When people in Australia tell me about places I should visit, my first question is, “Can you get there by car?” The look I get back when I ask this is a look I’ve seen before. In Mexico, it is the who-is-this-stupid-gringo look. In Thailand, it is who-is-this-crazy-farang look. And here in Australia, it is the who-is-this-American doesn’t-know-anything look.
The fact of the matter is, unless you are going to the petrol station down the street, you cannot drive anywhere in Australia because everything is 10,000 miles away (Australia’s highway one is among the longest in the world connecting all the mainland state capitals with 14,500 kilometers of roadways).
The point here is, unless you like leg cramps from sitting in a car forever, your best bet to get around Australia is to fly and the best app I’ve found to find the cheapest flights is Webjet.
You can download Webjet’s mobile app to iPhone from iTunes and Webjet for your android from Google play.
One Webjet feature especiallty helpful to me, the stupid American who only found out that Sydney was on the east coast after he landed, is that after selecting your departure city you can search all the places where one can fly from that departure point.
It’s easy to search flights and prices and then research those places to see if it’s worth a trip to. As a seat of his pants type traveler, this allows me to easily make rash decisions with minimal forethought and never having to ask the question “why?”
Why am I going to Byron Bay? Ummm, because it’s far away and I can get there for the price of four beers at a pub.
On Webjet, I found cheap flights in and around Australia that I did not find using my usual flight search tools like Google Flights, Expedia, and Sky Scanner.
The price of flights, and the currently cushy exchange rate between the US dollar and the AU dollar made me do a happy dance. In the US, I’ve never heard of flying 800 km for $40—but this very thing just happened in my life on Webjet—so Byron Bay, here I come!
If you’re like me, you have a hula hooping friend who lives in Byron Bay who will let you and your girlfriend crash with her in a cuddle puddle. But if you’re not like me, Webjet can also fix you up with a hotel and rental car situation at your destination.
