ok well you can totally do it if its only for a month. hostel are cheep. and air fare is about 2K. so i guess it all depends on what you want to do and where you want to go.

Hi—Australia is a very budget-friendly destination and if you plan to stay in mostly hostels, you can keep your costs pretty minimal. The airfare will depend on when you are traveling—when are you planning to go? If you go during their summer (our winter), the airfare is hundreds of dollars more, but if you go in spring/fall, or even better, our summer, the fares are much lower. There are tons of ways to get around, but the least expensive way is probably by bus—there are a few different hop-on, hop-off options such as Oz Experience or Greyhound. Please feel free to contact us for help in planning your trip and tips to keep it cheap! gwu@statravel.com or 202-747-9772

i think it really depends what you want to do and what you want to see. I think you should maybe pick a state to focus your travels on, it makes it more budget friendly. does your budget include flights to australia? maybe an idea would be to book your inbound flight to one city and outbound from another? i personally would visit sydney then make my way to queensland, you can do cairns and the barrier reef and head down to brisbane, brisbane is underrated by tourists, the surrounding islands are gorgeous and the southern beaches on the gold coast are awesome, definately rent a car to make it down to the cool beaches like coolangatta, if you are here during the summer make sure you head down to one of the surf comps. so much fun, and there are lots of summer festivals going on too. you will have an amazing time.

oh and fraser island was awesome

If you want to travel to Australia for a month for under 5000 you should check out www.isvonline.com (International Student Volunteers), they offer amazing adventure travel along with scheduled volunteer work…i went to New Zealand in 2006 with them…it was the time of my life. My whole trip costed me about 4000 dollars, which included a 1 week vacation in Fiji after NZ. They offer the Fiji trip to people that want to go to either NZ or Australia. Seriously, the volunteer work does not feel like work at all…you have the weekends off and you only do the volunteer work for the first two week, then you have an adrenaline pumping adventure package for the last two week. You owe it to yourself to go and check out the website. Hope this helps. Check out my videos about ISV if you want more info and there is a lot of info on the website also.
Elizabeth Holl

oh…and most of your food is covered along with accomodations for the whole trip!!!! Cheers!!!