Highlights of Australia with New Zealand & Cook Islands

An overnight flight with one stop, landing in Melbourne two calendar days after you leave. A transfer and a welcome drink from your Holiday Director ease you into Australian time.

Your Australian arrival city, which is a gentler landing than Sydney. Melbourne is a grid of Victorian arcades and graffitied laneways where the best coffee in the country is served out of premises the size of a wardrobe.

A city tour gets you oriented; the rest is yours for the NGV, the market, or a tram out to St Kilda.

Three nights here, early in the itinerary, so you arrive at the Red Centre already over the jet lag. A half-day tour takes in Bondi, Hyde Park and Darling Harbour before turning you loose.

What you do with the free days is the real question. The Opera House interior tour is worth the money; so is a day in the Blue Mountains for the Three Sisters and the Scenic World cableway. The BridgeClimb divides people — spectacular views, and a fairly hefty price for the privilege.

Any itinerary that visits Uluru once has short-changed you. This one goes at dusk, when the rock performs and the viewing area has the atmosphere of a garden party, and again at first light, when it does something quieter and considerably more affecting.

Between the two you visit Kata Tjuta and walk into Walpa Gorge, the wind-funnel between its two largest domes.

Alice is where the Outback stops being scenery and starts being somewhere people actually live. The Flying Doctor base explains how, as does the School of the Air, which has taught children by radio and now satellite for seventy years.

The evening bush barbecue is the social high point of the Australian leg — proper Territory hospitality, and stars you will not have seen the like of.

Australia's smallest and most relaxed capital, closer to Jakarta than to Canberra. Mango trees, a wartime history worth an afternoon, and the Mindil Beach sunset markets if your visit lands on the right night.

The Top End in the dry season is one of the great wildlife destinations, and Kakadu is its centrepiece. The Aboriginal rock art at Nourlangie is the oldest continuous artistic tradition on Earth — some of it painted before the last ice age.

Then the Yellow Water Lagoon cruise: birdlife in extraordinary density, and crocodiles basking on the banks with the calm of animals with no natural predators.

Nitmiluk National Park is jointly managed with its traditional owners, the Jawoyn, and the gorge cruise is the way to see it. The rock glows at close range, the water is glass-still, and the acoustics are extraordinary.

The reef day is the centrepiece: a fast catamaran to an outer reef site, where the coral cover and water clarity are in a different league to the inshore reefs.

But four nights also means proper rest, which after the Red Centre and the Top End you will want. The lagoon on the Esplanade is free, netted and open to everyone.

Two nights of subtropical calm before the Tasman crossing. Climb the Story Bridge, swim at South Bank, or take the CityCat upriver and watch the place go past.

One in three Auckland households owns a boat, which explains the nickname and the view. Two nights here to adjust before the touring starts in earnest.

Waiheke Island is 40 minutes by ferry and has 30 vineyards on it, which is how most people spend a free afternoon.

The far north is warmer, greener and slower than the rest of the country. Your base is Paihia, a few minutes from the Waitangi Treaty House and the carved meeting house beside it.

The bay itself is best seen from the water — dolphins are common, and the Hole in the Rock passage is the standard destination.

The most geothermally active town in the country, sitting on a caldera that last erupted spectacularly in 1886. Te Puia's thermal reserve puts the geology on display; the Māori Arts and Crafts Institute on the same site keeps the culture living rather than staged.

Dinner is a traditional hāngi, cooked underground on hot stones.

More cafés per head than New York, a serious craft beer scene, and a film industry tucked away in the suburbs. Two nights is enough for Te Papa, the cable car and a wander round Cuba Street.

The crossing separates two islands that feel like different countries. Rough in a southerly, glassy in settled weather, and spectacular either way once you enter the Sounds.

Sixteen tunnels, five viaducts and a climb to 737 metres. The eastern half is pastoral and wide; the western half is dense, wet and green. Very few train journeys change character so completely in one sitting.

The West Coast gets up to five metres of rain a year, which is precisely why the glacier exists and why the forest around it is so dense. Weather permitting, the scenic flights here are the best money you will spend in New Zealand.

Bungee jumping was commercialised here, which tells you the tone. But it is equally good at doing nothing: the lakefront, a gondola ride and an early dinner is a perfectly respectable day.

Technically a fjord rather than a sound, carved by glaciers rather than a river. On a wet day — and most days are wet — hundreds of temporary waterfalls appear down the walls, which is why locals will tell you rain is the better weather here.

Lunch is included on the cruise.

The larvae of a fungus gnat, hanging sticky threads to catch insects — an unromantic explanation for something that looks exactly like a private galaxy 30 centimetres above your head.

Scottish settlers, Victorian money from the Otago gold rush, and the steepest residential street on earth. The boulders on the drive north are the other draw — two metres across and entirely natural, however unlikely that looks.

The Mackenzie Basin's lakes are an improbable turquoise, coloured by glacial rock flour suspended in the meltwater. Aoraki stands 3,724 metres above it all.

The whole basin is an International Dark Sky Reserve — on a clear night the stargazing is world-class.

After six weeks of early starts, the Cook Islands are the correct prescription. Manuia Beach Resort is small, low-rise and directly on the sand — no towers, no crowds, and a lagoon warm enough to stay in for hours.

Snorkelling is straight off the beach. The whole island is 32km around, and the bus service runs clockwise and anticlockwise, which is the extent of the transport system.

One final swim before the flight back via Auckland. You cross the International Date Line eastbound, so you land before you took off — a last small absurdity to finish on.