my friend and i are heading to australia and are trying to find out a general idea of how much we need..
what we know so far:
-we are going for 6 -7 months
-we are willing to travel as cheap as possible (i.e long bus rides as opposed to flights).. maybe buying a car tehre to get around?
-we intend to work as much as possible, but also want to be able to travel and do as much as we can afford


so... 6 months, working, having fun, ...

after getting everything we need (plane ticket, work visa etc), how much should we realistically plan to have for sustaining us while we are there.. (i know you require $5000 or soemthing in your back account in order to go to oz.. not worried about that, parents will loan me that hopefully, even if they dont let me spend it)..

how much bling bling do i need???

thanks!!

The amount of money you will need with depend on a few factors:

Will you be working while you are there?
Will You be renting a flat or staying in hostels?
Will you be moving around alot, or staying in one place?

All these things are importent to remember when your trying to figue out how much money you will need

If you are working, then you will need to bring less money because you will have an income

If you are renting a flat, then you will need prob more money for the flat but less money on food because you will most likely have a kitchen and not have to eat out a whoel lot.

If you are moving around then you will have to pay for transport ( bus,train,plane) But if you enjoying places for extnded periods of time, the transport will be less

There are other factors as well, but there are so many to get into, too many variables...

If you are not going to work, then I would throw out a amount of about $7000 - 10,000 for a BUDGET 6-8 month trip, or $10,000-13,000 if you wanna live it up a bit.

I hope that gives you some idea on what you might need... :blink:

( i just re-read you post, if there are 2 of you going it will be less per person I think than if it was a single person travle'n)

Hi hope i can help....

I live in australia and have all my life. there are so many things you can do here. about the money issue if its the two of you, for food a week i would say you would need around 70 bucks and thats like supermarket food i mean drinks, snacks, dinners, breakfast, lunch, meat, fruit the hole thing 70 bucks a week for food is enough if you want to go out to eat it usually costsmore obviosly. Now theme parks and attractions....... all theme parks (dreamworld,movie world, wet and wild,sea world) they all pretty much charge around 30-40 dollars a ticket depending on your age i suppose. Beaches are amazing on the goldcoast and sunshine coast i recomend you go to broad beach on the goldy and noosa, coolum, and maloolaba on the sunshine coast. For serious partying melbourn, sydney, and surfers paradice (on the gold coast it is like the party capital of qld its also great to get cheap gifts for friends back home).

Sorry got a bit side tracked back to the money issue ..... Traveling expenses all depend on were your travelling to and how long itl take train passes are cheap as chips. Buses are also and leave from just about anywhere any time. best times to come to aust is probably feb-april or october-november this way you still get gud weather but you aviod holiday jerks and those times are also the favourite times for companies to employ people.

I live in qld on the goldy so obviously everything i have said mainly relates to queensland but australia is all pretty much the same in terms of cost.

And hey if you have trouble just contact me. If your in the area stop buy and i might be able to help you out. well if i dont here from you have a great trip and i wish you the best of luck. i hope i was a help :cheers:

hi mad_about_italy,
thanks for the tips...
we will be in australia from May until December, starting our trip in cairns and ending in Sydney, so we will hit most of teh places you suggested.
i do havea notehr wuestion that you may be able to answer: we will be staying in some cities longer than others and are hoping to rent apartments or something there, because we can;t afford to stay in hostels for the whole 7 months we are there! Can you give me an approximation of how much renting an apartment or a room in a house will cost? I have heard something abotu backpacker's apartments that you can rent for only a moneth or a few weeks at a time - do you kno anything about those?
we are trying to budget for our trip now and are having trouble because we have no idea ho wmuch accomodations are going to cost us.
thanks so much for any help!!

beeltee- They have backpacker houses in sydney that offer rooms for rent. Check out Sleeping With the enemy

:)

thanks! do you know if they have anything else like that anywhere along teh east coast?

I spent US$15,000 while travelling Oz for 6 months but I absolutely lived it up and had the time of my life. I spent 4 months living in a house (I rented a room) and two months living in hostels. I went out almost every night but I did most of my cooking so as not to have to eat out.

I blew thru a bunch of cash on my trip but every penny spent was well worth it!!

-Meg.