Melbourne

• New Here? No Worries Mate - Beginners Guide
• Daydreamer Believer - Daydream Island, Great Barrier Reef
• Wonders of Wilderness Island - Fraser Island, Great Barrier Reef
• The Lizard of Oz - Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef
• 700-mile hop on Kangeroo Highway - Melbourne to Sydney
• Bush Tucker... without the trial - Outback
• Primeval Pamering - Queensland
• Sydney is Supreme - Sydney
• It's simply the best, Mate! - Sydney
• Continent Please Carol - Top End
• Whirlybird Wine Tours - Victoria

WHEN YOU FLY OVER AUSTRALIA, and appreciate from 37,000ft the sheer vastness of that often inhospitable continent, it may cross your mind that one way to take some of it in would be to drive around it. The country has superb roads, even in parts of the Outback.

But some of the longer drives can be a little boring – after the second day even the reddest of deserts begins to pall – and such excursions are not a good idea for those with young children. They can even be dangerous.

Around the coast, though, there are some ideal routes for families who want to see a lot of Australia, see its varied landscapes and amuse the children. One such, perhaps the most obvious, is the drive from Melbourne, on the south coast, to Sydney on the south-eastern seaboard.

Amazingly Empty

There are two main routes between the capitals of Victoria and New South Wales. The direct one, the Hume Highway, is a nine-hour drive through rather boring bushland. The less direct, but far more scenic route, is via the coast.

At just over 700 miles, we spread it over three days with two overnight stops. The road is good, fast when you want it to be, and even in the high season of December and January amazingly empty.

Not only does the drive begin and end in two of the country’s finest cities, it also takes in bush, rainforest, lakes, mountains and beach resorts. However, when you leave Melbourne, for the Prince’s Highway out and past Dandenong, you may wonder when this stunning panorama will appear.

Melbourne has a massive suburban sprawl to the east and it is more than an hour before you see the bush. But, from then on, what you see is the Australia you’ve always imagined.

We chose to try to complete half the journey on the first day, with two smaller drives on days two and three to make things seem less boring for our sons, Fred, 11 and Johnnie, eight.

Our destination on day one was the resort of Eden, just over the state border into New South Wales, and about 360 miles out from Melbourne.

It is a tribute to the excellence of the mostly single-carriageway roads that we made it there in just six hours. The 130-mile drive between Lakes Entrance and Eden takes you through several national parks, with towering forests of eucalyptus trees and mountain ranges. It is here that you get the first taste of just how remote the bush can be.

At Eden we stayed at the excellent Twofold Bay Motor Inn, in a spacious two-room family units equipped with every facility – notably satellite television, vital to amuse children at the end of such a confining day.

The little town also has excellent beaches on that stretch of water where the Tasman Sea turns into the South Pacific.

Fine Seafood

Once you have worked up an appetite on the beach, you can deal with it at Eden’s Fisherman’s Club restaurant, which boasts fine seafood.

If you come to Eden in the spring, October and November, you can go on whale watching cruises.

And there are forest walks, though the local tourist authority warns that some of these are suitable only for experienced walkers.

Eden, like many of the resorts on this coast, is very popular, and it is essential to book your motels in advance.

For the more adventurous, there are plenty of campsites along the road, provided you have your own tent, of course. We could easily have driven on to Sydney in a day, but chose to break our journey a second time to spend part of the day on a beach.

We left Eden early – and the solemn pledge made at the outset of the journey was honoured. There was our kangaroo, a big one, bouncing across the road.

And it showed that it is wise to take seriously the signs warning of kangaroos – you and your car could come off badly otherwise.

This kangaroo crossing was possibly the highlight of the holiday for the children, although but one of many wildlife-spotting opportunities.

In the forests, especially, beautiful and exotic birds of bright plumage fly out from the trees, and other marsupials could occasionally be spotted standing seemingly deep in thought at the roadside.

We stayed for our second night not too far north, in the busy town of Nowra in another comfortable and pleasant motel.

As well as being an excellent base for the final descent into Sydney, Nowra is set on a wide river where we walked at sunset and watched pelicans fishing as sulphur-headed cockatoos screeched in the trees.

Coolangatta Estate

If the fancy takes you, there are many wineries in the area, well signposted from the road, such as the Coolangatta estate at Shoalhaven, founded in 1822 and therefore ancient by Australian standards.

Of more interest to the children, though, was Nowra’s star tourist attraction, Australia’s Museum of Flight. It overlooks HMAS Albatross, the birthplace of the country’s Fleet Air Arm, and tells the story of flight both nationally and internationally.

Sydney is less than two hours from there by the Prince’s Highway: or you can divert, as we did, along to the coast road through Shellharbour and up to the Royal National Park on the southern fringes of the city.

The park is certainly beautiful, and as you pass over a hill within it you are confronted with a fabulous view of the Sydney skyline.

However the Tourist Route (number 10, marked on brown signposts) also takes you through nasty suburbs and, as the piece de resistance, around the perimeter of what must be one of the largest steel plants in the southern hemisphere.

The journey between these two historic state capitals combines all the stunning scenery you could wish for plus facilities for young children, and few of the potential dangers of a journey through the Outback.