Best australian travel guides according to redditors

If you'd like to buy it before it becomes collectable

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may not actually become collectable

I am from American and spent 6 weeks traveling Australia last year for fun and I got to see the entire east coast from the Daintree Rainforest to Melbourne.

One HUGE difference that I had the most problems with were airline restrictions. Luggage flying within Australia can only weigh 23kg (50lbs) and carry-ons have to weight less (I think like 10kg.) They certainly weigh your check-in and have the right to weigh your carry on. Every kilo you are over in weight, you have to pay something like $10-15. On my flight over from the states, my bag could weigh some ridiculous amount but my flights within Australia, the bags had to weight a lot less. I threw away or gave away absolutely every item that I did not need or couldn't replace for my last domestic flight before I flew internationally. I still ended up paying some for my bag weighing too much. I crammed as much as I could into my carry on and just prayed they wouldn't weigh it. They didn't. But as I got on the plane, the flight attendant eyed my bag and asked if she could hold it to see how heavy it way. I could tell she was thinking of having it officially weighed.

For the electricity, when I got to Australia I found a very cheap adapter in a post office that allowed me to plug my ipod into an Australian socket to charge. It didn't convert the voltage so it could have fried my ipod. But it didn't.

I would follow other people's advice and travel/work. Many farmers are always looking for work. People I met along the way said they were able to work for a month or two and then take nice vacations and travel. Plus, if you work as a harvester for 3 months (I think) you can extend your visa for another year.

Get a Bank of America account before you go and put your money in it. A major bank, Westpac, is partnered with BOA so you will get better exchange rates when you take money out of ATMs. I don't know how it is now, but last year for every $500 Australian I took out of an ATM, it withdrew about $400 American from my account.

There are certain things you should do once you get there before you start actually working. Like get the Australian equivalent of a SSN. Otherwise, your paychecks will be taxed about 50%.

Hostels in Australia were really nice and clean. Everyone I went to provided sheets and a blanket. I made a sleep sack before I left just to have that extra layer or cleanliness. I included a built in pocket so I could sleep with my money and ipod where someone wouldn't be able to steal it. http://www.ehow.com/how_5515194_make-sleep-sack.html I never had any problems with safety in a hostel. That being said, I didn't carry a laptop or anything expensive with me. Also, many hostels will give you a cheaper rate if you rent by the week instead of by the night. So if you know you are going to be somewhere for at least a week, pay by the week.

You don't need a computer. There are cheap netcafes everywhere. Even in small little towns, one of the shops will have a computer that you can use for a small fee.

Another bigger-ish change is the cost of food. Food is more expensive and there is not as wide a selection in grocery stores. Carry around a water bottle, too. Drink sizes are A LOT smaller and there is no such thing as a free refill on a soda.

A good travel guide is must. I used http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Go-Australia-10th-Inc/dp/0312385757/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1278728530&sr=1-1 because it focused on some of the cheaper options out there.

I flew United internationally because it was the cheapest ($1000 roundtrip from Washington Dulles to Sydney.) However, people I spoke with who flew Quantas internationally seemed to have a much easier 14 hour flight from CA to AUS (There were individual TVs just like jetblue.) To bring the cost of your flight down, try to fly out of a major city to a major city. It might be cheaper to drive to Atlanta and fly from there than fly from Orlando. It is also probably cheaper to fly to Sydney then arrange to fly domestically within Australia to your final destination. The bonus of that is also if you have a roundtrip ticket, you can travel around and make your way back to Sydney instead of having to go back to the Gold Coast first. It gives you a lot more flexibility.

If I ever make it back to Australia, I would break up the flight with a stop in Hawaii or Tahiti. From the time I left my home near D.C. to the time I arrived in Cairns, I had been traveling 36 hours. (Surprise bonus, the flight home over the Pacific was only 12 hours due to winds helping out.)

You and your friends are in for a great adventure. Minimum wage there is a lot higher than here so as long as you aren't buying expensive items, you should be able to work a little, travel a little. I would recommend going with some money saved up for your initial expenses. It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to arrive with 1,000 or 2,000 each. You'll also want to budget a few days to get over your jet lag and swollen legs.

If you have some money (not sure of your budget), I'd do a tour of the country at some point. I did a 2 week Contiki tour and it was a great decisions. I saw a lot with very little effort on my part. (I recommend the Reefs and Rainforest.)

Have a great time!

My favorite places were the Daintree Rainforest (but there is very little work up there) and Melbourne. If you make it to Melbourne, make sure you take a tour or drive yourself along the Great Ocean Road. I like Cairns but it was small. Surfers Paradise was a little too much like an American city. Do at least a week in Sydney.

Have you considered just buying a travel guide? For example a Rough Guide or a Lonely Planet?

Let's get the cultural and safety stuff out of the way first.

A is for Australia.

Australia's Dangerous Creatures for Dummies.

If you still want to visit (and you should, Australia is awesome), then you get to see Australia's incredible list of home grown fantasy.

Jennifer Fallon's Wolfblade or The Immortal Prince start long epic fantasies. Wolfblade is more generic with a medieval time period and elves and magic. The Immortal Prince is the sort of insanity that Australia is really good at.

Visiting Brisbane? Pick up The Business of Death by Trent Jamieson. It's a urban fantasy where Death wears a suit and runs a business out of an office block in the Brisbane CBD.

Coming all the way out to Broken Hill? Lexicon by Max Barry ends with a running fight through the streets starting in the lobby of the Broken Hill hospital. Also, drop me a message before you get here and I can line you up a place to stay. Not that I know why you would come to Broken Hill.

Inheritance by Simon Brown starts a pretty good epic fantasy focused around succession issues in a kingdom. But that's boring, much more fun is Empire's Daughter/Born of Empire (same book, different names) which was the first full work of flintlock fantasy.

If you enjoy YA books, Trudi Canavan's The Magician's Guild, Garth Nix's Abhorsen and Sean William's The Stone Mage and the Sea are all good choices.

Try and get any Aboriginal myths that you can for the areas you are traveling through. This can be hard because for many of the cultural groups we lost track of who the myths belonged to. These stories about land and how the locals relate to it are good for understanding how the areas work.

This should do the trick

https://www.amazon.com/Lonely-Planet-Perth-Australia-Travel/dp/174179952X/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1467681191&sr=8-4&keywords=Perth

I would have a look at the Lonely Planet book for Perth and the west coast of Australia. These books usually provide a little history of the city. Plus, it will give you ideas of attractions you might like to see when you get here.

If you want some fiction that is set in Perth you could try reading Cloudstreet by Tim Winton. It revolves around two families that live together and their lives in Perth from 1943 to 1963.

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

amazon.nl

amazon.co.jp

amazon.fr

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Just wanted to post this new guidebook we have been working on: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KPCNV67

Its a guide of Australia's East Coast for single guys

http://www.amazon.com/Fodors-Australia-Full-color-Travel-Guide/dp/0307928446

Any other clues? Colour of the cover, what was it about, how long it was?

Could be something like this?

A few years ago, Lonely Planet put out a ranked “Ultimate Bucket List” of 500 destinations around the world. It’s available as a book, which you could buy or probably find at your local library, and the complete list has been posted online here. It’s a pretty good source of inspiration, as long as you don’t put too much emphasis on the rankings themselves. There are also first-time travel guides like this one which might help.

In my experience, a great trip can be to almost anywhere, and can usually be built around a few—or even just one—“bucket list” destination, sight, and/or event, as long as you keep to a reasonably sized region/area. If you love English soccer, you could easily put that as your centrepiece and then build a U.K.- or Western Europe-based trip, based on your other interests and how fast your money will run out (and it will run out relatively quickly in the U.K./Western Europe). But when your options are anywhere you want, it’s tough for anybody to give you real, solid advice on where that should be. Most people here are simply telling you where they would go, which may or may not align with what you actually like.

Also, I wouldn’t worry to much about finding a “non-touristy” destination, unless you have a pretty clear idea of just what that means. Compelling destinations with “a lot to see and do” don’t tend to be a secret—or to stay a secret for long—so anywhere you go is likely to have other tourists. There’s a continuum between Venice in mid-summer cruise ship season and Nowheresville Minnesota in February, and only experience will tell you where you’re most comfortable on that continuum. Until you get there, don’t over-focus on that.

Other than that, the best advice is something you already seem to be aware of: Don’t try to cram in too much in too short a time period. Many younger travellers wind up planning to visit a new city every day or two, or wanting to start a two-week trip in London and end it in Istanbul. You want to spend the bulk of your time enjoying places, not on planes, trains, and busses getting to them. Remember, your first trip doesn’t have to be your only trip.

He illustrated a funny book

Hi.
This is a hardcover, glossy photos, 6.5" square.
https://www.amazon.com/Travel-Book-Mini-Journey-Through/dp/174220905X

Fantastic question u/ardnassac115, and I'm glad you asked it. For some background on me, I'm 25 and used to work full-time in a pretty serious career before deciding to return to graduate school full-time. This lined up for me, and is probably one of the few times in my life I'll be able to do something this long and live-changing. When in my life will I have the holy trinity of time, energy, and money again? I had budgeted through grad school to 1.) make sure I could go through grad school without working, and 2.) make sure I had enough leftover to do something like this before returning to work. I still live at home and my major monthly expenses are student loans, car payment/insurance, and a cell phone bill. I budgeted to make sure the cost of this trip, in addition to those expenses, could be covered while I was gone before returning to work. I hope that answers your question regarding saving up.

Planning the trip was difficult at first, but became easier over time. I've never done anything like this in my life and I had no idea what I was doing. The most important thing is to first decide how long you want the trip to be. Everything else comes afterwards. I decided 6 weeks because it'd be enough to see a lot while not killing me financially. Next, I knew I wanted to see national parks, but had no idea how. This helped me immensely. It's an "optimal route" to see all the national parks in the lower 48 states (note there have been two new NP additions since: Gateway Arch NP and Indiana Dunes NP). In what I'm sure is a cardinal sin of this sub, I took the fastest, most direct routes in the interest of time rather than looking for scenic routes most of the time. I cared more about time in the parks than pretty views from my car (although there were many). If you look at the order of my route and the route through that link, you'll notice it's very similar. After, I just started researching parks and seeing which ones I want to see the most, and which ones I could skip for now or save for the future. Once I had that down, I opened up an excel sheet and google maps and started actually mapping each day, how long the drives would be between destinations, what I wanted to do, where I'd sleep each night, and how long I'd spend at each destination. How long was decided during the research part on the parks I decided to see on this trip. For example, parks like Rocky Mountan, Zion, Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Yosemite, and the Grand Canyon all got 2 essentially full days because they were so big that I didn't think I could do all the things I wanted to do in a single day. Parks like Badlands, Great Sand Dunes, Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Kings Canyon, Sequoia, Carlsbad Caverns, Gateway Arch, and Cuyahoga Valley I knew could be done in a single, very packed day. To preface that, I'm in shape and did a lot of hiking at a pretty unhealthy (read: fast) pace, allowing me to do a multitude of trails each day to get everything. I'm not going to lie, it took me a ton of effort to route my trip and make sure it was within the time frame. I essentially made an itinerary for myself. It's not as rigid as I'm making it sound, as the only thing really holding me to schedule was reserving campsites or AirBnBs. Otherwise I'd be able to do that research a few nights prior and alter as I needed. On the flip side, when it's 7PM and you don't know where you're sleeping that night, that can be a scary thing if you're not used to it.

I want to emphasize my planning of each day at parks too. I touched on that above, but this blog, where the authors spent 52 weeks doing all 59 (at the time) national parks for the centennial in 2016, was extremely helpful. The pictures, descriptions, and other info were so valuable. My friend's dad caught wind I was doing this trip and lent me three national park guides: Fodors, National Geographic, and Lonely Planet. These were the most important for actually planning my days in parks, with Fodors being by far the most useful, National Geographic also being good, and honestly not much help from Lonely Planet. Just an FYI, the links are for the exact copies I used, but there are newer versions available that you should get if you look into it. A note on this - it saved me a tremendous amount of valuable time when I got to parks to already know exactly what I wanted to do. If I had extra time and could do stuff I didn't know about, that was great! But on packed days it helps to know where things are in each park and how reasonable your "want to do" adventures are for the time frame.

For road trip prep I had to buy or borrow some things I didn't have and got the rest from my house: sleeping bag, sleeping pad, bed comforter, tarp, tent, knife, bear spray, pepper spray, a road atlas, a lantern, an abundance of snacks (clif bars, larabars, peanut butter crackers, etc), national park passport, a good cooler for water/food, camp stove and bowls, matches, paper towels, hand sanitizer, and some other things that I'm surely not remembering. A good, solid backpack and some good water bottles are necessary. Multi-tools are useful. Don't forget some engine coolant and wiper fluid just in case. Don't forget to stop for an oil change if your trip is long enough. For clothing I put a suitcase in the back seat of my car and lived out of that between laundry. Also had a box with some of the above items in it along with toiletries and other essentials like baby wipes, phone charger, electric razor and charger, nail clippers, sandwich baggies, and a few other things.

Woooo, that was a long winded post! There is so much to think about and plan when doing something like this, and I'd be lying if I said a great deal of work didn't go into my plan. If this trip had been shorter, a lot of this wouldn't be necessary. Six weeks though, that's a long time away from home, completely on my own. Having never done something even close to this, I felt I needed to do a lot of this prep work to make sure this went as smoothly as possible. It did go very smoothly too, but I attribute a lot of that to planning. I hope that this essay response helps you understand the pre-trip process I went through a bit better. I'd be happy to answer any questions you have!

http://www.amazon.com/Frommers-Sydney-Day-Pocket/dp/0731409809


http://www.amazon.com/Frommers-Sydney-Free-Dirt-Cheap/dp/174216966X




Ironically the dirt cheap book cost more!

You should read Cold beer and Crocodiles