Travelling to Australia

Britain and Australia are more than 10,000 miles apart – about as far as you can go before you start coming back again.

But when you travel to Australia, you realise that ours is actually a small world. The far side of the planet is only a day away by air, and you can get there for less than you’d pay for closer, less popular routes.

Over 5 million international travellers visit Australia every year, so there’s plenty of demand for transport into the country, which helps to keep costs down, and departure frequencies up.

In this section, you’ll find our easy, at-a-glance guide to getting there by air, with all the different long-haul airlines that fly to Australia.

Plus we’re your first stop for getting there the old-fashioned way, with our links to surface travel – by sea, rail or road.

Travelling by surface (trains, boats and road), you will experience a renaissance. As flight costs rise along with CO₂ emissions, the price gap between air and land transport is slowly closing, and surface travel is regaining its old appeal. It’s more eco-friendly, it’s more adventurous, it’s more fun – and you won’t get jet lag.

Surface travel to Australia is the ultimate big adventure. Not many people manage it, but it can certainly be done. Allow plenty of time, and plenty of money!

The downside is that all surface travel requires careful planning and independent research – few high-street travel agents are equipped to help. But this is half the fun, and gives you plenty of freedom! Get started early, and of course allow at least a month to cover the 10,000 miles.

Whichever mode of transport you go for, this is the ultimate Grand Tour of the modern age – in which the journey is as important as the destination, if not more so. You’ll come to understand the distances, climes and cultures that lie between Australia and Europe, and it will change your life.

For an account of one man’s overland mission travlling from Britain to Australia, read Aussie travel writer Peter Moore’s book, The Wrong Way Home.