My husband, his Mum, Aunt and Uncle and I went to Australia for 3 weeks in October/November this year and I thought I'd share our experience with you. We flew with Singapore Airlines from Manchester with an overnight stay in Singapore and then onto Melbourne. We stayed at the Radisson Hotel on Flagstaff (not yet listed in hotel reviews) where we were upgraded to Executive rooms - very nice! We hired 2 cars whilst we were there because we were doing different things. My husband has family in Melbourne, hence the reason we went there first.

After 4 nights we drove along the Great Ocean Road to Adelaide and had 2 stops along the way - Port Fairy first, then Robe. It was a long drive and we were grateful to have had the stop-overs along the way. We had only one night in Adelaide then flew up to Cairns for our "chill-out" time! My husband and I did a hot air ballon trip in Cairns (and one in Melbourne actually) and we were witnesses for a wedding couple on our balloon! The weather in Cairns was fab. We stayed at The Lakes Resort (already completed a review!) which was just wonderful. After 4 nights there we flew down to Sydney and stayed at the Saville 2 Bond Street apartments (again not listed) which was only a mere 7 minute walk down to the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Circular Quays, the main harbour. It took us about 20 mins to walk to Darling Harbour, so not too bad. Sydney was just great and my husband and I did the bridge climb which wasn't as scary as we thought! My husband, mum-in-law and I did a helicopter flight over Sydney too, and that was just brilliant - we could see the climbers climbing the bridge and they were waving to us.

We flew back to Singapore for another night before flying back to Manchester. We were all exhausted by the time we got home, but you can't go that far and not do anything! We had such a great time and managed to pack a lot in. Bearing in mind my mum-in-law is 77 she didn't half do bad!!! I can't wait to go back again, but now I'm trying to convince my husband that New Zealand should be our next venture!!