General Tips

• Leaving Ireland, a visa requirement seems to be that you must have Aus$5,000 in your bank account. Usit can organise a bank account, a TFN (TAX FILE NUMBER), which you will need for work, and a sim card. You can do these thing yourself when you land in Australia but theres no harm in having it all organised for you before you get there, with one exception. Don't bother with the sim card as it's just as easy to go into a phone store and buy your own. Usit seem to give a virgin sim card as well and they are a more expensive network. With Vodafone or Optus if you buy lets say $30 of credit you will get $120 for that price.

• When planning your trip to Australia, give a thought to the timing of your trip. A few examples would be, you could leave home so that you could have a few weeks in Asia or America or wherever, and then land in Sydney in time for Christmas and New Years with plenty of money in your pocket. However it can be hard to find a job at this time of the year in Sydney because everybody seems to be there. Also hostels go up in price at Christmas and you will have to book early and book around 7 nights minimum. Alternatively get there early so you have plenty of time to find a job and maybe an apartment if thats what you want. You could land in Cairns in May (after the wet season), do all the activities there and then head down the east coast. Theres so much options but give it some thought before you head off.

• It may sound obvious but be sure to buy your own food in supermarkets rather than eating out all the time. This could save you hundreds of dollars a week. The hostels in Australia pretty much all have well equipped kitchens. You may have to put a deposit down ($10) on a set of plates and utensils etc. Make sure to label your bags and if possible put a little lock on the bag as theft of food is rife in hostels. There's nothiing worse than doing a weeks worth of shopping and finding the steak you got for dinner has been nicked.

• Buying alcohol in off licenses or 'bottle shops' as they're called in Oz works out much cheaper as you can imagine. In a pub you're talking about between $6 and $7.50 for a pint of lager. This will leave a nasty hole in your pocket after one of the massive sessions you're sure to enjoy out there. A case or slab of beer costs under $40 for around 24 or 30 cans or stubbies (bottles). A 4l cask of wine or 'goon' costs around $10 or $12. Thats incredibly cheap and that stuff will definitely get you drunk, if that's what you want of course. So have a few drinks in the hostel or share house with the gang before you go out and save some of that precious cash.

• Make sure you have a full international driving license before you leave home. Your own national license will generally do, but they seem to prefer an international license. Getting one is simply a matter of sending off for it. You don't have to take a test. Find out from your local roads authority how to go about it. There's a million kilometres of road in Australia and driving yourself is one of the best ways to discover it.

• An around the world trip with USIT will cost roughly €2200 for the entire trip including tax, insurance and visa. Make sure you get comprehensive insurance which covers you in an emergency such as getting flown home.

• If travelling with a friend, buy one set of toiletries and split them. It sounds obvious but you could save an awful lot of space in you rucksack, and that space is precious.

• Another way to save space is buy only one guide book ie lonely planet, even if you are going to lots of countries on your trip. Buy a book for the first country you are visiting, when you are finished with that book, swap it with other backpackers, in a hostels library, or in a bookstore. It must be a fairly new edition for the bookstores to take it though. Or simply buy them as you go.

• Use your empty goon bag (casks of wine) to cool your beer or food in your esky (ice box). Just fill it with water, freeze it and throw in the esky. The great thing is they also stay frozen longer than normal bags of ice.

• Be careful when booking some boat trips. Make sure you can get your money back in the event of bad weather. If the sea is too rough and they cancel the trip, you could be out of pocket. The same with any tour that involves wild animals, let's say spotting, dolphins, or whales. Is there a guarantee to see them, if not will they give you a free tour if you don't spot them.

• A great way of moving around Australia on the cheap is by relocating campervans. Companies such as Britz and Apollo offer free locations, where you bring one of their vehicles to a destination where they need it, ie they may need a van moved from Sydney to cairns. Some times they may even pay your fuel, sometimes you may have to pay a few dollars a day. Keep an eye on their websites and you may get lucky. You have to be fairly flexible. You will only get a certain amount of days to do the trip.

• If you own a car, offer lifts on notice boards so you can cut the costs of fuel. If you don't have a car advertise for a lift, there's always someone looking to cut costs.

• Try to use buses and trains as much as you can, rather than taxis. It's cheaper in general but also in Sydney and Melbourne in particular taxi drivers are notorious for having foreign drivers who don't know or pretend not to know where they are going and drive you around in circles or take you the long way home. In Sydney at night, they won't even let you in the cab if you're not going the way they want you to go, unless you're prepared to pay way over the odds. They're not all bad, just an awful lot of them.

• Talk to other backpackers about tours. The best advice can be from your fellow travellers. They may help you avoid getting ripped off on some tour that you were considering doing.