Australia & New Zealand
Two countries across the southern summer. The harbour city, the red centre, the reef and the Southern Alps.
Australia and New Zealand reward a trip built around the southern summer, roughly November to March, when Sydney and the New Zealand high country are at their best and the days are long. The one qualification is the tropical north: the Great Barrier Reef and the Top End are drier and clearer in the middle of the year, so the reef leg is timed with a little more care than the rest.
Seventeen nights, and real distance to cover, this being the trip on which private aviation most obviously earns its place, across a country the size of the continental United States and then a sea crossing on top. Australia first: Sydney, the red centre at Uluru, and the Great Barrier Reef; then New Zealand, the Southern Alps and a lodge or two on either island.
The highlights are spread wide. Sydney is the harbour, the Opera House and a private boat; Uluru is the rock at first and last light, the desert silence and a sky with no light in it for hundreds of miles; the reef is best from a chartered boat or a private pontoon rather than a day trip, with Lizard Island at the northern end. In New Zealand it is Milford and Doubtful Sound, a ski-plane onto a glacier, back-country fishing by helicopter, and the wine of Central Otago.
The aviation is the backbone. Sydney, Melbourne, Ayers Rock, the reef gateways and the New Zealand fields all take the appropriate aircraft, and the sectors are long enough that the alternative is days lost to airlines. New Zealand's biosecurity is strict and worth respecting, boots and gear are checked and it is not a formality.
Among our preferred hotel partners we use Park Hyatt and Capella in Sydney, Longitude 131 facing Uluru, qualia and Lizard Island on the reef, and Matakauri Lodge and Huka Lodge in New Zealand.
Ask your advisor about Uluru with a private guide at dawn, a chartered boat on the reef rather than the day pontoons, and a New Zealand lodge taken whole for a family.