@CrazyChookChookLady : I'm going to answer your comment here rather than on MJ's thread because if I'm going to rabbit on I'd best do it on my own thread. I'm going to state a couple of obvious points first because I have heard of tourists who expected to do The Sydney Opera House, The Great Barrier Reef & Uluru all in the same day so: Australia is
BIG. John & I used to laugh in Europe about how many countries we'd been through in one day! I think our biggest day was about 6. That doesn't happen here.
In winter it snows in some places [some places it's been known to do that in summer] so depending on what you want to see you need to plan your time & whether you are going to do your travelling by car, train or plane. That will decide where a lot of your money goes & how long you can stay.
That all said I am going to assume you want to see the country, not do the culture vulture shuffle. Because we are so big every state is different & has a different climate. MJ lives on the edge of a desert. You get some of our big wineries there & the Great Ocean Road hugs the coastline of Victoria, next door. If you want to experience the outback some of the biggest & most isolated properties do take tourists. You'd have to ask your tourist guide but some of the properties are absolutely incredible. Our beaches are incredible but they are all
dangerous. I can't emphasise that enough because every year tourists drown because they've never heard of rips & just go in anywhere. In summer the big beaches are all patrolled by life guards who put up flags to mark the safest areas & post about the conditions. We have one deadly species of octopus & some nasty jellyfish type things so check before heading into the water anywhere.
Then there is Queensland.
We are a very cool state. We have the Great Barrier Reef up north & the hinterland has amazing walks, spectacular waterfalls & birdlife you won't see anywhere else like the cassowary. We have the largest sand island in the world, Fraser, & some big & amazing national parks. We go all the way from monsoonal tropical up north to a more temperate climate on the border. We have Steve Irwin's zoo [expensive but worth it I'm told ~ I've never been] & some lovely touristy places like Maleny [they have a cuckoo clock shop
~ sorry, I'm a big kid @ heart]. You really need months rather than days or weeks to even begin to see this country because everywhere is just so different & the distances are huge. I've barely scratched the surface & have no real idea of the sort of thing you'd really like to see. Just driving out west you're likely to see kangaroos & emus & of course if we all want to try & meet up...oh.my.
We now have 2 international airports, one @ each end of the state so what you do is fly in @ one end, travel through the state seeing what you want to see & fly out the other end. 
Ribh’s right though; there is heaps to do and see and some will depend on the time of year you come. Still check out the Lonely Planet website, we loved our LP books travelling through Europe.
