Photo © Jesse Kunerth/123rf.
While the fun part of trip planning is deciding where to go, equally important is figuring out the necessities such as entry visas, spending budgets, and getting around your destination. Thanks to robust tourism, the essentials of heading to Sydney and the Great Barrier Reef are fairly easy to plan out.
All visitors, except those holding a New Zealand passport, require a visa to enter Australia. It is very easy to obtain an electronic travel authority (ETA) online from www.eta.immi.gov.au. It takes about five minutes to complete the details, pay, and get the confirmation online, and costs around $20, payable by credit card only. There will be no stamp in your passport, but the details are electronically logged and available to the immigration officers upon your arrival.
Within Sydney the public transport system is very good, relatively cheap, and easy to understand. Timetables are displayed at bus stops and train stations, with information booths also helping out and selling tickets. If the kiosks are closed, you can get one-way, daily, and weekly tickets via easy-to-use vending machines that take cash and credit cards. Taxisare easily recognized, and while not all are uniformly colored, they all display a taxi sign on the roof and are metered.
In Queensland, simply due to the sheer size of the state, public transport between cities and attractions is less common, but there are regular, if not necessarily daily, trains running up and down the coast. If you are on a budget and have a bit of time on your hands, one of the best ways is to travel by Greyhound buses, which tend to be economical and offer more stops than the trains. Most larger towns have small regional airports, and, due to the distances involved, flying is the most time efficient way to connect around Queensland. Most hubs, such as Hamilton Island, Townsville, and Cairns, are reached by low-cost airlines such as Tigerair and Jetstar, whereas some of the more remote islands can only be reached by private local companies, making the prices a little higher.
The average room price in Australia at the time of writing was $177, with the most expensive room average found in the Whitsundays, ahead of Sydney. Budget accommodation, especially hostel beds, can be had from $20 per night, but in Sydney in particular, if you are not a backpacker keen on hostels, you’d better budget $150-200 per night—you stand a better chance to get something of a decent (and family-acceptable) standard.
The cost of dining out depends on where you go, but you can get a cup of coffee for $4, a substantial breakfast for $18, and a main course for dinner in a decent restaurant for around $30, accompanied by a glass of wine for $9.
Daily travel on a tram, bus, or other public transportation will set you back around $3 per trip for the shortest distance, with discounts if you buy passes. Air travel can be expensive, although domestic flights can be cheap on one of the low-cost airlines, such as Tigerair.
You can expect higher prices for manufactured goods as well as clothing—20 to 30 percent more than in the United States is a rule of thumb.
Excerpted from the First Edition of Moon Sydney & the Great Barrier Reef.
