We saw animal sanctuaries (koalas, roos and wallabies, echidnas and wombats, birds galore) and coal mines, soared over rainforests, snorkelled over the Barrier reef (wonderful!), spotted rock wallabies in the wild, wandered around magnificent botanical gardens, watched penguins coming ashore at dusk, had dinner under the stars whilst an Italian astronomer pointed out the constellations to us and dinner on an antique tram as it trundled around Melbourne, saw the School of the Air at work and visited the Flying Doctor station in Alice ........ just too much to list in this note!

Snorkelling over the Barrier Reef on the included excursion was the most wonderful experience for me and I could write paragraphs about that alone. And the sheer pleasure of looking out of the bedroom window to see galahs, lorakeets and sulphur-crested cockatoos on the grass instead of sparrows and magpies was worth the whole trip ...

The hotels were all good quality and comfortable. They all had practical fridges in the bedrooms, so if you're inclined to do your own thing instead of joining the pre-arranged trips, you could put together a picnic from the local delicatessens and store cold drinks easily. Where needed, all the hotels supplied swimming towels, so there's no need to take one with you. The hotels all had coin-op launderettes as well, so I could have cut down my luggage by at least a third!

The organised trips were very good value for money and I recommend them as a way of seeing more of the country, always with local guides driving the coach and making detours to ensure that we saw everything. And Ian had his own arcane ways of getting us all to the front of the queue where necessary.

There were just 10 of us on this trip, which was an ideal number - some were newbies, like myself, others were JY veterans.

Small niggles: the hotel at Cairns was under both the airport flight path and the hospital helicopter approach, which was not ideal and it was a brisk 20 minute walk to the centre of the town, which is not good when you've already had a long day out. And the visit to Canberra was, for me personally, a waste of time - we arrived during mid afternoon and saw the Parliament building, which is very undistinguished by comparison with European architecture and the War Museum which, although heartbreaking, is the same as most other war museums. We then left early the next morning for the flight to Melbourne, having spent rather less than 24 hours there without ever seeing the city itself. A pointless diversion, I think, when we could have had an extra day in Sydney or Melbourne instead.

But these really are small matters compared to the whole journey and I'm sure JY will sort them out.

As you'll realise, I had a great time and cannot recommend the tour too highly. If you've got the chance, do it!

I'll be happy to answer any questions, if you want to post them.

Regards

Deb Nurse (who is now looking at the brochure for her next trip, possibly New Zealand, or maybe Borneo ....)

Thank you so much for this great review. I have passed it around JYHQ, and it's guaranteed to brighten up their gloomy Wednesday afternoon. I have also passed it on to our Holiday Creators too so they can look into the hotel in Cairns.

I hope to speak to you once you have booked either New Zealand or Borneo!

Kindest Regards,

Monty

Of all my holiday Australia has to be my favourite so reading your review brought back many memory's, I am glad you had a great time and thanks for letting us know how you got on.

Cindy

Mark

What a wonderful review. I did this trip in January and it has brought back many happy memories.

Thank you

Regards Julie

Regards

Deb

Thank you for your comprehensive review. I have just booked to go on the trip in March next year so it answered a lot of my questions.

Can you give me some idea of how much money I need to take? Also did you do any of the optional excursions and could you pay for them while you were there by credit card?

Thanks,

Pauline

te='ampleaphrodite' pid='279691' dateline='1445429306']

What a fabulous trip! If you want to have a look at Oz for the first time, this is the way to do it. We had a brilliant tour leader in Ian Magnall, who was a fount of all knowledge and who guided us expertly from the Indian Ocean (Perth), through the dead heart (Alice Springs and Uluru), to rainforests and the Barrier Reef (Cairns) and finally to the hotspots of Sydney and Melbourne.

We saw animal sanctuaries (koalas, roos and wallabies, echidnas and wombats, birds galore) and coal mines, soared over rainforests, snorkelled over the Barrier reef (wonderful!), spotted rock wallabies in the wild, wandered around magnificent botanical gardens, watched penguins coming ashore at dusk, had dinner under the stars whilst an Italian astronomer pointed out the constellations to us and dinner on an antique tram as it trundled around Melbourne, saw the School of the Air at work and visited the Flying Doctor station in Alice ........ just too much to list in this note!

Snorkelling over the Barrier Reef on the included excursion was the most wonderful experience for me and I could write paragraphs about that alone. And the sheer pleasure of looking out of the bedroom window to see galahs, lorakeets and sulphur-crested cockatoos on the grass instead of sparrows and magpies was worth the whole trip ...

The hotels were all good quality and comfortable. They all had practical fridges in the bedrooms, so if you're inclined to do your own thing instead of joining the pre-arranged trips, you could put together a picnic from the local delicatessens and store cold drinks easily. Where needed, all the hotels supplied swimming towels, so there's no need to take one with you. The hotels all had coin-op launderettes as well, so I could have cut down my luggage by at least a third!

The organised trips were very good value for money and I recommend them as a way of seeing more of the country, always with local guides driving the coach and making detours to ensure that we saw everything. And Ian had his own arcane ways of getting us all to the front of the queue where necessary.

There were just 10 of us on this trip, which was an ideal number - some were newbies, like myself, others were JY veterans.

Small niggles: the hotel at Cairns was under both the airport flight path and the hospital helicopter approach, which was not ideal and it was a brisk 20 minute walk to the centre of the town, which is not good when you've already had a long day out. And the visit to Canberra was, for me personally, a waste of time - we arrived during mid afternoon and saw the Parliament building, which is very undistinguished by comparison with European architecture and the War Museum which, although heartbreaking, is the same as most other war museums. We then left early the next morning for the flight to Melbourne, having spent rather less than 24 hours there without ever seeing the city itself. A pointless diversion, I think, when we could have had an extra day in Sydney or Melbourne instead.

But these really are small matters compared to the whole journey and I'm sure JY will sort them out.

As you'll realise, I had a great time and cannot recommend the tour too highly. If you've got the chance, do it!

I'll be happy to answer any questions, if you want to post them.

Regards

Deb Nurse (who is now looking at the brochure for her next trip, possibly New Zealand, or maybe Borneo ....)

Many thanks for this great review, Australia has been top of my wish list for a long time now, I just have to find a date that suits (and the money!)

Cheers,

Bob

can you please tell me what happened to my reply to this post, having put in my honest input of a wonderful tour it has not been published

Dave

Thank you for the review, I have booked this trip for next year.

Are there any of the optional trips that you would definitely recommend or would not bother with?

Lynne

What a fabulous trip! If you want to have a look at Oz for the first time, this is the way to do it. We had a brilliant tour leader in Ian Magnall, who was a fount of all knowledge and who guided us expertly from the Indian Ocean (Perth), through the dead heart (Alice Springs and Uluru), to rainforests and the Barrier Reef (Cairns) and finally to the hotspots of Sydney and Melbourne.

We saw animal sanctuaries (koalas, roos and wallabies, echidnas and wombats, birds galore) and coal mines, soared over rainforests, snorkelled over the Barrier reef (wonderful!), spotted rock wallabies in the wild, wandered around magnificent botanical gardens, watched penguins coming ashore at dusk, had dinner under the stars whilst an Italian astronomer pointed out the constellations to us and dinner on an antique tram as it trundled around Melbourne, saw the School of the Air at work and visited the Flying Doctor station in Alice ........ just too much to list in this note!

Snorkelling over the Barrier Reef on the included excursion was the most wonderful experience for me and I could write paragraphs about that alone. And the sheer pleasure of looking out of the bedroom window to see galahs, lorakeets and sulphur-crested cockatoos on the grass instead of sparrows and magpies was worth the whole trip ...

The hotels were all good quality and comfortable. They all had practical fridges in the bedrooms, so if you're inclined to do your own thing instead of joining the pre-arranged trips, you could put together a picnic from the local delicatessens and store cold drinks easily. Where needed, all the hotels supplied swimming towels, so there's no need to take one with you. The hotels all had coin-op launderettes as well, so I could have cut down my luggage by at least a third!

The organised trips were very good value for money and I recommend them as a way of seeing more of the country, always with local guides driving the coach and making detours to ensure that we saw everything. And Ian had his own arcane ways of getting us all to the front of the queue where necessary.

There were just 10 of us on this trip, which was an ideal number - some were newbies, like myself, others were JY veterans.

Small niggles: the hotel at Cairns was under both the airport flight path and the hospital helicopter approach, which was not ideal and it was a brisk 20 minute walk to the centre of the town, which is not good when you've already had a long day out. And the visit to Canberra was, for me personally, a waste of time - we arrived during mid afternoon and saw the Parliament building, which is very undistinguished by comparison with European architecture and the War Museum which, although heartbreaking, is the same as most other war museums. We then left early the next morning for the flight to Melbourne, having spent rather less than 24 hours there without ever seeing the city itself. A pointless diversion, I think, when we could have had an extra day in Sydney or Melbourne instead.

But these really are small matters compared to the whole journey and I'm sure JY will sort them out.

As you'll realise, I had a great time and cannot recommend the tour too highly. If you've got the chance, do it!

I'll be happy to answer any questions, if you want to post them.

Regards

Deb Nurse (who is now looking at the brochure for her next trip, possibly New Zealand, or maybe Borneo ....)

You don't actually need to take a large amount of cash with you at all, as there are ATMs absolutely everywhere and you can draw cash as you need it. However, I'd advise picking up, say, AUS$50 on your way out through Heathrow Airport, so that you've got money to buy bottled water etc. on your first day, without having to find a machine straightaway.

All the restaurants take Credit Cards, if you find yourself splashing out on a seafood platter unexpectedly, as do the tiniest of shops.

With the optional excursions that hadn't been pre-booked, we all paid in cash. I didn't ask, but I doubt that the Tour Leader had any facility to take a CC payment - perhaps JY can advise on this? (There was no difficulty with NOT taking up these excursions.)

About bottled water - obviously, we all carried water with us all the time, but I personally don't think it was necessary to buy the expensive bottled stuff except as a top up. I generally drank the tap water everywhere we went and just kept refilling my bottle, with no ill effects. Ian, our Tour Leader, recommended bottled water, but I think this was really to avoid upsets due to different sources.

Regards

Deb

Hi Monty

can you please tell me what happened to my reply to this post, having put in my honest input of a wonderful tour it has not been published

Dave

Hi Dave,

I am not too sure where your post has gone, but it is certainly not in our moderation queue. I am afraid you may want to post it again as it'll be nice to see your thoughts.

Kindest regards,

Monty

im trying to reply to this and I keep getting this message

Your message has been blocked on suspicion of being spam or offensive behaviour.

Dave

We have not increased our security, so this is very strange!! Could you pop a screenshot or a copy of this message into an email and send it to community@justyou.co.uk so we can look into this a bit further for you.

Kindest regards,

Monty

very strange

Dave

as my original post off into cyber space somewhere i'll try and remember just what I wrote having done this tour in Nov 2013, I meant to do a review with having so much to write and then never really got round to it, I suppose I could still do one better later than never as I have done a comprehensive review for myself and friends

we had Ian as our tour leader he was ok very handy for taking photographs for you and his expert knowledge was invaluable, taking us for meals etc or recommending places, yes he looked after us well

we too found Canberra a waste of time nothing there and the hotels was out of the way a little a very muddily complex room wise though the bar was the best bit mingling with other residents till late the one place we had what you might call a session, did Ian take any of you across the car park kangaroo spotting that night? I too would prefare an extra night in either Sydney or Melbourne or see the actual city of Canberra, mind without the parliament buildings and war museums which though quite interesting could also be deemed boring with many people we don't see what Canberra had to be named the countrys capital, so you flew from Canberra to Melbourne we had a long day on the coach but had stop at Glenrowen where Ned Kelly was gunned down with lunchtime entertainment from Lazy Harry

most of the hotels as I recall had free wifi you sometimes had to ask for the code at reception, I only realised the AS hotel had it in reception on the morning of departure and the Travel Inn Melbourne or was it the Sydney hotel one of those two just had a pc in the corner for resident use, the TI Melbourne was a good twenty minutes walk down to the river but was very close to endless eating places, as for the hotel in Cairns the mecure harbourside it is out of the way a little, 20 min walk from town in the humid atmosphere can be very testing, but the local pub where Ian took us nearby was well worth going to for the local atmosphere and fantastic food portions, also the buffet meal at Charlies next door was good, I wasn't aware that the hotel was on the flight path as didn't experience any planes or hospital helicopters of which you pass the hospital on your way into town, perhaps you just got unlucky there

wifi is very much the thing these days so I think most if not all hotels should supply it for guests, oh some gave you your code with your room key and some you could only use downstairs

optional excursions I paid for all mine in advance but you can book as you go though they may need a couple days notice on some of them for booking trains cable cars entrance fees etc but you have to have dollars up front, I still don't know why the TM just cant carry a card machine with them rather than handling all that cash if only for security reasons, the optionals I did were Freematle Perth, highly recommend, AS bbq. nothing special but worth doing as little else to do but relax in AS and there is a second night for that where a few of us went into town dining at bar bojangles some dined in resort, Western Mcdonnell Ranges AS, excellent though tiring if you done balloon ride at dawn then city tour and then straight onto the tour wmr, GBR in Cairns was great and an inclusive, we only went to Green Island ( lots to do there ) not the pontoon, another trip which was a must do is the Kuranda Skyrail gliding over the rainforest in a cable car being photographed with a cuddly koala bear and returning by train, in Sydney you must do the harbour cruise and the blue mountains an absolute must, I didn't do any of the tours in Melbourne as just wanted to chill out and see some of Melbourne and I saw some cricket at the MCG and a tour also caught a football match across the road from the MCG, the sounds of silence dinner in Ayers Rock was also a highlight

as for money I took OZ dollars and spent about a thousand £ worth, you only do it once enjoy it, this is a once in a lifetime tour and out of all the places in the world if I had one choice for my final holiday I would choose OZ

have a marvellous time in OZ and any q&a's just ask, so there you are that's not far off a review is it

Dave

Have you been a 'naughty' boy?!

Jaya

Lovely review. I want to do this trip one day, but will have to wait till I retire as I plan to do both Australia and New Zealand at the same time if this is still on offer. Also, need lots of days off so doubt if I can do it whilst I am still working.

Jaya