Australia family holidays and breaks

From bustling city to stunning beach or tropical rainforest (and that’s just Sydney!), Australia is a magical world of its own and a fantastic destination for family holidays. The only real drawback is the long flight, but these days airlines make the whole thing more painless and you can also turn the stopover into a mini-break en route.

On the whole, it's best to stay in one area and take your time to explore it properly. Even three weeks is not enough to get a proper taste of this vast, incredibly diverse country.

10.00

Today

12°C
55°F

Capital City	Canberra
Flying Time	20.5 hours
Carbon Footprint	22.44 tonnes CO2
Timezone	GMT +10
Local Currency	Australian Dollar

What to do

Experience in-your-face Sydney with its great food and beaches, blessed weather, big art and electric fashion, and also the state of which it is capital, New South Wales. The latter is a top spot for family holidays, with pristine beaches and funky seaside towns, and beyond it the Outback, rich in Australian colonial history. 

Venture to the vast north-eastern state of Queensland – more than seven times the size of the UK and covering more than a quarter of Australia’s total expanse. Both lush and tropical and desolate and harsh, garish and refined, it's another great place for a family holiday, with one of the world’s best conservation zoos, rainforest to explore, the natural wonder of the Great Barrier Reef, and spotlessly clean and child-friendly sub-tropical and tropical beaches with the softest sand imaginable. The Gold Coast here is Australia's favourite family holiday destination,with 300 days of sunshine a year, 70km of beaches and fantastic themeparks. 

Explore Victoria in the south-east corner, Australia’s smallest mainland state – sophisticated yet unspoiled, with a dramatic coastline, lush ski-fields, country towns rich in gold-mine history, a passion for great produce, and an arty capital, Melbourne.

Discover the dynamic cutting-edge city of Perth, one of the most cosmopolitan and interesting cities in the country, its low-key and bohemian sister-town, Fremantle, and the Margaret River region as a whole, with its top surfing, great wineries and gourmet food. They're on the very edge of Western Australia, the country's largest state and the real deal, with isolated mining towns, cattle stations, burnt orange skies, wildflowers and canyons, coral reefs and 12,500km of deserted beaches.

With older kids, venture into the vast central and northern-central Northern Territory to walk on the red soil of a vast camel-studded desert, guided through a timeless landscape by a living representative of the oldest continuing culture on Earth. A trip to Uluru (Ayers Rock) is a once-in-a-lifetime must-do.  

Where to stay

Whether you choose to stay in one place or visit a number of areas, the choice of accommodation options in Australia is huge, from all-inclusive hotel resorts to budget motels, from houseboats to Outback retreats. Costs vary tremendously and depend largely on what kind of family holiday you have in mind, but in Sydney, mid-range rooms sleeping up to 3 can cost from as little as £50 per room per night. 

See also our inspirational features on Green Places to Stay in Australasia and the Pacific and Unusual Places to Stay with Kids Outside Europe.

If you're exploring large areas of Australia, consider hiring a motorhome (see 'How'), which will save you money on car-hire, eating out and accommodation.

When

Seasons in Australia are the opposite of those in the UK: summer runs Nov–March, winter is May–Aug. But there are huge variations in weather or temperature throughout this vast country, which you need to take into account when planning a family holiday.

New South Wales, the centre of Western Australia and Queensland have hot summers and mild winters, while Victoria and Tasmania can experience chilly winters, combined with short days. Sydney averages temperatures of 8-16°C in July and 18-26°C in January, although it has reached 46°C in summer! April, May and June are the wettest months in Sydney.

The dry interior is hot year-round during the day but come nightfall it can become very cold. In the north, as the country enters the tropics, there are just two seasons - the dry, from May to September, and the wet, from December to March.

How

There are reasonably priced flights from several UK airports to Australia's 10 main international airports, including Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, Darwin, Cairns and Canberra. Direct flights from London take 21–25hrs. A host of low-cost airlines operate internally for those planning to explore more than one area (travelling from Perth to Sydney is like going from London to Cairo, while Cairns and the Great Barrier Reef are in the far north and Uluru/Ayers Rock is in the middle, so even covering the highlights requires a lot of moving around).

Find great flight deals with our preferred travel partners on our flights page.

Take a look at our flying with kids tips page for advice on handling such a long flight and the inevitable jet-lag. Seat-back TVs with kid channels, fun packs, Sky Nannies and so on make life easier. You might also turn the stopover into a mini family holiday in itself by breaking the journery for a night or two in the Middle East, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Singapore or even LA.  

See also our car-hire and motorhoming pages and our feature on exploring the Outback by motorhome. There also also some amazing - and child-friendly – great train journeys in Australia.

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