Hunter Valley wine country (about an hour and a half away by car)
Lots of beautiful places to stay, inexpensive options available. Best wines: semillion and shiraz. Visit Petersons up the hill, Briar Ridge, same area, Margan and McWilliams for great wine at good prices. Eat at Bimbagen, Robert's at Peppertree and Chez Pok.

Blue Mountains © Kenta Tanaka

Blue Mountains
(two hours away by train or car)
Great hiking in these beautiful mountains covered with Eucalypt trees and flowing water. Some great places to stay and eat up here too. Try Vulcan's, Solitary, or Silk's Brasserie for the best meals there. Further afield, try, and stay, at Colitt's Inn.

Jarvis Bay
(about three hours away by car)
Beautiful and huge National Park on the Coast south of Sydney. Some great places to stay such as Paper Bark Camp for the gourmet African safari treatment.

Kangaroo Valley
Beautiful spot in the country about 4-5 hours from Sydney. You can camp here or stay in one of the many B&Bs in the area. Lots of wildlife and peaceful country setting.

Around Australia

Best to book any internal flights when you book your airfare to Sydney, it's usually cheaper than waiting until you get here.

1. The Great Barrier Reef and nearby rainforest. Fly to Cairns (pronounced Cannes) but don't stay there. Hire a car to any of the nearby resort towns. For the reef, I recommend beautiful Port Douglas and for a rainforest experience, Daintree. Daintree Lodge, expensive but fantastic - stay in a tree house in a tropical rainforest!

2. Ayers Rock, fly to the centre of Australia to see what most of the country looks like -- Mars! Red desert and an unusual set of mountains that are sacred Aboriginal land.

3. Tasmania and its capital city, Hobart. Great little city, Hobart. Small and friendly. Great Saturday market to while away an afternoon. Great hiking in Cradle Mountain and Lake St. Clair National Park. Cradle Mountain Lodge, in the middle of the mountains, is supposed to be beautiful and very nice. There is still wilderness all over the island. You can hire a car and drive around all of it in three days. Closest you may ever get to Antarctica.

4. Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide or Darwin. Quite different cities and very different to Sydney. Melbourne is thought to be more English-like (wetter, greener, cooler) and likes to think it has better food than Sydney. Great wine country nearby. You can see penguins just outside the city! Perth is the biggest city in the West of Australia, a sleepy little town with lots of beautiful beaches and great wine country too - Margaret River - nearby. Adelaide is a small but nice town also with GREAT wine areas nearby such as the Clare and Barossa Valleys. And Darwin is, well, the end of the universe. It's hot there most of the time. Not to mention tiny.

5. Byron Bay. For relaxed beach lovers, this is a great little town. You can stay in one of the many nice and inexpensive places right on the beach. Lots of backpacker hostels, etc.

6. For the big splash out, take the Indian Pacific train coast to coast from Sydney to Perth across the desert. The trip takes about 64 hours if you go directly or you can make stop overs in towns such as Adelaide and Broken Hill for a longer journey. This is a good way to slow down, watch the desert go by and eat in a dining car. Bring a good book. Expensive.

7. Noosa beach resort, north of Brisbane - it's beautiful, beaches are fine, food is fantastic and you can see koalas in the wild in the many national parks to explore all around - what more could you want? Great holiday houses and apartments to rent.

8. Great Ocean Road. From Melbourne to Adelaide you can drive along some of Australia's most beautiful and undeveloped beaches.

Questions?
If you want more information about this area you can email the author or check out our Pacific Insiders page.