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If you can’t decide where to spend your next holiday, choose Australia.

Australia is a country that fascinates you from the first minutes and we are sure that no matter which region you choose to visit, you won’t regret the choice you made.

There is something for everyone in this country, whether you are looking for a holiday on a white sandy beach with turquoise blue water, you want to hike in a tropical rainforest or maybe walk through the red-colored gorges, here you can do all these and more.

Let’s don’t forget the amazing underwater world – the Great Barrier Reef on the East Coast and the Ningaloo Reef on the West Coast, where you can dive or snorkel in places of breathtaking beauty.

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Australia made us become interested in birds. From the very first day, we were pleasantly surprised at how many types of beautifully colored birds flew freely around us.

You can read about our itinerary for Western Australia here.

 How you can get the visa for Australia?

To get the visa you must apply online and it is free of charge.

The first step is to make an account on this website, then you have to choose the type of visa you want to apply for.

We applied for the tourist visa, which is granted for a period of one year and allows you to stay in Australia for 3 months per visit during that year.

The tourist visa is called eVisitor (subclass 651).

After choosing the type of visa you want to apply for, you need to fill out a form.

In this form, you have to fill in some personal data, the name of the person (s) you will be traveling to Australia with, there are a few yes or no questions, and you also have to write your travel plan.

We had already bought all the tickets, and on the travel plan, we briefly wrote when we were going to Australia, what we were going to visit and when we were going to leave Australia.

How long does it take to get the visa?

There is no exact answer, it can take 24 hours, a month or more. It took us about a month.

One week after completing the form we received an E-Mail requesting additional information.

The documents with additional information have to be uploaded directly on the platform into your account and not sent via E-Mail. We uploaded them about a week after we received the request.

Here’s the additional information they asked for in the E-Mail:

We wrote our answers in a Word document and uploaded the document on the platform, along with the other scanned documents.

If you want to get the visa sooner, our recommendation is to upload as many documents as possible after filling out the form and not to wait for them to be requested.

What does the visa look like?

You will receive the visa in an Email with the subject “IMMI Grant Notification”. It is a PDF document, and it is recommended that you print it and have it with you throughout your stay in Australia:

What you can do in case of a refusal?

In case of a refusal, they will tell you the reasons that led to this refusal and you can apply again from the same account. The second time it is advisable to be better prepared and more convincing.

What’s next after you get your visa for Australia?

You will have an interview at the airport from which you are about to fly to Australia

We flew from Asia to Australia, and in Kuala Lumpur, before we boarded the plane, we had an interview. We were asked to present the visa and answer some questions about ourselves and the itinerary we were going to follow in Australia.

There is a form to be filled in on the plane:

On the plane, before we landed in Perth, we had to complete the following form:

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You have another interview in Australia:

We landed in Perth at 5:35 in the morning and we went as a group to the passport control. There didn’t ask for the visa, just for the passport and the form we had filled in on the plane. They asked us some questions about what we were going to visit in Australia and in less than five minutes we had finished.

How do you get to Australia?

We visited Asia before visiting Australia and flew from Kuala Lumpur to Perth with AirAsia. The tickets cost 120 AUD / person.

We flew back from Sydney on the route: Sydney – Singapore – Berlin with Scoot. Scoot is a low-cost company owned by Singapore Airlines.

We had a very good experience with SCOOT. They do not offer free food or drinks on board, but you can buy these. Besides this, the tickets were very cheap: 720 AUD / 2 persons:  Sydney – Berlin.

When you sign up for Scoot (you become a “Scoot insider”) you get a 15% discount voucher.

Scoot flies to several locations in Asia, Australia, and New Zealand.

Which airlines did we choose for domestic flights in Australia?

In Australia, we flew with Jetstar, a low-cost company owned by Qantas Airways, and Tigerair, a low-cost option offered by Virgin Australia.

Applications we’ve used in Australia:

Can I Fly There? is an application we’ve used to check where we were allowed to fly the drone and where not.

Uber – taxi.

Fuel Map Australia: we used this app especially in Western Australia, where the distance between towns is very big, and it is recommended to fuel whenever you find a gas station on the road. On the app, you will see all the gas stations on your route, their schedule, the prices and the distance from you to them.

Wikicamps: is an application that shows you all the campsites, rest areas and car parks on your route. For Western Australia, we did not book the accommodation in advance, and with this application, it was very easy to find campsites on the route.

Driving in Australia:

In Australia, you have to drive on the left side of the road.

Toll roads:

To be able to drive on some roads in Australia, you will have to pay a toll. Toll roads are found in the states of Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria.

We had an electronic tag fitted to our rented car, and this device automatically detected when we entered one of these toll roads, and we paid the toll directly to the rental company.

If you don’t have an electronic tag you will be able to purchase a temporary pass. You should ideally buy this pass before traveling on any toll road, although you have up to 72 hours after traveling on them to purchase a pass.

International driving permit:

Before renting a car in Australia, check if your driving license is also recognized in Australia.

Because our license wasn’t written in English, we had to obtain an international permit. This document was checked every time we took our rented cars.

The international permit is a translation of the driving license in 7 languages.

If you do not have an international permit, there are some Australian states where a license translation is accepted, and more details about the accepted translations can be found here.

Additional insurance for the rented car:

When you rent a car, you have to choose between paying only the basic price and in the event of an accident you have to pay an amount according to the company’s terms and conditions, or you can pay the insurance, and in case of an accident, you don’t have to pay anything.

Depending on the terms and conditions of the company, if you pay this insurance you can get a discount or even not have to pay at all the deposit/bond that is otherwise blocked on your card when you pick up the car.

We paid the extra insurance for each rented car.

We had one incident with one of the cars in an area where maintenance work was carried out on the road, a small stone jumped and hit the windscreen.

Although the windscreen fissure was quite large, we did not pay anything for repairs.

Which companies we chose to rent cars from in Australia:

The campervan – Western Australia:

The best way to discover Western Australia is from the campervan. After we did a lot of research, we decided that it would be best for us to rent a campervan.

We rented a small campervan from Apollo. 

Apollo is about 2 km away from Perth Airport. The small distance is a great advantage considering that there is no free transfer from the airport.

The car worked impeccably throughout the route and we are very pleased with the choice we made.

We paid 77 AUD / day including insurance plus 100 AUD deposit/ bond.

Australia’s East Coast:

On the east coast, we rented from Apex, they have a free airport shuttle service. The cars are new, and the prices are very competitive.

Another advantage of this company is that we did not have to pay a deposit when we took the car.

We paid 68 AUD / day including the insurance.

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