Australia & New Zealand Cruise Guide

Landscape of Sydney Opera House, Sydney CBD, Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney Harbour (Photo: Hamilton Lund)

The fastest grow­ing cruise mar­ket in the world — dubbed the "new Mediter­ranean" — Aus­tralia and New Zealand are in­creas­ing­ly pop­ular with lo­cal and vis­it­ing cruise va­ca­tion­ers.

• Aus­tralia cruis­es call at such des­ti­na­tions as Cairns (gate­way to the Great Bar­ri­er Reef), Bris­bane, and Mel­bourne; itineraries may al­so include visits to islands such as in New Cale­do­nia.
• Cruis­es to and from New Zealand hit both the North and South is­lands and in­clude vis­its to Fjord­land Na­tion­al Park and Mil­ford Sound, the spec­tac­ular glacial fjord Rud­yard Kipling called "the eighth won­der of the world". Shore ex­cur­sions take pas­sen­gers to The Hob­bit and Lord of the Ringsmovie lo­ca­tion­s, bird re­serves, and Maori cul­tur­al at­trac­tions.
• Cruis­es be­tween Syd­ney and Auck­land — some one-way, so you can ex­plore both cities — al­so of­ten vis­it Tas­ma­nia, Aus­tralia's off­shore state.

The sail­ings range from a few nights to more than two weeks, and some are one-way. Land tours make it easy for over­seas vis­itors to eas­ily com­bine a cruise with a vis­it to such at­trac­tions as New Zealand's Mil­ford Track and Aus­tralia's Ulu­ru (Ay­er's Rock). The longer cruis­es at­tract adults from the U.S. and else­where. Short­er cruis­es at­tract a lot of lo­cals, in­clud­ing fam­ilies.

Cruise to Aus­tralia/New Zealand if you...

Want to see Mil­ford Sound. Love wildlife, es­pe­cial­ly birds.

Don't go if you...

Don't want to spend sev­er­al days at sea. Are more in­ter­est­ed in the coun­tries' in­land at­trac­tions.

--Fran Golden is the Experience Cruise expert blogger and a contributing editor of Porthole Magazine. She is the co-author of Frommer's Alaska Cruises and Ports of Call.