By Christina
Australia, South Pacific, We took a family trip to Australia in late August. We were travelling with two adults and three children, ages 12, 10 and 8. We flew into Melbourne for 3 days, flew up to Cairns and stayed an hour north, in Port Douglas, for 5 days (Great Barrier Reef area) and then spent 3 days in Sydney. Here are some of my impressions and some advice.

We were lucky enough to fly on miles with United. United allows you to fly into one city and out of another, which expanded our options. I think, however, that they only fly to Sydney and Melbourne - maybe Adelaide. Check with them. Qantas is another option, since if you book with them you can add on up to three internal flights, which I think saves you money if you're paying your full fare. Worth looking into...

We used Virgin Blue for our internal flights. Another discount airway is Jetstar. Go to their websites and sign up for their newsletters. They will email you when they have special deals. Doing that we were able to fly five of us from Melbourne to Cairns and then from Cairns to Sydney for about $1,000 (about $100 a leg per person).

When looking into attractions or even airport transfers, always ask about family rates, since a family often can include up to four children. This saved us a lot of money. Also, hotels often have discount coupons for attractions.

Shop around a lot for tours and remember you can always rent a car and drive. It's a little "interesting" at first if you're not used to left hand driving, but as long as you get out of cities, you're o.k. Rental rates are similar to in US, but you get a better rate if you book by Internet before you go - you can always cancel if you decide to do a tour. Both times we rented we got a Honda X Trail, which was sufficient for a family of five and drive well.

When you select tours beware of those that add a lot of stops for shopping unless you're into cheap souvenirs. More on tours we did below, but I think we chose well - good, educated guides, small groups and very little forced shopping.

With a family, look into staying in "serviced apartments." This gives you room to spread out and ability to prepare meals, especially breakfast or sandwich/snack supplies. This saves money and, more importantly, time. Kids want to eat their three square meals a day, and one thing that was consistently slow in Australia was restaurant service - nice, but slow. I include my reviews of our accomodations in reviews portion of this site, but I have mentioned them below.

Overall, with kids, you have to realize your limitations - it may be a great wine region or a great restaurant region, but kids aren't going to enjoy that (though our kids really enjoyed trying new things at Victoria market and all different Asian cuisines - they just wouldn't have been up for a multicourse "mod oz" restaurant full of yuppies when they were all jetlagged and tired from walking around all day).

Overall, Australia was great. If I had it to do over again, and a little more time, I would combine it with a stop in Bali, Fiji, Tahiti or some other "exotic" locale - for without scenery and animals and sea life, you could really be in States, fast food, Target and all. Since you're travelling 1/2 way around world if you're coming from states, it might be good to experience some more culture unlike our own. That said, many people will appreciate ease of getting around this beautiful country ( and I'm sure there's plenty of adventure in outback, which we didn't get opportunity to visit). Also, I felt very safe at various attractions, even though there is an element of risk in climbing down, say a 1,000 step stairway in a mountain (at three sisters in Blue Mountains) or snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef. You are NOT in a third world country.