Sea Kayaking Down Under

[NickB]

We are planning a family holiday for January 2006, the majority of time will be spent doing the family/sightseeing/friend visiting bit, but I also fancy getting in a bit of sea kayaking.

We are visiting Sydney and Melbourne and also spending a week or so doing the Great Ocean Road. I fancy a paddle out around the 12 Apostles, or at least some of them!

Although we will have a car we will not have a roof rack and I am not planning to take any gear with me. I guess that this means I will need to join an organised trip that suppies all the gear and is provided locally, does anyone have any experience of local providers of this kind of service?

[NickB]

'Bounce' to the top.

What nobody have any ideas?

[bloodybutterflies]

I don't know if this is much help but, if it's anything like New Zealand, it's a lot easier to hire boats when you're there than it seemed from the information available before travelling. I found a suprising ammount of information in the Lonely Planet guide, more than in the places I expected to on the web.

We went to the Abel Tasman and found that they were happy to hire out boats not on organised trips as long as there was more than one person. Noone did single hires. But even then, when I spoke to a company owner himself we managed to work around this (We wanted to take our 3month old son out for a try - he was a bit below the age limit, but liked everything except the sun reflecting into his eyes.) I bought a boat then sold it back afterwards.

And regarding roofracks, have you considered the inflatable ones? There a bit pricey though and I dont think there too light either.

Good luck
wol

[mharrall]

You could get this book!

http://www.seapaddler.co.uk/bookreviewAustralia.htm

Martin