TRANSPORT (mainly luggage allowances)

This is one aspect of my country that I really, really don’t like, and if you get caught out here it can seriously put a dampener on your vacation.  Aussie airlines are notorious arseholes when it comes to luggage allowances.  They will publicly bend you over in the airport and give you (via you wallet) a serious flogging if you’re over on anything (e.g. the $200 flight I had booked from Cairns to Darwin where I was charged $600 for an extra bag I hadn’t pre-registered online.  No, I’m not joking.  Two years ago and I’m still pissed off about that one!).  Here are my top tips to beat the bastards:

1. buy a hand scale.  Best single investment of my life, allowing me the absolute satisfaction of having EXACTLY the weight limit for my checked bag (50lbs / 23kg as a rule).
2. by aware of the domestic flight checked bag weight allowance.  Some of these bastards make it just under 23kg then charge you between $20-$50 per extra kilo (no, again I’m not kidding).  And make sure your Aussie domestic flight ticket definitely allows for one checked bag – some of the budget airlines bury this in the small print and if you don’t pre-register (normally $20-$30 per bag) they then charge you at the airport per kilo as though it’s excess (result: my $600 suitcase for christ sake).
3. by aware that for some reason, only US-airlines allow the larger carry-on bags.  Aussie domestic airlines will sometimes make you check a bag that you took as carry-on for the first part of the trip, leading to often Kafka-esque conversations like “…but I carried it on to get here” and “…what do you mean that’ll be $600???” (no, I still haven’t let that go!)