Australia Packing List: What To Pack For Australia In Winter

There’s no denying that everyone loves a good nose at what people pack in their suitcases and now I’m going to give you a look into mine. This is a look at what was on my Australia packing list for a 2 week trip during winter!

Typically when the Northern Hemisphere gets their school breaks, the Southern Hemisphere is just coming into winter. So while I’ve been used to temperatures reaching between 30c – 40c (high 80fs to 90s), I traded them in for temperatures a bit of a jump lower than that!

Obviously Australia is a big place (big is a bit of an understatement). I put this packing list together with the current temperatures on the East Coast, no further south than Sydney (New South Wales) and only as far as a 1 hour drive north of Brisbane (Queensland). Not as high as the Tropics and no outback visits this time!

We had one domestic flight once in Australia and then hired a car for the journey between Brisbane and Sydney

Australia Packing List: Winter

Temperatures in Sydney (NSW) in June

• ☀️Day time: 17c/62f
• 🌙Night time: Real feel around 10c/50f

Temperatures in Brisbane (QLD) in June

• ☀️Day time: 22c/71f
• 🌙Night time: Real feel around 12c/53f

Believe it or not, Australia isn’t always sunny and winter can bring rain showers too!

Because of a tight connection in Tokyo Japan, I was also packing with just cabin baggage in mind…literally pushing every centimetre and kilogram to the limit in hope that they may feel sorry for me, on the off chance that a sprint to the next flight may be on the cards.  

(Yep I turned into one of those ‘suitcase in the cabin’ people, but at least it would mean arriving with all of my luggage!)

My case of choice: a little 4 wheeler Antler suitcase, guaranteed to still fit in the cabin baggage dimensions, even when full.

What To Pack For Australia in Winter

Contents of suitcase:

• 2 x knee length shorts – I’m stubborn and don’t care if it’s winter.  I hate wearing long trousers.
• 1 x little shorts – Just in case it does get warmer, more so while in Queensland.
• 1 x leggings – To double up and wear with the little shorts in case the cold is too much…I can’t bring myself to just wear leggings alone, so hence the need of the shorts.  This ‘combination’ also takes up less room than a pair of jeans.
• 3 x hoodies – All quite thin and lightweight, picked for this reason to save space.  The idea being if it’s chilly in the day, they aren’t too bulky to carry around but are thin enough to wear under my ‘coat’ at night.
• 1 x ‘pack a mac’ rain coat – Not attractive in any way, shape or form but it’ll keep my dry if it does in fact rain. On the way back my 12 hour stopover was in Tokyo again and it fell in the weird mini 3 week June ‘rainy season’. Better to be safe than sorry. My rain coat makes it onto most packing lists…and is usually the first thing to be cut, so I’m surprised it actually made it to flight day!

• 4 x t-shirts
• 2 x tank tops – It meant wearing every top twice but I could handle that.  It also left me a little bit of room to buy a t-shirt or a vest top while in Australia.
• 1 x PJs – A small set of course, just shorts and a t-shirt.
• 2 x bikinis – Shock horror, I usually pack millions as I’ll often wear them like underwear too, as they then have multiple uses, they are easy to wash and just hang around and I’m then prepared if I want to go for an impromptu swim. However, it is winter after all. The last time I went to Sydney and had a surf lesson in the Spring, the sea was FREEZING even with a full length wetsuit. DreamWorld on the Gold Coast has a waterpark, that will be open, so the choice was there if I decided to swim.

• 1 x rash vest – I literally threw this in as I was walking out of the door!
• 1 x travel towel – It folds up tiny and is quick drying.  One of the accommodations provide didn’t towels so it was necessary.

• Wash bag: solid shampoo bar, stick deodorant, mini toothbrush etc.  The ‘hard’ things give me more space for liquids as part of the liquid allowance if used as a cabin bag.  Plus I also use travel sized items.

• Liquids bag: In a clear zip pouch bag (not a ziploc bag…one with an actual zip) – suncream SPF30 and SPF50, a mini Avon Skin So Soft oil (for use as bug repellant if needed), travel size toothpaste, a small ex hotel toiletry body lotion (to use if I happen to get burnt, despite having 2 different suncreams to choose from!)

• 1 x mini sewing kit – The same pocket sewing kit I bought from the Brisbane train station, 10 years ago back in 2008.  I have actually had to use it multiple times during my travels.
• 2 x worldwide travel adaptors
• Plastic bags – For wet stuff/dirty stuff
• Socks & underwear

⭐️Packing tip: All the small stuff, like my t-shirts, underwear, swim wear were in packing cubes, my raincoat is like a packing cube in itself and my wash bag and towel are like packing cubes too.  The big things just get rolled or folded in the bottom and held down with the compression straps.

Contents of backpack:

After my sister rejected it, I used one of those ‘anti-theft’ backpacks that you may have seen floating around on Facebook!  I actually love it.

• DJI Spark Drone
• The drone battery charging hub (in a pencil case)
• Digital Camera plus spare battery and memory card
• Kindle and USB lead
• 1 x travel adaptor – in case I needed it in the airports
• Mini iPod (music only)
• iPod Touch
• iPhone
• External USB charger
• My travel ‘buddies’ (Moz and Swan Weasley for photos!)
• Mini tripod
• Wallet
• Passport/Green card
• Paperwork/e-tickets
• Notebook and pens
• Mini first aid kit (antihistamines, paracetamol, diarrhoea tablets, sinus tablets, plasters/band aids)

• Sunglasses
• Lip balm
• Fold up travel brush
• Lead pouch: 2 x 6ft iPod/iPhone leads so I can charge both at once, my music iPod lead, my USB camera battery charger, Fitbit charger, AUX lead (possibly for hire car)
• Inflatable travel pillow – It’s hard to describe, it’s not a conventional neck travel pillow but it’s AMAZING!

What I wore on the plane:

• 1 x knee length shorts
• 1 x belt
• 1 x t-shirt
• 1 x thick hoodie/coat – As it was hot when we left Chicago I didn’t want to be carrying too much so all the hoodies were in the case and my ‘coat’ was basically like a really thick zip up hoodie so it was comfortable enough if I needed to wear it on the plane.

• 1 x shoes – the only shoes I took!
• Waterproof watch
• Fitbit Flex

Notes before trip

I had put my laptop on the list but decided to take it off, as a travel blogger this was something I umm’ed and ahh’ed about. I scheduled all my posts for 2 weeks and I have the WordPress app on my iPod if I needed to make edits and share etc. At the end of the day I think I deserve a break from writing for a bit!

I also took flip flops off the list, partly due to the weather forecast.

Thoughts on my Australia winter packing list…what I did right and what I did wrong.

❌WRONG

My raincoat was in fact not waterproof. It was once upon a time but it’s 10 years old and the plastic over the seams all fell off and I think the ‘waxy’ coating had all gone too. 

So on the 2 days in Sydney that it poured down, I got SOAKED…which then soaked my coat to the point that I had to chuck it in a dryer one day.  It would have been brilliant if it had of done its job!

My backpack is advertised as showerproof…however the zip runs right the way around the edge and so the rain came in and things inside therefore got damp…I had to dry all my paperwork off in my hotel ‘pod’ one night!

I didn’t need the SPF50 suncream…I barely used the SPF30 (but I’m glad I took the 30).

✔️RIGHT

I’m so glad I chucked in my rash vest at the last second! While at DreamWorld on the Gold Coast, I went on one of the Flowrider surf simulators! There was a girl that went on before me and she was constantly flashing nip, whereas I was safely covered up for the whole of my session!

I used almost every single item that I packed, yay! Go me! Well I only used the antihistamines (thanks bugs!) and the plasters/band aids from the first aid kit and I didn’t use the mini tripod but I don’t regret taking the items I didn’t use. I even used the sewing kit. Yep, I repaired 2 things that my sister had took along!

I only managed to get my drone up on 2 days, I’m glad I took it but I didn’t use it as much as I had hoped. This was partly down to the rainy weather plus we visited a few places with no fly zones (I knew from research as well as coming across no fly signs) or were in places with too many people/buildings/wind.

I hate posts where people tell you how you should look to blend in with the locals (believe me, I’ve read some awful London ones, I never dress like that but I would consider myself a ‘local’) but an Australian lady mistook me for an Australian because of how I was dressed, WIN!  

I wasn’t even trying, I just wear the clothes I like (for the record, it was the day of my header image at the top of this post)!

If you are worried about ‘blending in’, in Sydney a lot of people were wearing winter coats and bobble hats…Australian winters are a bit like English summers. I think I would have been sweating like a pig if I tried to ‘blend in’.  

I was quite comfortable in leggings and shorts on those particularly cold days. (Bridge Climb night I did wear the full length climb suit and their fleece though…still not the bobble hat!!!)

For the most part I would call my winter Australia packing list a success!  What are some of your must have travel accessories?

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Last Updated on March 5, 2024