Travelling to Australia

Travelling to Australia is Real Gap's most requested gap year option. If you are longing to get away from it all on your gap year, travelling to Australia is about as far away from the UK as you can possibly get! Travelling to Australia has distinct advantages over many other gap year destinations as well. Working in Australia is easy if you are aged 18-30 and travelling to Australia on many of Real Gap's Australia programmes gives you the guarantee of a definite job once you get there.

Because taking a gap year in Australia is so popular, travelling to Australia also means that you are guaranteed to meet loads of other like-minded backpackers on your travels. The gap year social scene in Australia is second to none and if you are travelling to Australia on your own, it's easy to hook up with other backpackers and explore the country with them.

The number one reason for travelling to Australia, however, is undoubtedly Australia itself. Australia is a huge, beautiful country and travelling to Australia gives you the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to explore this amazing country in-depth. Australia is home to some fantastic cities (Sydney, Melbourne and Perth being the most notable examples), incredible wildlife on land and sea (including the incomparable Great Barrier Reef), stunning scenery and some of the world's best beaches. Travelling to Australia also brings with it the distinct advantage that it has a fantastic Southern Hemisphere climate. The top half of Australia is generally warm and sunny all year round while, further south, the Australian winter is far warmer than the ones people living in the Northern Hemisphere have to suffer each year.

If you are travelling to Australia you will need to apply for a visa beforehand, (even if you don't plan to work while you're out there), but this is something Real Gap can sort out for you. The other thing you will obviously need for travelling to Australia is a return plane ticket. One of the great things about travelling to Australia is that, because it's so far away, if you want to you can make use of free stopovers en route. This could be simply for a city break for a night or two in order to make the journey travelling to Australia more comfortable or, alternatively, you can stop for an extended period of time and explore some other countries more extensively.

There are two main ways of travelling to Australia from the UK. You can choose to travel east - with cities such as Bangkok, Singapore and Hong Kong being particularly common stopover options when you are travelling to Australia in this direction. The second option is by travelling to Australia in a westerly direction. The USA, the Pacific islands and New Zealand are the most popular stopovers if you are travelling to Australia via the west.

All things considered travelling to Australia on your gap year is an excellent choice for many reasons - it's a fantastic country to explore, you can earn some decent money while you are there and there is also the option of taking in some exciting stopovers in other countries en route.

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