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- Smoking Guns
- Rep: 330
Re: Australia, looks like an awesome place
Metallex and Monkey, been doing some research on ole Australia, wow. Looks amazing. Looks clean and beautiful. You speak English and have a very high standard of life. I also recently watched a house hunters show in Australia and everything looked so pretty. Is it warmer in the north? I didn't recognize any of the cities there. Sydney and Melbourne are both in the south with Brisbane and Perth on the East and West coasts respectively. I need to plan a trip there ASAP. Is the Capitol in the middle of the country. It seems so isolated there. Perth to Brisbane must be a very long flight. Anyway, looks like you guys have a very cool country. Can't wait to visit.
- Me_Wise_Magic
- Rep: 70
Re: Australia, looks like an awesome place
Same here. Australia is up on my list of future areas to visit. Hoping in the next couple of years to maybe pull off one of these locations with a few friends & family. Along with Japan, England, Ireland, Russia, France, and Italy. 
It would be pretty sweet to chill with Monkey & Metallex when the time comes for some of us to be able to go down under.
- Smoking Guns
- Rep: 330
Re: Australia, looks like an awesome place
Not much in the middle most people live around the coast line . I live in kingston we have a big lobster 
- Smoking Guns
- Rep: 330
Re: Australia, looks like an awesome place
Is there anything worth seeing in the north? Is the water warmer there? Can you swim in the water in the south?
- A Private Eye
- Rep: 77
Re: Australia, looks like an awesome place
Cairns is supposedly very nice and a lot of travellers visit Darwin so theresome spots to visit. I began planning a trip to Oz but things kinda got in the way, will do it in the next few years though.
Actually while we're talking oz are any of the aussies on here rugby league fans? Been meaning to ask for ages and not got round to it.
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Australia, looks like an awesome place
Here's what I would say about it. Watch as we expose my ignorance about my own country!
Darwin/Northern Territory: There are reasons as a tourist you might want to go to the Northern Territory. It's the home of the Steve Irwin/Crocodile Dundee australian image. The red dirt. Blazing Sun. National Parks. Rivers. Crocodiles. Uluru (formally known as Ayres Rock. My advice would be however if you intend to see such things. Do it as part of some professionally organised tour.
There's a wet/dry season in the NT which will effect what roads are flooded and so on.
A lot of tourists have got in trouble because they just don't comprehend the extent of the isolation in some of these places. Australia is a vast land mass - about the size of the USA - except comparatively no one lives here - and for sure nearly all of us are around the edges...so it's like if you tried to drive the whole length of the usa and discovered there was no towns to buy gas/water, and with places where you need a 4x4 to be able to dive, no one for hundreds of miles, and with stuff like deadly snakes, spiders and crocodiles wandering around at random.
I don't mean to scare you off, I'm just saying a holiday in the top end is better planned properly, don't just rent a car and set off with 2 people into the sunset without packing serious amounts of water, emergency equipment, telling people where you're going etc. Apparently people do this - they just drive off and next thing you know they're lost and there's a whole incident.
So unless you're a Bear Grylls type dude, if you want to see the top end, I'd go on some type of organised trip where you'll see Uluru, sail down a croc river on a safe boat where they can't get you, do a few outbacky things, but do it in a pretty controlled way.
Darwin itself is a proper city of course. It's not all bushland.
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Western Australia/Perth: Aussie can tell you more about this. As a kid i've been to perth on vacation. My parents rented a unit for a few days in a beach suburb and we had a beach themed vacation. Seems to always be nice weather in perth. I also remember doing some kind of "swimming with dolphins" experience somewhere outside of perth that I got to via a light plane flight. I gather there are also a lot of beautiful outdoors attraction in that state. I'm more of an indoors forum nerd though so i've not done much of that stuff.
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Adelaide/South Australia: I drove up there for GNR once. There was stuff you could find around to do as a tourist, but to be honest it's not a destination I'd set course for if I was from a big international city. It's one of our smaller cities and while a nice place to live, probably not much by way of attractions for international visitors. Gibbo could probably tell you more about the state of SA though.
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Hobart/Tasmania: It's colder than the rest of Australia, but of course we're not cold compared to places where it actually gets seriously cold like canada etc. Been years since I went down there...but I remember the boat ride can be rocky (apparently in the olden days it was a treacherous passage - in modern ships it's just bumpy) and I remember there's a lot of museums about the original convict prisons and stuff like that. Lots of history type stuff.
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Brisbane/Gold Coast/Qld: Another popular holiday region. Very nice weather most of the time - although I gather there's a "wet season" of sorts? I think perhaps it's somewhat tropical weather - where it's very warm in the day and then in the evening it rains heavily but is still humid and warm. There's a lot of touristy things, from national parks and attractions of that sort, to theme parks and so on. Although I guess by USA standards the theme parks probably arn't up to much - we have a Warner Bros park, sea-world and places like that - but they're not exactly at disneyworld production value if you know what I mean. My memory of the gold coast (and this is going back to the 80s) is it's a bit like hawaii in a way - in that it's beachy - but also touristy - in that it's built up with high-rise hotels and that kind of stuff.
Canberra/ACT: Our nation's capital. However it's a really strange place. There's always been a rivalry between Melbourne and Sydney (as two of the early australian settlements) and my understanding is that when we federated as a nation to solve the dispute of who would get to be capital - they made Canberra - because it was geographically the same distance from Melb and Syd! I know most gov jobs you see advertised require a move to canberra - and I sometimes think the only people who live there are folks who work for the goverment or in media orgs that follow the government and so on! That's probably wrong. I doubt it would have value to an international guest to be honest - as an Aussie you can spend a day there and go "look it's parliament like I see on TV" or maybe see the war museum and think about ancestors and so on. If you go I doubt you'd want more than a day there anyway. it's not a place where you book weeks of vacation IMO.
Sydney/NSW: This is alex's home town. I've had a number of holidays in sydney and it's a great spot. Probably should be the real capital of australia if I'm honest - even though it's traditional to have a Sydney-Melb feud. (Sort of like the old LA vs NYC thing in the usa except we have less guns!). There's a lot of good touristy stuff to do in the city, and of course as a tourist you go get a ferry and ride under the sydney harbour bridge you've seen in the movies, and over to the opera house and so on. I really enjoy sydney. Don't recommend driving though - road system is kinda confusing in the city. But there's lots of public transport around so it's not a place you really need a car as a tourist as long as you're staying in the city or one of the slightly-out of city areas designed for such things like Darling Harbour etc.
Melbourne: This is where I live. Famous for our questionable weather: "All four seasons in a day". The joke is it's impossible to know what you'll get with the weather. Sometimes there's a heat wave. Same date the next year will be a flood. Can't really guarantee on any date that it won't be raining, or won't be sunburn weather and so on. You learn to live with it though 
Anyway, lots of visitors describe melbourne as similar to San Francisco. I've only been to SF as a kid so not sure what to make of that comparison. There's a lot of hipsters here We're a cultural city - lots of different foods, cafe culture (it's important to wear black and have a proper coffee not instant unless you want to be seen as odd , lots of live music, poetry, art and that kind of stuff.
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Australia, looks like an awesome place
Is there anything worth seeing in the north?
Depends on the type of tourist you are. If you want to see landscape/outdoor type sites then stuff like this exists in the NT.
If you're like me and you hate the sun/outdoors...then I'd skip it
Is the water warmer there?
As for the water...it will be warm in Queensland (eg Brisbane), and it would be in NT (although there's crocs so you can only swim in set places). If you want a spot for a beach themed holiday I'd probably recommend Brisbane...or you could look into our resort island's off the coast....pricey...but they give that james bond style look:
Can you swim in the water in the south?
Yes but only in summer unless you want to test your metal
For example, in melbourne, the average temperature in Jan, Feb or March (our summer) is 25.9 (78.62F), however there are also heat waves...you never quite know when but during the summer you can expect a several days of pretty strong heat. Last summer that just past we set a new record...it got to 46.4 (115.52F) for many days in a row and I'd sat there was several weeks of 40+ heat. My Air Con was dying lol.
If you're here with weather like that you will want to swim and everyone does.
At the same time though, melbourne does have unpredictable temperatures. So it's hard to pick a week to guarantee that heat.
So my approach would be...if you come to Melbourne for the sites...pack bathers in case it's hot....but if you're aiming to go somewhere to spend a week on a beach for sure (like if that's the point of the holiday) then I'd go somewhere like perth or Brisbane or something...as while it's often hot as fuck down here...i'd not sell melbourne as a beach paradise as it's just too likely to suddenly rain or not be hot for no reason. That said we also some some beautiful days here. I mean I had to leave soundwave festival early once because I was over the heat. So it's not like we don't get hot.
I would def come in the Australian summer though or maybe late spring if you're worried about sunburn. As in June or somewhere in winter the temp in the south is more likely to be around 13.5 (56.3F). Not like you'd freeze and die but not much fun for outdoor stuff if it's raining either.
If you do come in the summer though keep in mind the hole over the ozone layer is here. It's sunburn central if you're not wise about using protection/shade etc 2000 people died in 2011 from skin cancer. We have one of the highest rates of it in the world. It's not to be underestimated...if you've got fair skin and don't tan easily...you can be burnt very badly in a short time. So keep it in mind when planning you're outings.
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Australia, looks like an awesome place
tourist attractions:
Seriously, you guys should come down one day though, with a bit of planning you could make it coincide with a GNR or Slash tour as well or something and we could try and organise some kind of evo meet! Although I guess with international holidays that's not the primary concern lol!
- Smoking Guns
- Rep: 330
Re: Australia, looks like an awesome place
Thanks for the info guys. I would love to visit. Seems like a strong economy, little political issues, high employment , beautiful clean cities.
