I'm trying to plan a spectacular trip for my husband and I for late september/early october 2005, when our youngest daughter moves away to college.

I had my heart set on a return trip to New Zealand, which we fell in love with 20 years ago. But I am concerned about the spring weather in New Zealand. Would Australia be better for late september/early october?

What do you think? We've never been to Australia. Has anyone been to both places? What we loved about New Zealand is the spectacular scenery, the peace, lack of crowds, clean air, friendly people, the feeling like you've stepped back into the past technologically. That small-town feeling...actually stopping at the dairy for milk and the bakery too...Loved Milford Sound and Mt. Cook...

From Hobart, which faces the Antarctica, to the tropics of Darwin, there is a range of climates from which you can choose.
I was in Melbourne and on the Great Ocean Road for two weeks late September/ early October this year. It wasn't shorts and t-shirt weather, but jeans and t=shirt was fine for the day with a jumper early morning and evening.

I haven't done my trip report yet but here is a potted version.
City of Melbourne (city with second largest population of Greeks in world after Athens) for a few days:
Federation Square and the Melbourne Art Gallery
Lygon Street for Italian Restaurants
St Kilda Beach for ethnic restaurants and Australian Fusion cuisine.
Melbourne Uni for historic buildings (Jude was at a conference there).
Victoria Markets for coffee, morning tea, glasses of wine, gastronomic foods.

Hire a car for a trip to:
Phillip Island to see the little penguins at dusk, nesting muttun birds, dolphins, whales, and sea lions.
Car Ferry from Sorrento (runs hourly during the day) over to the Great Ocean Road.
Take a slow drive down the great ocean road to see the spectacular sights of the sea eroded limestone cliffs e.g. 12 Apostles, London Bridge.
Towns to stay at, Port Campbell, Port Fairy, Lorne.
Do the Otway skywalk through the rainforest canopy.
Do some of the spectacular walks from Halls gap in the Grampians.
Travel back to Melbourne via Ararat, the only town in Australia founded by Chinese.
Stay at Bendigo and see the Eureka stockade re-enactment and the reconstructed 18th century gold mining town.
Off the main roads you can find boutique wineries and olive farms where you can have morning teas, lunches, afternoon teas, and buy their produce.
You want Italian food. We have it.
You want Greek food. We have it.
You want Lebanese food. We have it.
You want Thai food. We have it
You want ....

You want to come up to Byron Bay. I will show you around.

On the other hand, you may prefer the tropics, snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef and sailing round the Whitsunday Islands on one of the Maxi yachts.

Got to stop and post this now. It's a start.

JohnfromAus, thank you, thank you for sharing the great info on Australia. Looking forward to your full trip report. What a great source you are...

I want to see little penguins at Phillip Island...and the sea eroded limestone cliffs...I bet you know the really good local restaurants with character...the ones that have REAL food, not tourist food...Actually I can smell the coffee at Victoria Markets...

I think we definitely need to see both Australia and return to New Zealand as well, but one at a time. Still deciding which one to do first (in September/October 2005)

Trip reports are harder than they look. Still haven't finished mine for Italy for June!

Where is the magic for you in Australia?

Melissa,
I have posted some photos of my trip.
Some of them are
Loch Ard Gorge
Otway Fly
London Bridge
The 12 Apostles at Dusk
The Jaws of Death in the Grampians

Most restaurants do not specifically target a tourist trade. The ones that do are at tourist destinations like Darling Harbour in Sydney.

The reason I love Australia and became an Australian citizen are (apart from Jude ,of course) that it is a new country developing a new culture and traditions from a fusion of the old, both the old world and the aboriginal cultures. The multicultural origins and the experiments in fusion are reflected in the restaurants and art. You can find sicilian reataurants in country Queensland, traditional italian in e.g. the Italian Forum in Sydney which is built to reflect some aspects of Italian town forms - a piazza with al fresco dining and apartments overlooking- but suited to modern Australia with large underground car parks.
On the northern beaches of Sydney I have seen an Indian/Italian restaurant, though I never got to see the menu.
We have great seafood, and the Sydney fishmarkets have a lot of stalls run by people of chinese or asian origin, though some may be second generation or more.
I lived for eighteen years in the Highgate Hill/West End inner suburbs of Brisbane. The names sound English, but greek immigrants bought into the area and ran corner stores, emporia, and introduced delicatessans and some reataurants. There have been a few gree restaurants, but they did not proliferate as did the vietnamese that came in a following immigation wave. Greeks have a very close community, and their main orthodox church is in West End, though many of the original immigrants have made their money and have moved out to the more affluent suburbs. They have kept their property in West End and many of them are rented out to the vietnamese, many of whom came as boat people refugees from the Vietnam war. We could tell the good vietnamese restaurants, as they were filled with vietnamese families, though now many have a large western clientele who, like us, have come to love vietnamese food. In vietnamese areas you may find the menus in vietnamese, hopefully with an english version.
I could go on. There is a similar story for the Italian/Chinese area of New Farm in Brisbane.
Carole R may be able to tell you stories of the new Sudanese refugee immigrant community in Coffs Harbour.
My country town has a large number of germans. I pay social tennis with some them and they tell me that the local butcher makes better bratwurst than they get in germany.
We are living in a coffee growing area and the local coffee tastes good. A little further inland there are olive groves, and although Italy may have introduced me to olive oil as a delicacy, rather than as just a low cholesterol cooking oil, I can easily find a large number of local producers of good olive oils.
There are also a large number of macadamia farms, and macadamia oil is also being promoted as the vegetable oil of choice.

PS.
I don't think I am being unpatriotic to England if I say that weather in Mullum beats London and Nottingham.
We can have al-fresco dining all year round.

Oh, such a difficult choice between New Zealand or Australia. I've been to both (2 weeks in New Zealand camping in January; and 13 months in Sydney working and then travelling around the country).

In my experience, neither country have "crowds" (well, maybe there are a tad too many tourists and locals having a ball in Sydney down near the docks on a holiday weekend, but it's one of only three big cities in an underpopulated country).

I tend to think of New Zealand as offering more opportunities for "spectacular" scenery -- only because it is one of those smaller countries in which you can experience dramatic changes within a relatively short distance. I remember driving a van on an umpteen kilometre totally deserted beach on the north island of New Zealand; and then a few days later, being in the snow-covered mountains on the south island. New Zealand felt very much like "small town" and "country" to me everywhere; whereas Australia had a sharper demarcation between large cities, a whole lot of nothing, and then smaller outposts which I don't recall as being particularly friendly or unfriendly either. I think that the outposts were created to serve the outback farmers in Australia, whereas New Zealand is a much smaller country so their small towns have a closer town/country feel to them. New Zealand didn't then feel like it had any "big" cities. It was definitely the more "laid-back" country.

I hasten to add that I had no interest whatsoever in living in New Zealand, and thoroughly loved, loved, loved living in Sydney -- which, BTW, felt a lot like Toronto, except back then (1980) it was very, very white and was hostile to women professionals. Back then, they called their woman a Sheila.

If you are a foodie, Australia will definitely offer more ethnic diversity food choices. (Have you seen the incredibly beautiful new Aussie foodie magazine called Delicious? WOW!!! Through it, I've learned about imaginative, upscale chefs doing marvellous things there.) New Zealand has to-die-for wines (I, and about a million other Canadians, can't get enough of Oyster Bay whites, and we fight over our pitiful allotment of some of their cult wines like Cloudy Bay), but I can't comment on the restaurant trends now.

From a weather perspective, I don't think that there is much difference.

It's a tough call. Let us know what other factors would lean you one way or the other.

New Zealand does have spectacular mountain scenery, and thermal springs. The green countryside is more reminiscent of the UK than a lot of the dry australian landscape, with its blue/green gum trees whose leaves themeselves appeared to be avoiding the sun and provide only partial shade, which was how I first experienced it in my first year in Australia.

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Originally posted by MarionP:
From a weather perspective, I don't think that there is much difference.

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Although it is possible to find parts of Australia with a similar climate to NZ, the Australian climate ranges from cool temperate in Tasmania to the tropical north, with dry desert in the inland. To say there is not much difference is like saying that there is not much difference between weather in the UK and weather in the US.

NB. Although Australia has a sparse population, its soils are old and fragile and not able to support large populations, despite some economists saying that we should aim for a population of 50 million. Much farmland is in a parlous state from overclearing, overgrazing, salination, etc.