Down Under

[click on the map for a larger, clearer view]

Who wouldn't want to go to Australia? Last week I dialed a 1-800 number for multi-city inquiries at Virgin Australia airlines (because their web site oddly did not allow for multi-city options) and I talked to a woman in Australia. Her accent made me melt. Unfortunately, the cost for the type of flight I was inquiring about just made me chuckle and say "...well, thank you anyway...."

A trip like this is a very different beast, in several different ways. The first issue that must be addressed is whether or not to insist upon visiting New Zealand as well. Given the fact that flights between the two are relatively cheap, the two are culturally connected, and the great unlikelihood of doing both separately within the next decade, I would have to say yes, it would be very wise to do them both at once.

However, that requires that we accept the notion that we will come nowhere close to seeing all their is to see of either place. Australia is huge. It would take a full year there, circling the continent (without even venturing much into the outback) to say you saw even most of it. So it's not rational to bother much with the idea of wanting to see all there is to see. New Zealand, on the other hand, is a manageable size. You could see a great deal of it in one 5-week trip. But I don't think we would enjoy such a lengthy, in-depth trip there during their winter, only to return to the prospect of another 6-months of cold in Minnesota just around the corner. The opportunity to spend more than a week there during their summer won't come until we are retired - who knows when.

So the best plan would be to spend about two weeks in chilly New Zealand and about three weeks in Australia, most of that between Brisbane and Cairns along the northeastern coast, where the weather is more tropical and temperatures are between 70 and 80 during the day, even in winter.

Arranging flights would be the biggest hurdle. Several major carriers fly from the US west coast to Australia or New Zealand. Few fly to both. Fewer still offer flights from Minneapolis. So coming up with a flight plan that wouldn't be completely impossible to afford would likely involve cobbling together a number of different flights including cris-crossing routes between the two destinations. The path shown on the map is just one of many possibilities, but it does illustrate the challenge. We could fly into Sydney, spend a few days there, then take a discount flight to Auckland, NZ. There we could rent a car and meander south toward the small city of Christchurch. From there we can take a flight to Cairns, Australia, stay for a week or more and then gradually work our way south by car to Brisbane. From there we can get a direct flight to the US west coast. Similar ground could be covered any number of other ways, too. But we would want to avoid having to backtrack as much as possible to catch the next flight. The more logical path, of course, would be to fly into NZ from the US and out of Australia to the US, but that would require using the same airline for both flights, and that is unlikely to be the most economical option even though, in a rational world, it would be.