Yes, Australia is one of the easiest countries in the world to backpack on your own: English is the main language, hostels line the entire east coast and most travelers feel safe in cities and towns after dark.
The real challenges are distance and cost. Dorm beds run about A$35 to 60 (US$23 to 40) a night, and a realistic daily budget is A$100 to 150 (US$65 to 100) if you cook in hostel kitchens. The
Sydney to
Cairns corridor is set up for solo travelers with hop-on hop-off coach passes and hostel tour desks, while the Outback and
Kakadu are far easier on a group tour. Travelers aged 18 to 30 (35 for some nationalities) can get a Working Holiday visa to fund a longer trip.
Two weeks covers one region of Australia properly, and three to four weeks lets you combine the east coast with the Red Centre or Tasmania.
The country is roughly the size of the contiguous United States, so plan around flights. With 14 days, stick to
Cairns and the
Whitsundays, or Sydney plus the
Blue Mountains. With 21 days, add
Melbourne, the
Great Ocean Road and
Tasmania. The full Sydney to Cairns run is about 2,700 km by road and needs 3 to 4 weeks on coaches. Flights between hubs range from 1.5 hours (Sydney to Melbourne) to about 5 hours (Sydney to Perth), and Uluru needs 3 days on its own.
Yes, you can travel Australia without a car if you stick to the east coast and the big cities, where coaches, trains and cheap domestic flights link everything.
Greyhound covers the whole
Sydney to
Cairns coast, with typical legs of 2 to 6 hours (Byron Bay to Brisbane is about 2.5). The NSW TrainLink train from Sydney to
Melbourne takes about 11 hours, while budget flights on that route often cost A$80 to 180 (US$50 to 120). Car-free travel gets hard at
Uluru,
Kakadu, the
Great Ocean Road and much of Tasmania; book a 3-day tour from Alice Springs, or rent a car or campervan for roughly A$60 to 150 a day for those stretches.
For a first trip to Australia, the places not to miss are Sydney Harbour, the Great Barrier Reef and Uluru in the Red Centre.
Give
Sydney 3 to 4 days for the Opera House, the harbor ferries and the Bondi to Coogee coastal walk. Snorkel the outer
Great Barrier Reef from Cairns on a day trip costing about A$200 to 300 (US$130 to 200), and allow 3 days for
Uluru-Kata Tjuta, flying into Ayers Rock Airport or touring from Alice Springs. With more time, add
Melbourne for food and galleries, a sailing trip to
Whitehaven Beach in the Whitsundays and a 4WD tour of
K’gari (Fraser Island).
If time is short in Australia, skip Surfers Paradise, the Gold Coast theme parks and Canberra, all of which are easy to replace with better beaches and cities.
Dreamworld and
Warner Bros. Movie World cost around A$100 to 130 (US$65 to 85) per park and feel much like theme parks anywhere;
Burleigh Heads, about 20 minutes south of Surfers, gives you the same surf without the high-rises. Canberra’s Australian War Memorial is excellent but costs a 3-hour detour each way from Sydney.
Perth and the west need 7 to 10 days because the flight from Sydney alone takes about 5 hours, and Darwin and Kakadu are best avoided in the November to April wet season.
Yes, our itinerary-planner does exactly that. Set your trip length in days, give your interests and travel style, optionally give start- and end location and/or some mandatory stops you would like to include and the itinerary planner creates your personalized routes for Australia in seconds. Try it out!
Try the itinerary plannerv2.webp){kind=logo}
Best Backpacking
