Planning
With our 40th wedding anniversary due this October we had decided to have a big holiday and after much consideration we plumped for Australia. I had for a long time wanted to go but we were leaving it for a big trip when we retired but after negotiating a month's leave we decided to go this year backed up by a very profitable Sharesave and October seemed to be a good time to visit Australia both from a birding and a weather prospective. The trip was well into the planning stage even if nothing have been set in stone when the next big happening occurred, I was offered the chance to take early retirement !! Well this put everything into a new prospective, now the only things standing in the way was how much time Kay could negotiate away from work. Eventually it was settled that we could take the full month of October off and with the weekends at either end this equated to 5 weeks in all although this does mean her returning to work the day after her return which could be interesting to say the least.
The next decisions were on where to go as I was well aware that Australia is a huge area and we did not want to spend to much time just travelling, I had already decided that the Cairns area would be a must but how long do we need there and where else could we go, financially it is not a bottomless pit so we have to keep costs under control. A fully boarded guided tour was completely out of the question so much time was spent on the net looking at trip reports, gleaning Bird Tour Companies brochures to try and establish a viable itinerary and at the same time keep travel and costs to a minimum. A chance meeting with an Australian bird guide in Morocco was also a help as he offered to help or at least cast an eye over my suggestions which I happily took up and sent him my outline itinerary and it was at his suggestion that Tasmania was included in the final version. As a first and most likely only visit to the continent I decided that we needed to see the widest selection of species as possible both birds and mammals and that we could not really have the time even in 5 weeks to chase specific rarities and although there are a number of species that I would be disappointed to miss we would not be able to spend time in remote areas looking for a few specialities. Reading trip reports and studying the field guides I soon realised that after Queensland, Victoria offered the most variety so Melbourne was added to the trip, a visit to Lamington seemed essential and I hoped to fit in a pelagic. This was my original plan although as stated earlier Tasmania mainly for the mammals was added. Although Darwin area and Alice Springs were considered it was decided that neither would be a viable option as it mean dropping either Victoria or Tasmania, although a visit to Ayers Rock would have been nice Tasmania with its wildlife was more appealing and Victoria offered more variation than Darwin.
The next stage was to fit the itinerary around fixed dates as the pelagic trips only ran on a very few dates, and as Southern Ocean seabirds were the main targets it meant we had to be in Sydney on the second Saturday of the month or Wollongong on the last weekend, initially I had planned to start in Cairns and then make the Sydney trip but as most international flights to Cairns seem to go through Sydney anyway this would have entailed flying from Sydney to Cairns then back on the same journey then flying back up to Brisbane for a visit to Lamington before flying south again to Melbourne so after confirming availability on the Wollongong trip it was decided to book on that one as we could then fly home from Sydney a few days later and spend a time around Sydney in the meantime. It was then decided that if we started in Melbourne it would be a short hop to Tasmania and then one long flight up to Cairns followed by another short hop to Brisbane and then back to Sydney. I had wanted to be as late as possible in Cairns to connect with some late spring arrivals but we may not be lucky with them.
Now that a rough plan was in place the next step was to find out the availability of some key accommodation as this could have a vital influence over the final itinerary.
The next part of the plan was not just arranging accommodation but to keep costs under control as they were in danger of spiralling out of sight, I soon learnt that Australia so not a cheap destination and that all costs were greater than here in the UK. There was no way we could live in hotels and eat out every night nor it soon became obvious could we afford to be guided around everywhere. The one thing in our favour was that we could drive on the same side of the road and that generally the roads were much quieter. So we decided that for some of the time hiring a motor home would be a good idea it not only provided both transport and accommodation but we would be able to cook for ourselves and not eat out all the time so it was therefore decided that the last part of the trip would be simpler if we hired a camper van in Brisbane visiting Lamington and then driving down to Wollongong for the pelagic the alternative was to hire a car and travel to O'Reilly's before returning to Brisbane and flying to Sydney to pick up another hire car or camper there and that seemed to be an expensive option with another wasted travel day, it was far easier to drive to Lamington and stay in the campsite next to O'Rielly's and then drive down the coast to Sydney it does however limit our time at Lamington as according to Google maps we need 12hours to make the journey so I have allowed 3 days so we can make our way at a steady pace instead of trying to drive the whole journey in one tiring session, time will tell if that is correct and Google times can be relied upon.
Many hours over the next few weeks were spent looking at the various options, where we needed to be for the best birding areas and what accommodation was close by. Much information was gleaned especially from Lloyd Nielsen's Birding Australia and numerous other birding links mainly from http://www.ausbird.com. Everything began to fall into place although finding Kingfisher House was already fully booked when we wanted to be there did throw a spanner in the works and I did panic a little and book Cassowary House for a whole week as it was available on the premise that we could cover the whole area from there, again only time will tell and in hindsight it may have been wise to have split the time between there and somewhere nearer to Daintree for at least a couple of days. Taking a self catering option at Cassowary House does allow us to control food costs a little and also by not being reliant on meal times we can please ourselves, have an early breakfast and shoot out or an early walk and leisurely breakfast.
Guiding
Guiding was our next concern, how much would we need or could afford. Experience has taught me that while it is more fulfilling to find your own birds it is also especially in a strange area , not knowing the calls and with restrictive times also very frustrating so the plan was to use local guides to find us the specialities and more skulking stuff and then spend more time photographing and finding a few things ourselves. It was decided that a guide early on the trip would be most beneficial not only to help with the common stuff but also with some of the skulking little brown jobs Thornbills and Scrubwrens etc then later on I could focus on the local specialities and not waste time trying to ID birds that would eventually become commonplace. As we had decided to start in Melbourne Simon Starr's Firetail Birding site seemed to provide all I needed so I contacted him and he was most helpful and after some discussions we settled on a 5 day round Victoria tour which would not only introduce me to a good selection of common Aussie birds and mammals but also try and find me those Victorian specialities that we will not find on the later part of our trip.
The remaining parts of our trip will be mainly self-guided aided by the fact that hopefully we staying where the birds are. In Tasmania we had settled on staying at Mountain Wilderness lodge in the NW for its mammals like Tasmanian Devil, Quolls and Platypus as well as many of the Tas endemics on site then moving to Inala on Bruny Island where all the endemics are present. One thing I did discover if visiting Bruny is that most car hire firms will not allow you to take their cars there so some care needs to be taken when arranging car hire for there.
Queensland seems well geared up for birding with much information available for all the sites around the Tablelands and also many species can hopefully be found near our accommodation. As we wanted take the early morning Daintree River Trip it has been arranged that we combine that with a day on Mt Lewis hopefully to catch up with most of the Tableland endemics and specialities and so we have a guide for the day there but I am currently toying with the idea of having another day to catch up with anything that has managed to elude us up to then.
We have arranged nothing for the latter part of the trip although we may try and join the morning walk at O'Reilly's while we are there and I had hoped to use a guide in the Capertee Vally in the Blue Mountains but sadly she was not available so finding Regent Honey-eater may be difficult.
Hotels
It was decided that we would need to use some hotels so most of them were booked through either Expedia or Booking.com with location being the biggest consideration. With early flights booked in all cases so that we would have time at our destination to settle in rather than waste time hanging around waiting for flights in the middle of the day. So with this in mind we booked hotels close to the airports at Melbourne and Hobart so we could catch early flights bearing in mind that all the airports were several kilometres out of town, in Cairns we considered that by having the boat trip to the reef on the day after our arrival we would not need a hire car until the morning of the next day so here we booked a hotel on the Esplanade with walking distance of the marina and also arranged to pick up the hire car from Cairns city centre rather than the airport although this meant we had to pay a slight relocation fee as we would drop off the car at the airport on the return date it was no more than the taxi fee from the airport into Cairns centre. The hotel in Hobart was very close to the airport with meant we had all day to travel from Bruny Island to the hotel and drop the car off then take the shuttle to the hotel and back to the airport next morning, in retrospect we did not need to do this as the car hire company told me the reception at the airport would not be manned at the time we intended to arrive so that we could keep the car free of charge until early next morning. At Melbourne the hotel was close to the airport with a free shuttle although we had a free day there as Simon was not available as a guide on the Sunday, so we opted to stay there for both nights so that we did not have to worry about luggage and take the bus into the town centre for our sightseeing excursion.
Flights
Flights were booked once all the plans had been confirmed using Qantas on the international flights as they the most direct with minimum stopover delays, some others were cheaper but usually much longer flight times as they had 7+ hrs stops compared to Qantas around 2 hrs, we added one internal flight with Qantas as it was cheaper than booking separately but they did not cover the other routes where we used Jetstar who are their lo-cost subsidiaries for the other flights. Jetstar gave a good selection of daily internal flights although as with other lo-cost airlines extras boosted the cost considerably but I paid in advance for allocated seating and extra luggage as much as we were trying to keep luggage to a minimum we were still needing to carry luggage for our 5 week trip so thought it prudent to pay in advance and not get lumbered with a hefty over weight charge at the airport.
Money
We wanted to keep carrying cash to a reasonable minimum so I opted for a prepaid card to minimise exchange rate charges and also took out a new credit card which also carried no exchange fees. The advantage of the prepaid card is that the exchange rate decided on the day you add funds rather than the day of purchase so you are not subject to the whims of the exchange market, the exchange rate free credit card would have been suffice but as a new customer the credit limit was insufficient so was used as a back up once the cash and prepaid card had been used. One point concerning the prepaid card was although technically it is not a credit card it would not go through the card machines as a debit card and was only excepted as a credit card which although it did not happen to us it could then occur a surcharge. Unless you have a credit card that does not charge for overseas transactions there will be a charge for every time it is used abroad, Martin Lewis's moneysaving website explains this better than me.
Reference
