, as we are still working on later dates. But, Australia and New Zealand to tend to be further in advance, so they may be included for the full year. Apologies I can't give more of a definitive answer at the moment, as we're still working on finalising them.
Regarding booking, to have all the customers booked on the same date, we could look at having 1 passenger as the lead passenger and have the rest of the passengers on the same booking. The lead passenger can give us the authority to discuss and amend the booking and take payments. You could also book in pairs where each individual booking would have a lead passenger and a second passenger. There is also the option of booking your own holiday as individuals, as you say, but a solo supplement may apply, and you would all be in charge of your own booking and receive your own documentation. If you wanted to do that, then you would need to give us a call once the dates are released. If we have more than the allotted number of solo travellers wanting to book the trip, we may be able to add more solo places, but this would depend at the time.
At the moment our Make Your Own Way option is not possible for Australia, due to the fact there are internal flights involved, so we can only offer this as a package, so you wouldn't be able to book your own flights. This is something we're looking into for the future, but at the moment we can't offer it.
Many thanks,
Vickie