Are you planning Christmas 2008 in Australia?

Father Christmas emerging from the surf in Noosa on Christmas Day... was it a coincidence our waiter was nowhere to be seen?

If you're planning to travel to Australia for Christmas, my best advice is to do everything early! Try and book early, and try and leave early!

By "leave early" I mean: try and leave a couple of weeks BEFORE Christmas, and you will save yourself a lot of £££. Airlines tend to have a cut-off date in December, after which they whack up their fares for peak-season travelling at Christmas. This date varies from airline to airline, and can be anywhere from the 4th December to the 9th December. This means you could travel, for example, on the 9th December and stay for 3 weeks and have yourself an Australian Christmas for around £800 for a flight... as opposed to around £1200! It really can be that much different in price.

So what are your flight options for an Australian Christmas 2008 at the moment?

Having had a squiz on my favourite airline fares website (I don't work for Travelmood, by the way — just that they are really clear about who is flying when and for how much — which saves me physically looking up lots of fares, and is just so useful as a reference!)

So, as you can see, if you are able to leave earlier in December you could pay £835 return on the 9th December to Perth or Melbourne (Sydney's only £8 more! And Brisbane only £4 more) on Emirates.

Up to the 4th December, you could fly Cathay Pacific for between £673 (Perth) and £723 (Adelaide and Cairns).

ALSO, interestingly, Cathay are already advertising fares for departures from 24th December 2008. So if leaving earlier in December is not an option, then what about leaving on Christmas Eve and spending Christmas Day in the air on the way to Australia? You'll be there possibly for the end of the big day, or certainly for turkey sandwiches on Boxing Day! These fares are from £725—£775 for various destinations in Australia.

Singapore Airlines has fares departing up to the 5th December from £765—£809 for Christmas to various Australian destinations.

All of these are good priced fares, and when you compare that during the 'peak' Christmas time of 4/5/6/7/8/9 December—24 December, all these exact same seats will cost over £1k return you are looking at saving £200—300 per person or more.

Santa is a surf dude in Byron Bay (of course!).

The other upside of spending time in Australia in December (and not more time in January), is that the school holidays don't start until just before Christmas. So the resorts, roads and domestic airports aren't so busy. Here's when the Australian school holidays for 2008 are...

If you have no choice but to travel right before Christmas, look into flights NOW!

Expensive or not — they get very booked up, and all the dates should be released now (most airlines work up to a year in advance), so see what you can do. As a test, I just put in a search for flights to Sydney departing 19th December and returning 31st December (return January 2009 dates weren't an option yet), and no return economy flight was less than £1200. I used the Airline Network site (always very reasonable), and my 'cheapest' options were Cathay for £1209, BA/Qantas at £1274, and Singapore Airlines at £1279.

Comparing these peak-season fares (departing 19th December as an example) with early December fares — it's £487 more per ticket on Cathay, and £470 more on Singapore — EACH! So if you are travelling as a couple, that's almost £1k more just to get you to Australia.

So if you really want that Christmas Day barbie on an Australian beach... try and leave a couple of weeks before Christmas and save yourself the best part of £1k (and with the money you save, you can always buy me a present!).