From experience I know that finding accommodation in Australia is a very delicate matter. Once you've saved the money to pay for your flying trip to Australia, you might think that nothing can come to you as a surprise anymore. (Yeah, that's exactly what I thought). In Australia I was confronted with the brutal facts that made me realize that things aren't that simple.

'They do things a little different down there' my grandmother said before I left. Just because they speak English in Australia doesn't mean that you won't be surprised once you get to the Land of Oz!

When I was there I learned that most popular types of accommodation in Australia are Australian hostels. I think this has to do with the fact that people down there travel a lot more than Americans.

A great share of the country is an amazingly beautiful and unspoiled wilderness and some places are rather remote. You can also find some kind of ruggedness in the Australian spirit that we Americans and Western Europeans have lost many years ago.

Most Australians don't mind living in what I like to call 'Spartan environments' if they can live relaxed and on the cheap, and that's exactly what Australia hostels are all about.

They are Spartan and they are cheap. But for my family sharing one room with 15 to 20 people and having only one toilet to share is kind of frustrating. Due to these circumstances we were forced to make another decision about accommodation in Australia.

If your facts about Australia are out-of-date, how will that affect your actions and decisions? Make certain you don't let this important information slip by you.

So in the end we picked a fancy Australia resort to spend the rest of our vacation. The service was excellent as I remember. At the time the choice was very simple, we had to choose between a plain old hostel/camping or a hotel.

As you can imagine we were tempted to indulge in a few nights of hotel accommodation in Australia, where we could finally enjoy our privacy and well needed soft beds to rest our tired bodies.

Because the people living down under are always on the move, it isn't hard to find some kind of outdoor accommodation in Australia.

The only thing we took with us were our backpacks and sleeping bags because we wanted to travel light. We found it was no problem at all to find a good tent, pans, pots and things like a portable stove, and other essential camping gear for a modest amount of money.

You can easily buy all these things or even better rent them. We found that renting our gear was very convenient since we had no plans on taking all this stuff with us when our vacation was over.