Oz Travel Tip: School Holidays

Oz Travel Tip:  School Holidays

It’s taken me years to get a grip on when to fly in Australia.  Flights and prices seemed to vary with even more weirdness than the usual airline shift and feint.  One week, the trip from Sydney to my home in Northern New South Wales is $89 AUD and the next, that same flight is $425 AUD.  I’d waited too long to book the flight?  Big tours booked?  I just wasn’t sure.  I figured it was one of those gaps in knowing I’d so often run into as I’d become more embedded in my sometimes-life in Oz.

I’d gotten caught many times in the confusing changing tides of airline rules and regulations, mostly at my cost.  In fact, always at my cost. You’d think after a decade of flying south to paradise, I’d have more of a clue.  And that’s the thing about clues — you don’t always know when you have one in your back pocket, until it is joined by its mates, and they start talking.

My travel time is somewhat flexible with windows of opportunity, so there is no excuse for getting caught in a high-travel week, but good timing seemed to elude me.  Where I saved for miles on the over-Pacific leg of the trip, I over-paid for the in-country part with some regularity.  

Since I try to get to Oz twice a year, I figured there must be some arcane alchemy I just did not comprehend. I’m pretty much convinced that there are some spectacled old men in back rooms with alcohol burners mixing odd powders who come up with airline fares, but no matter.  There had to be a password, a key for figuring out why fares peaked and waned.  A tide-table, as it were, for traveling in Oz.

In one of those parallel-universe coincidences, I bought a calendar with gorgeous scenes of Australia, and in examining the photographs on the last page, noticed the school calendar published with its vacation times noted.  Each of Australia’s 7 states and territories (and ACT — Canbarra, the Australian Capitol Territory) has a slightly different calendar, off-set during the school year by a week or so.  

Blinking light, K-Mart shoppers!  When I wanted to travel, so did at least of 1/3 of Australia’s school kids and their families.  

Now, I try to book in-between schoolies’ holidays and footie contests, banking holidays and torrential downpours (see below).  It still requires some magic-wand work, but I’ve begun to save a few more Aussie dollars that I can put toward interesting Australian wines and pricey litres of petrol. 

My calendar revealed that the school year begins in late January or early February and goes through mid-December.  All schools close during the 6 week summer vacation over Christmas, Boxing Day, and New Year’s Day.  

The entire nation is on the move to someplace cooler — the beach, the reef, the mountains, south to Tassie — somewhere, anywhere cool, anywhere with a breeze.  Book your travel early and still expect to pay a premium for whatever travel you do during this period.  And pack your sunscreen.  It will be hot.  Very hot.  But then, it’s summer.  What do you expect?

In most of Australia, the school year has four terms with a two-week break between the terms — except for the extended year-end summer holiday.  States have the right to set their own school calendars, and like the gauges in railroads and daylight savings time, each takes great pride in their own particular preferences. In that same spirit of independent thinking, Tasmania has chosen to have three school terms, rather than four (see below). 

Like so many small discoveries in Australia, this one made a huge difference in my travel plans. An outsider doesn’t know s/he needs to know, if you see what I mean?  Unless you are extremely savvy.  Which excludes me.  So, to help you be a savvy traveller in Australia, for your exploration of paradise, here are some clues, some travel tips for your big travel picture:

School calendar 2008:

State      Term 1                Term 2              Term 3                 Term 4

NSW      29 Jan – 11 Ap      28 Ap – 4 Jul        21 Jul – 26 Sept        13 Oct – 19 Dec

VIC        29 Jan – 20 Mar     7 Ap – 27 Jun      14 Jul – 19 Sept        6 Oct – 19 Dec

QLD      29 Jan – 4 Ap        14 Ap – 27 Jun     14 Jul – 19 Sept        6 Oct – 12 Dec

NT         30 Jan – 4 Ap        14 Ap – 20 Jun     21 Jul – 26 Sept        6 Oct – 12 Dec

WA        4 Feb – 11 Ap       29 Ap – 4 Jul         22 Jul – 26 Sept        14 Oct – 18 Dec

ACT       1 Feb – 11 Ap       27 Ap – 4 Jul         21 Jul – 26 Sept        13 Oct – 19 Dec

SA          29 Jan – 11 Ap     28 Ap – 4 Jul          21 Jul – 26 Sept        13 Oct  12 Dec

TAS        14 Feb – 30 May  16 Jun – 5 Sept      22 Sept – 18 Dec. (3 terms only)

Check dates and any changes at:

http://www.dest.gov.au/portfolio_department/calendar_dates/school_term_dates_2008.htm

For extended planning through 2009, and for some states, 2010, go to:  http://www.australia.gov.au/School_Term_Dates

For expanded planning, use this site for planning around national, state, and banking holidays: http://www.atn.com.au/info/holidays.html

And have a fabulous tour of Australia!

Photos above: Top, right: Rushcutters Bay, Sydney, NSW.  Middle, left:  Byron Bay NSW hinterland, Northern Rivers Area.  Bottom right:  Gum canopy at sunset, near Strahan, TAS.