Planning your 2008 Australian Holiday (and avoiding the school holidays Down Under!) Updated 2009 version here...

As you can see, it wasn't the school holidays when we were visiting Palm Cove, Queensland!

I thought it would be useful to look up when the main Australian school holidays are, as these can have a big impact on booking a trip (usually in terms of accommodation being booked up, and resorts and roads being more busy). January is the biggest and busiest holiday time in Australia, as this is the long 'summer holiday' after Christmas, and all the southern states are in the middle of their hottest time of year. Lots of Australians will be on holiday for some or all of the month.

If you are planning a trip to Australia in January, you definitely want to make sure you have booked your accommodation and internal flights, etc in advance, and be ready for busy roads on major holiday routes (in some cases, think main roads to Brighton on a sunny bank holiday weekend!).

There are other school holiday times during the year too in Australia, which will also make travelling and staying busy, so again it's worth making sure you think about your accommodation in advance if your trip is planned for one of these times. So with thanks to the education authority in the state of Victoria, who have handily put together a table of all the Australian different states' school term times.

Here are the main school holidays (by states) for Australia in 2008:

What month will you be going in 2008?

Jan

Feb

Mar

Apr

May

Jun

Jul

Aug

Sep

Oct

Nov

Dec

ACT

All Jan

12—27

5—20

27 Sept
—12 Oct

From 19

NSW

Until 29

6—22

30 June
—15 July

29 Sept
—14 Oct

From 21

Until 29

5—13

21 June
—20 July

27 Sept
—5 Oct

From 12

QLD

Until 29

5—13

28 June
—13 July

20 Sept
—5 Oct

From 12

Until 29

12—27

5—20

27 Sept
—12 Oct

From 12

TAS

Until 13 Feb

31 May
—15 June

6—21

From 18

VIC

Until 30

21 March
—6 April

28 June
—13 July

20 Sept
—5 Oct

From 19

Until 3 Feb

12—28

5—21

27 Sept
—13 Oct

From 18

(This table has been updated to 2009 here...)

And remember — it's not just the state you are visiting whose holiday dates you have to think about — other states having holidays will make other places busy. For example, Queensland is like to get busy in 'winter' school holiday times (June/July and September/October) for the Southern states (NSW, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia) when it won't be so warm where they are, and they will head North! Happy planning ;-)

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