Earlier in January Amy Salmon decided to take a gap year in Australia and she started researching the cheapest and best ways to travel from Birmingham, UK, to Perth, Western Australia.
Travelling to Australia can be a mammoth journey, this country is far from almost everywhere especially the UK.
If you have the money you can buy a non-stop flight from London Heathrow to Perth with Qantas . This takes 16 hours 45 minutes, covering 14,500 km but it isn’t cheap.
The quickest fights with other airlines like British Airways, Qatar, Emirates or Singapore Airlines to Australia take just under 20 hours, stopping in the Middle East or South East Asia en route.
Some of the most popular stop over destinations or to get connection flights include Dubai, Singapore, Bangkok and Hong Kong Stopover. But these are also some of the most expensive places in Asia and the Middle East, and best avoided if you don’t want to spend a fortune travelling to Australia.
The Cheapest Ways to Fly From the UK to Australia
The journey to Australia is a long journey at the best of times, and Amy and her boyfriend were travelling on a budget so in order to have the most cost-effective flights she found a trip with multiple stop offs.
The flights she found were over a 48 hour period passing through 3 different countries before arriving in Perth. Although this journey might sound long, it is a fraction of the price of flying direct and also breaking the journey up can be beneficial.
But passing through countries specifically in the Middle Easthttps://www.gapyearworld.com/destinations/middle-east means you not only had to be mindful of travel information for Australia, but also for the various countries we would be passing through.
The gov.uk website made this task simple, as there are travel advice pages for each of the countries we were passing through.
This guide to some of the best Australia stop overs for a cheap way to travel to Australia and it also details the various stages of Amy’s journey and advice from gov.uk about each destination.
Paris
We started the trip from Birmingham with a short flight to Charles De Galle airport.
Naturally, our flight was delayed 2 and a half hours, conveniently just shy of the 3-hour delay that must occur to receive any compensation. But before long we had arrived in Paris. We then had a very short overnight stay in an airport hotel before our next flight the following morning.
The gov.uk advice about travelling to France included some warnings about the national threat level being raised to ‘Emergency Attack Level’ following an attack in Arras in October. It warned that evacuations of crowded spaces such as airports could occur, so we prepared ourselves for that eventuality.
Luckily for us, there were no issues with our travel through CDG. I had never been to this airport before, and I was taken aback by its size.
We were both amazed as the flight information screens read ‘more than a 40-minute walk to your gate’.
We actually hopped on a shuttle bus to our gate and boarded our next flight without issue. It was helpful to be aware of the potential risks of travelling through France, just so that nothing would come as too much of a surprise.
If you do a stopover here you might like to checkout some free things to do Paris.
Abu Dhabi
Our next flight was the first of the long-haul flights. Paris to Abu Dhabi was going to take us 6 hours in the air.
By this point, we were both excited about reaching our destination and the tiredness hadn’t really kicked in. There was nothing outside of the usual travel advice stated on the gov.uk website about entering the UAE.
However, I did wonder whether we would need a visa to enter the country. The entry requirements section of the page explained that there was no need to apply for a visa in advance as our passports would be stamped with the visa as we went through immigration.
This was very useful to know and gave us one less thing to do before travelling. There are also strict rules about bringing certain items and certain medications into the UAE.
Some UK prescribed medicines and over the counter medicines cannot be brought into the country without the prior permission from the UAE Ministry of Health.
Once we had landed, our transition was very smooth as our passports were stamped with visas and our hold luggage was being sent to the next destination.
Then came the 8 hours wait in AUH. Anyone who has travelled there before will know that there are far worse places to be stuck for 8 hours. There were plenty of shops and restaurants and the structure of the airport was very impressive.
We took a stroll around the terminal to stretch our legs, grabbed a bite to eat and then found a spot to settle before our 8 hours flight to Jakarta.
Jakarta
Our final stop before Perth was Jakarta, Indonesia.
Neither of us had ever been to Indonesia before and although we were only going to be in the airport for a matter of hours, we decided to check the travel advice.
The FCDO outlined three areas in Indonesia where it advised against travelling; Mount Marapi, Mount Sinabung and Mount Semeru. As we were only in the country for transit this wasn’t a problem for us.
We also looked into the need for a visa in Jakarta and found that even if we were only going to be in the airport for a couple of hours, we needed to buy a visa on arrival. Gov.uk warned of visa scams as this is seemingly increasing in Indonesia.
Some agents will take your money and then provide you with an incorrect visa or indeed give you nothing at all. Being wary of this, we headed straight to the immigration services desk on arrival and bought our visa from there.
Once purchased we had no issues passing through and moving to our final gate of the journey. By the time we arrived in Jakarta we were both exhausted and willing the short 4 hours flight to Perth to go quickly.
Perth (finally)
At long last, we arrived in Perth!
Our bags had arrived with us, which was a relief, and we had made it in one piece. The final stage before the gap year could begin was border control.
We had both applied for our Australia working holiday visas well in advance of the trip and we had them printed out and in our carry-on luggage to show if needed. There are several other types of visas that you can apply for, but the working holiday was the best fit for us.
We were also given an Incoming Passenger Card in Jakarta which we filled out on the flight. This was the chance to declare any risk goods that you may be carrying, your contact details, the reason for your trip and so on.
The whole experience was relatively seamless and quick, we scanned our passports at the e-gates and then showed our Incoming Passenger Cards to border control and then we were through.
We arrived just before 1am in Perth so we hopped in a taxi and went to our accommodation for the best shower I think I’ve ever had followed by the most peaceful night’s sleep.
All in all, the journey was problem free if somewhat lengthy and this was definitely helped by checking the travel advice pages on the gov.uk website and being aware of the places we were entering and the varying requirements for each. #TravelAwareSBA