We are thinking of a circle Australia cruise next year.

Hate to book shore excursions at cruise ship prices. In many ports there are local tours available in the port. Does anyone know if this is common in Australian ports?

Hate to book shore excursions at cruise ship prices. In many ports there are local tours available in the port. Does anyone know if this is common in Australian ports?

Haven’t booked a ships excursion in over 15 years, some (smaller) ports may be hard to get one at the dock, but they are usually easy to do on your own anyway.

Hate to book shore excursions at cruise ship prices. In many ports there are local tours available in the port. Does anyone know if this is common in Australian ports?

I can't think of any Australian ports that don't offer tours at the port, but somebody will probably correct me.

In the smaller ports your choice may be limited, but even places like Eden are quite well served.

http://www.cruiseeden.com.au/cruiseedentours/

Whatever you do I would arrange your ports ahead of time.

This is not like the Caribbean where people will be at the ports for you to select spontaneous tours.

First do the research to decide what you want to do.

In some cases you can just tour around on your own if we are talking about major cities.

In other cases a ships tour might make sense if you have any worries about returning back in time for departure of the ship or if the tour goes to somewhere that you cannot do on your own.

At the same time all of the ports have tours that you can book in advance. You can look at some of the previous posts on this board where someone has asked about tour recommendations in one or more ports and see what private tours have been recommended and also make good use of other sites such as Trip Advisor. Over the years I have booked several private tours in Australia and other places using both of these methods.

Keith

We are doing this cruise and I've done a bunch of research. I don't know what your POC are but here is ours.

Unless there is really some special/unique you want to do ...

Sydney - DIY - You can book a tour of the Opera House if you want. Ride the ferries. The HOHO bus is great for first-time visitors. Go to Bondi Beach. We loved the aquarium.

Hobart - First time we used the ship's tour for Mt. Field. This time we are DIY the town

Burnie - We've booked a private tour

Melbourne - First time DIY - This time we've booked a ships tour only because I couldn't get enough interest on the roll call for a private tour

Adelaide - DIY

Albany - I know a company will be selling tours at the port and we plan on doing that.

Margaret River - Private tour

Freemantle/Perth - DIY

Broome - DIY

Darwin - DIY

Cairns - Great Barrier Reef - Ship's tour because of timing

Brisbane - Because we are docking well outside the city, the cost of the shuttle as compared to the city tour wasn't that great. So we booked the ships tour because it does exactly what we'd do on our own ... get to see the city and an hour at the botanical gardens.

Hope this helps you.