onedog

The onedog family is heading to Australia for about 17 days in June. We are flying into SYD from LAX. One of the things we'd like to do is visit the Cairns area to scuba dive the GBR and tour around the area. From researching here on FT, it appears that there is a lot to see and do in the general Cairns area.

Since there will be 5 of us, would it be better for us (cost wise, time wise and missing any sights)to rent a car and drive from Sydney to Cairns, take a train or should we fly? I'm leaning towards flying except that airline tix are pretty pricey. It appears to be a pretty long distance (approximately 3.5 hours by air). I checked and it appears that r/t flights run around $450 pp.

We arrive into Sydney in the early a.m. Should we try to fly that morning directly to Cairns or spend a few days in Sydney to get situated and recuperate from the long flight. If we are going to fly to Cairns, it just seems more time efficient to transfer directly to a Cairns flight rather than to spend time and money to do the whole airport shlep (get bags, transfers into town, transfers back to the airport, check bags, etc.). Travel days always seem to eat up a whole day, regardless of how short the flight is.

Thanks,

Onedog