Our itinerary

Saturday, July 30: drive to Houston

Sunday, July 31: fly, IAH-DEN, DEN-SFO, then the big one, SFO-SYD. It's a 14.5 hour flight. The kids will probably sack out during the first two flights and be wide awake for the final one... We still have to figure out how to charge a laptop in the depths of United's economy seating.

Monday, August 1: we don't have one of these.

Tuesday, August 2: arrive in Sydney around 6 am local time. Pick up the rental minivan from an offsite rental place fairly near the airport. For a while, we were picking up from Williams St. in downtown Sydney. Not my idea of fun -- fly for a day and a half, then drive out of a huge city's downtown area on the wrong side of the road. I learned to drive in Aussie, so it will come back to me, but I'd rather it come back on a country highway rather than old downtown streets. We'll spend the day driving as far south as we want, then will check into a motel as soon as we can't stay awake any longer.

Weds-Sat: Drive to Melbourne via the coast. The only stop currently scheduled is at Wilson's Promontory. I'm sure there will be many more stops in parks, playgrounds, beaches, caches, and lookouts.

Sun-?: Great Ocean Road.
http://www.greatoceanroad.org/index.asp
http://www.tourism.net.au/Victoria/Ocean/
http://www.parkweb.vic.gov.au/1park_display.cfm

More itinerary later.