Product Description

Golden beaches, baked red deserts and glamorous cities. An ancient indigenous history and a young, vibrant culture: welcome to Australia! Stick around, hang out with us a while. With this bestselling guide to the Land Down Under tucked under one arm, let us show you why Lonely Planet calls Australia home.

o RELAX and let us take care of it: planning your holiday Down Under has never been so easy.
o GET AROUND with the help of 193 maps to town and country, beach and mountain - and everywhere in between.
o TREAT YOURSELF to the best wining and dining that Australia has to offer, served on a platter by our expert food and drink author.
o MEET THE LOCALS - Bouncing 'roos, half-stoned koalas and sleepy wombats: Australia's fascinating wildlife is demystified in our full-colour Environment chapter.
o PUT YOUR FEET UP at Australia's best and best-value accommodation, handpicked by our troupe of roaming authors.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #405071 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1120 pages

Review
As usual the guidebook standard is set by Lonely Planet

-- Outside

From the Publisher
Who We Are
At Lonely Planet, we see our job as inspiring and enabling travellers to connect with the world for their own benefit and for the benefit of the world at large.

What We Do
* We offer travellers the world's richest travel advice, informed by the collective wisdom of over 350 Lonely Planet authors living in 37 countries and fluent in 70 languages.
* We are relentless in finding the special, the unique and the different for travellers wherever they are.
* When we update our guidebooks, we check every listing, in person, every time.
* We always offer the trusted filter for those who are curious, open minded and independent.
* We challenge our growing community of travellers; leading debate and discussion about travel and the world.
* We tell it like it is without fear or favor in service of the travellers; not clouded by any other motive.

What We Believe
We believe that travel leads to a deeper cultural understanding and compassion and therefore a better world.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Destination: Australia

Australia is an intriguing enigma not only to people elsewhere in the world, who look at a map and see this curiously chunky bit of terra firma floating way down in the southern hemisphere, but also to the locals, who can spend years making leisurely explorations and still feel they've only begun to comprehend the full nature of their own mammoth back yard. It's not just Australia's size that defies the exhaustion of travel possibilities - Australia also has a sublime, time-bending quality that can't be overruled by any itinerary.

In a city, you'll experience an urban blur of fashion-festooned boutiques, plate-clattering restaurants and vivacious humankind, but suddenly be mesmerized in a gallery or lose yourself in one long fluid moment inside a wine glass. In the interior, you might be surrounded by noise in a beer-washed pub or hear the thump of rocks under your 4WD, only to be transfixed by a slow, silent swirl of outback dust or an outrageously beautiful sunset. Some roads are so long and straight that no matter how fast you go, it's as if you're barely moving. Around the coast, you'll be tasting the foam of ocean surf or pedalling furiously down a mountain, then end up diving down into a coral garden, taking an endless breath in the depths of a rainforest, or slowly realizing you have an entire beach to yourself.

Only one thing is consistent: every traveler in Australia faces the same wondrous dilemma - where to begin...

Customer Reviews

Unless These Books Bring Back Destinations and Hostel Listings They'll Be Lonely on the Shelves Due to New Better Competitors
Since the late 90's Lonely Planet have been dwindling down the number of destinations and hostel listings in these guides and replacing that space with more five star hotels, fine dining and other useless information backpackers will never use. In this edition Lonely Planet lists the most expensive Hotel in Australia, Palazzo Versace in their Gold Coast accommodation listings. They are so out of touch with their target market now it is not funny.

Buy the Backpackers Ultimate Guide (BUG) Australia instead as it is what Lonely Planet and Lets Go used to be. A comprehensive coverage of all hostels in a destination, not just the one or two that pay to be listed and no weight increasing space taking up useless information that we backpackers do not want to lug around an entire continent.

If you can find an old copy from ten years ago buy it otherwise give Lonely Planet a miss!

It is really really really bad travel guide!!!
I started to use Lonely Planet 15 years ago. I can say that I am a witness of how much quality deteriorite it has been. I used to just buy it by default. It was a Bible for me. But, a BIG but, this Lonely Planet Australia set a new lowest standard for the series.

First of all, it had so old information. The hostels listed in the book in Sydeny probably were closed more than 5 years ago. One hostel in bondi beach that I wanted to go that was listed in the book. When I showed up in the hotel address, there was a internet café and pub. No hostel at all.

Second. The most unbelieveable of all, the book I have, which is 2004 version, has no mention at all about the Olympic Village in Sydeny. Oh my God! Sydney Olympic was in 2000. Can you believe that after 4 years, they still didn't update it? I was reading it again and again, before I throw this book away to trash can, I still didn't belive that they can omit all the information about Olympic, like the village, the boat to go there, like the stadium... they pretend that there is no such a thing!

I know that Lonely Plante started many years ago in Australia, by some Australian backpackers. So it is a REAL shame that Lonely Planet Australia is so bad. If there is negative score, I will give that. As one star is minimum, I have to give that. But my true belief is that this book deserves negative 5 stars!!!

Good for travelers on a budget
I just wrote a review of Australia Handbook and decided to have a look at the reviews for Lonely Planet's Australia guide. I bought both books as well as Frommer's and Fodor's guides for my trip to Australia. I have used many Lonely Planet guides through the years, but must agree with the comments of other posted reviews--it is oriented almostly solely to young people out looking for a a job picking fruit and wanting to know the latest nightclub hotspot. I did find the first sections of this book to be thorough on the country's history and what to expect, but as for myself and my wife (40 year olds staying in motels and with a rental car) it was useless once we got there. Lonely Planet is also way behind when it comes to listing websites.

These books may serve budget travelers well, but for my money, it's the Frommer's or Moon book.