First time
Australia on a first visit, and what three weeks actually covers
Three weeks sounds generous until you look at the map. A first trip to Australia is a matter of choosing a shape, and accepting that most of the country will be seen from the window of an aeroplane.
By Walter Pellow20 October 20264 min read
Australia is about thirty times the size of the United Kingdom and has fewer than half as many people, most of them living near the coast in the south-east. That is the fact to keep in mind when planning a first visit. Three weeks, which sounds like a long holiday, is enough to see perhaps four or five parts of the country properly, linked by flights of several hours. Anyone who expects to "do" Australia in that time will spend most of it in airports. Anyone who chooses a shape for the trip, and leaves the rest for another time, will come home with a fair idea of what the country is like.
The flight out is the first thing to plan around. From Britain it is well over twenty hours of flying with at least one stop. Most people find it pays to give themselves a gentle first day or two in Sydney or Melbourne before setting off for anywhere that needs an early start.
The cities, and how they differ
Sydney is the city most people know before they arrive: the harbour, the bridge, the Opera House with its white shells. It is just as good in person, especially seen from the water on one of the ferries that cross the harbour all day. Melbourne, the old rival, is a different kind of city, built on the gold-rush wealth of the nineteenth century and laid out on a grid of arcades and laneways, with its cafés and its fondness for sport. Brisbane, further north, is warmer and slower. Perth and Adelaide, in the west and south, are quieter still, and each is the gateway to a region of its own.
Choosing which cities to include is mostly a question of what lies around them. Sydney leads north, up the coast past Port Stephens and Byron Bay towards Queensland. Melbourne leads west along the Great Ocean Road and its limestone stacks towards Warrnambool. Adelaide has the Barossa Valley, and the old German village of Hahndorf in the hills. Perth is the obvious start for anyone heading on to the west coast.
Three weeks is enough to see perhaps four or five parts of the country properly.
The middle, and the north
No first trip feels complete without the Red Centre, and in practice that means Uluru. It rises about 350 metres above the flat red desert, and it is sacred to the Anangu, its traditional owners. Climbing it has been banned since 2019, and the walk around its base is the better way to understand it anyway, with its caves, waterholes and rock art. Sunrise and sunset, when the colour of the rock changes, are the obvious times to see it. Alice Springs, a few hundred kilometres away, is the town of the region and the base for the ranges around it.
The tropical north is a different country again. Darwin, Katherine and Kakadu National Park, with its wetlands, escarpments and Aboriginal rock art, belong to the Top End, where the year divides into a wet season and a dry. Further east, Cairns is the base for the Great Barrier Reef and the rainforest of the Daintree. The north is at its most comfortable in the dry months of the southern winter, roughly May to October. In the wet season some roads flood and the humidity is formidable, while the far south is at its best in the southern summer. A three-week trip covering both ends usually involves some compromise on weather, and the honest course is to accept it.
Three ways to draw the map
Travelsphere's Highlights of Australia, twenty-one nights, draws the classic shape: Melbourne and Sydney in the south-east, Uluru and Alice Springs in the centre, Darwin, Katherine and Kakadu in the Top End, and Cairns and Brisbane on the east coast. It covers a great deal of ground, and it gives a sense of how different the regions are from one another.
Just You's Australian Highlights, twenty-two nights for solo travellers, takes a different line. It follows the coast north from Sydney through Port Stephens, Port Macquarie, Byron Bay and Brisbane to Cairns, then the centre at Uluru and Alice Springs, and the south at Adelaide, the Barossa Valley, Hahndorf and Warrnambool. It trades the Top End for more of the south.
For those with longer, Travelsphere's The Wonders of Australia, at twenty-nine nights, adds Perth, Adelaide and Kangaroo Island to the centre, the Top End, the reef and the big south-eastern cities. It is about as complete a first look as a single trip offers, and it still leaves out Tasmania, the Kimberley and most of the interior.
That is the point to accept before going: whatever you choose, a great deal of Australia will be left over. I would treat a first trip as a survey, and expect to come back.
By Walter Pellow, the name Atlas & Passage’s editorial team writes under. Prices and dates in the trips below come from the operators and can change.
