An independent travel journal — go when the country is at its best.
Questions, corrections, story notes
Short arguments
between the
standing guides.
The guides on this site are meant to stay still. They describe a region or a subject the way it behaves year after year, and they are the pages we send people to first. The journal is the other half of the work: shorter pieces that take one question — how far to drive before the day stops being enjoyable, whether the shoulder season really is the better trade — and argue it out in a single sitting.
Because a short read is only useful when you are already thinking about something, the index below is arranged by subject rather than by date. Find the hub you are planning around, and the entries that belong to it sit directly underneath it.
HOW THIS PAGE IS ORDERED
PART 01 Guide or entry: the difference
PART 02 When to go and how far to drive
Every published entry appears in one of the two groups below, so nothing is buried behind an archive month. An entry can sit under only one subject, even when it touches several — the hub it belongs to is the one it was written to answer.
The index below is assembled the way an entry is: one question written down, checked against public sources, and filed under the single hub it was written to answer. A guide describes how a subject behaves; an entry picks one decision inside it and says what choosing costs.
A guide holds still.
An entry takes
a position.
Both are written the same way and checked the same way. What changes is the job. If you are still deciding where to go, read a guide. If you have decided, and the question left is a judgement call, read an entry.
Entries are revised when the reasoning stops holding, not padded out with news. When one of them turns out to be doing a guide’s work, it gets folded into the relevant hub instead of living on as a stray page.
A GUIDE
Stable reference for a region, a season or a practical subject. It describes how something behaves in general — distances, climate windows, costs of the ordinary kind, what changes between the coast and the interior — and it is meant to be re-read on a later trip without going stale.
Guides carry the structure of the site: Trip Planning Basics, When to Go: Seasons and Timing, Australian Road Trips, Coast and Reef, Outback and Red Centre and the rest of the topic index.
A JOURNAL ENTRY
One question, one argument, one sitting. An entry is allowed to prefer something: a slower daily driving limit, a fortnight in the shoulder season, three days in a city spent on two suburbs rather than six. Where it states a preference, it says so plainly and shows the trade being made.
Entries do not report availability, departures or prices, and they are not written to fill a schedule. A subject earns an entry when a standing guide stops at description and the decision underneath it is still open. The contact form is where questions, corrections and topic suggestions arrive, and Reader Questions holds the ones that can be settled in a paragraph.
When to go,
and how far.
Four entries about the calendar and the map: which window suits the country you have chosen, and how much ground a day can honestly hold once stops, light and fatigue are counted.
They sit under these guides:
When to Go: Seasons and Timing
Trip Planning Basics
Australian Road Trips
Cities and Short Breaks
LEAD ENTRY · 01 · WHEN TO GO
The Case for the Shoulder Season
The weeks either side of peak usually hand you the better version of a place — softer light, room to move, cooler walking — and charge for it in daylight hours and open services. It goes first because everything else in this group assumes a window has already been chosen.
A map, a calendar and an hour at the table. Every entry in this group settles the window first — month, holidays, daylight — and only then asks how much ground a day can honestly hold.
ENTRY 02 · WHEN TO GO
Planning Around School Holidays
Holiday periods change the crowd, the noise and the cost of a trip more than the weather does. An argument for reading the school calendar first, whether you are tied to it or free to travel around it. Read the entry →
ENTRY 03 · AUSTRALIAN ROAD TRIPS
How Far to Drive in One Day
The case for setting a daily limit in hours rather than kilometres, then building the route to fit it — including why arriving before dusk matters more on country roads than any distance you save. Read the entry →
ENTRY 04 · CITIES AND SHORT BREAKS
How to Structure Three Days in a City
A short window works best when it is spent narrowly. How to pick two districts and one day trip instead of a list of sights, and where to put the walking so the city stops feeling like a transfer. Read the entry →
Who you go with,
what it costs,
what it leaves.
Four entries about the parts of a trip that have nothing to do with the map: company, money, the bag, and the way you behave once you arrive.
They sit under these guides:
Travel Styles: Solo, Family, Group
Budgeting a Trip
Packing and Preparation
Travelling Responsibly
LEAD ENTRY · 05 · TRAVEL STYLES
Notes on a First Solo Trip
What changes when nobody else is deciding: pacing, the shape of the evenings, how much structure to keep, and why a first trip alone is usually better short and close than long and far. The other three entries here deal with money, kit and conduct — this one deals with the company you keep, or don’t.
One pack, and nobody to hand a decision to. The four entries here begin where the route stops mattering: who is travelling, what the days cost, what goes in the bag, and how you behave once you arrive.
ENTRY 06 · BUDGETING A TRIP
Cutting Costs Without Cutting Days
Shortening a trip is the most expensive saving there is. Where the money actually goes, which lines bend without spoiling anything, and why staying longer in fewer places usually costs less per day. Read the entry →
ENTRY 07 · PACKING AND PREPARATION
Packing for Changeable Weather
How to build a layered kit for regions that hand you three seasons in a day, and why a single well-chosen shell beats the three spare outfits it replaces in the bag. Read the entry →
ENTRY 08 · TRAVELLING RESPONSIBLY
Respect on Country in Remote Travel
Permits, signage, restricted areas and photography: what to check before you set out for the interior, and how to treat a place that is lived in rather than looked at. Read the entry →
THE THREE ROUTES ONWARD
Guides and Topics
The standing page underneath whichever entry you have just read.
Regions We Cover
Seven regional pages, each entered through its season rather than its sights.
Trip Records
Routes written up after they were travelled, rather than argued in advance.
Where an entry
sends you next.
A short read is deliberately incomplete. Once it has settled the question it was written for, the next step is almost always a standing page — the region you are actually going to, or the practical guide that carries the detail.
The regional pages run from Queensland and New South Wales down through Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia, and out to Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
If the question is narrower than an entry, it may already be answered in Reader Questions. If it is not, the contact form is the place to raise it.
What this form
is for.
Entries settle one decision each and leave the next one open. This form takes questions, corrections and subject suggestions.
If it is a correction, quote the line and name the page — it will be checked against the same public sources the entry was written from, and logged rather than quietly rewritten. How a message is handled once it arrives is set out on the contact page.
ABOUT THIS JOURNAL
Trips and Tours is an independent travel discovery journal for Australia and the trips Australians take. It publishes guidance for planning your own trip — no departures, no availability, nothing for sale.
Entries are written by the same hands as the guides, under the method set out in How We Research and Write, and the reasoning behind the whole publication is on the About page.