Hi all, this summer is the first chance I've gotten to travel alone and I've booked myself on flights to Australia for 6 weeks. I have the latter end of it sorted with 9 days in Sydney, and travelling will take about 4 days in total. So I have 4 weeks, I've booked flights to Darwin and want to know what my best plan of action would be. To base myself in Darwin and explore from there or to try to wing it with accommodation and not really book myself in anywhere. My initial plan was to book myself in for 2 weeks in a hostel in Darwin and then decide the rest when I'm there but I'm open to suggestions.
I have a few other quite important questions too... My flight is from Ireland to Sydney with one stop in Abu Dhabi, which I hear is not the best place to be for a 10 hour overnight stopover... Any comments??? And do I require a visa to get thropugh Abu Dhabi into Australia and then back home? I'm not working in Oz, just want a few weeks of exploration.
Any other comments re this trip would be hugely welcome as I fear my lack of travelling experience may hold against me.
It would help if you gave some indication of what you're interested in, and if there is anything you particularly want to see. For the following suggestions, I am going to assume: you have booked a return flight Syd-Dar-Syd, you are coming in the Northern summer/Southern winter, you are interested in exploring the areas around Darwin, rather than making your way overland from Darwin to Sydney, you will not have your own transport.
Darwin: a few days here enjoying the sun. Visit the museum, crocodile park, fish feeding, markets.
Kakadu/Litchfield: Get a tour combining the two parks, or get a day tour to Litchfield and use Greyhound to explore Kakadu independently.
Katherine: Visit the Gorge, go along the river either by kayak or ferry, do some walks along the escarpment. Try out the hot springs near town, or visit the ones further out at Mataranka (100km south so you'll need transport). Visit Edith Falls if you have transport. Katherine can also be visited on combined tours with Kakadu and Litchfield from Darwin.
Other possibilities:
Arnhem Land: expensive, but much more remote and far less tourists.
Tiwi Islands: Required to take a tour, but supposedly interesting (I haven't done it)
Kununurra: much further afield, about 900km from Darwin. Visit the Bungles, El Questro, Lake Argyle, Hidden Valley
To be honest, 4 weeks is a long time as a tourist in the Top End, especially without transport. With your own vehicle, especially if it's 4wd, you can see a lot more and if you're into nature, 4 weeks is a good amount of time.
Visa: You will need a tourist visa to enter Australia, no matter where you're from. I don't know if you need a visa for Abu Dhabi but usually not if you stay in transit (ie don't clear Immigration).
Yeah, I'm with Jehane on the Darwin thing: don't book for two weeks, just a couple of nights to find your feet and work out a plan - which may well see you wanting to take more than day trips out to Kakadu or wherever. The big decision to make, and only you can make it really, is to work out which way you're going to take to get back to Sydney - either down through Alice Springs or take yourself a flight to Cairns and down the coast. Both have their attractions, but the attractions are quite remarkably different! I'd say that with only four weeks, however, keeping some momentum up will be important. My personal tastes would probably see me move fairly smartly if I was going down through Alice, which would mean more time available up north, than if I was coming down the East Coast from Cairns, which would have a number of more reasons to stop. But that's my taste.
Darwin for four weeks is much too long out of six weeks total - unique and interesting as it is - it is overkill. <BR><BR>If you are new to travel and don't have private transport, you could consider a few days in Darwin then a WesternXposure (or similar) backpacker bus tour Darwin > Perth via the Kimberley, Broome and the WA coast. From Perth get a cheap domestic fare back to Sydney, or better still, fly home from there if your ticket allows. A bus tour will be good fun, you will meet a lot of ther similar travellers, and you will have a great experience - 21 days or so - they have a good website. Or alternatively, as suggested above, a week or so in Darwin and return to Sydney via the Queensland coast.
I reckon you should do an internet search for some of the Darwin to Adelaide camping trips, and you could then try the train Adelaide to Sydney.
Selection here.
They take care of all the details and you'll meet some like-minded travellers.
Could also try someone like Wayward Bus ( here ) for some shorter trips.
I've done a couple of these and had a ball. (And I usually prefer independant travel)
Further to eveningstar's wrap of Abu Dhabi, if you haven't paid for your fares, you could look at both Emirates and Royal Brunei too. Fly into Darwin or Perth or Sydney to start (depending on season), and fly out of one of those as well (depending on your itinerary end) to minimise your overall air travel. Emirates Perth > LHR via Dubai (for example) is about as quick as you can travel UK/Ireland to Australia. Or from Darwin via BKK, etc. Good luck with your plans.
As suggested above there's lots to do & natural beauty to see if you're willing to travel a bit from Darwin.
Even without your own transport, tours and travel between towns are easy to arrange. I travelled all over the place with public transport and arranged tours from where I was at the moment (use a guidebook for possibilities though), but if that´s too much hassle you can go all the way with a backpacker tourbus. It depends on how you want to travel.
Kakadu is very nice for a camping tour, so is Bungle Bungle NP and travelling through the Kimberley via Gibb River Road on again a camping tour is awesome. Broome has Cable Beach and further south there´s Karinjini NP and the beaches and National Park around Exmouth-Coral Bay.
North of Broome is the most beautiful beach I ever saw at Cape Leveque. A long and not particularly interesting road (apart from a couple of Aboriginal settlements on the way) gets you there, but it´s definitely worth the ride. Very few people, amazing coloured rocks, sleeping in a beach shelter under a million and then some stars and the only footsteps on the beach are yours.....
Four weeks is way too much to stay in one place.
Thanks for all the replies, to be honest I don't have the money for more expensive flights, hence the Abu Dhabi stopover but I've resigned myself to it being hell and my philosophy on it is that the worst part of my trip will be over before I reach Oz so the rest can only get better from there, even more to look forward to!
I think I worded my original post wrongly, I don't want to stay in Darwin for 4 weeks, I was just wondering was it a good base to take trips from, I've already looked into a 5 day safari to Kakadu and Litchfield, and I see loads more options to use my time, my lack of own transport was the initial reason for kind of giving myself a base to work from. I was just concerned about the availability of accommodation so I thought maybe booking somewhere for the first two weeks would save me from being stuck somewhere, but it doesn't make much sense financially, esp with my budget!
I'm very much there for the Nature, exploration, escape part of it, hence the travelling solo but I'm all up for meeting new people so the bus trip sounds good, and again, all comments, suggestions, etc welcome.
Darwin is a perfectly reasonable and interesting place, and a good base for about a week (during which you might spend 5-6 nights on a Kakadu > Katherine Gorge > Litchfield trip in any case). After that week however, it ceases to be a reasonable base for anything much else. Nice enough place to vegetate around the hostel pool, but that is only a good thing for a day or two. So then you need to move on - to the Kimberley and WA, Alice Springs, or NE Queensland. It is good to book ahead though - Darwin hostels get very busy June to September. Just that pre-booked two weeks in Darwin (both for itself and as a base) would be the absolute maximum, so hopefully you haven't pre-paid too much - you can certainly get away with less if you want to see more country in your six short weeks. Good luck.
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