Australia might be seriously big, and those long, long roads are full of bleary backpackers on buses, but you don’t have to join them. For long hauls, spend your Flashpacker cash on flying — it’s not even that pricey with Virgin Blue (www.virginblue.com.au), the Aussie low-cost carrier. For instance, you can get from Sydney to Launceston, Tasmania, for as little as £60.

Why Tasmania? It’s a natural wonder, competing head to head with New Zealand on superb landscapes and offering some of the best hiking in the world. Getting in among it costs next to nothing. Entry to national parks is a paltry £12 for eight weeks, or £4 for a day: there are cabins on many of the trails, or you can hire camping gear. Trekking will place you in the natural environment, but it won’t tell you anything about it. For that, you need an expert interpreter. So, for just one day, hire Craig Williams, of Pepper Bush Adventures (00 61- 3 6352 2263, www.pepperbush.com, or book through Turquoise: 01494 678400, www.turquoiseholidays.com; £165pp per day). Born and bred in outback Tazzie, he’s an authority on everything from flora and fauna to the southern stars and colonial history.

Back to Sydney, and hop on the train to Tamworth (about £30, 6hr). You’re going to get to grips with the outback. And an awful lot of sheep.

It may be clichéd, and it’s certainly hard work, but nothing immerses you in outback life quite like a jackaroo (or jillaroo) training course. They’re cheap, too, and all the better for it — this is station life in the raw, and you wouldn’t want to get too comfy. At Leconfield Jackaroo and Jillaroo school (00 61-2 6769 4328, www.leconfield.com), 30 miles east of Tamworth, the course includes bush survival, natural horsemanship, sheep health, sheep mustering, sheep shearing and even sheep slaughtering. It’s £180 for five days, including bunkhouse accommodation and meals.

From here, it’s a 10hr bus ride — it’s the only way — to Brisbane, where you jump on a Virgin Blue flight for the Whitsunday coast, for about £36. Miles of empty sands, pristine forest and perfect water, the Whitsunday Islands look a million dollars, but you should tackle them on the cheap. Dozens of sailing and snorkelling cruises are sold from Airlie Beach, and the posher they are, the less fun they tend to be. Our pick of the ships is the Derwent Hunter, a classic 90ft timber topsail schooner built in 1945. She oozes style and class, but, with all meals and snorkelling thrown in, she costs just £150 for three days: a snip for a tall- ship cruise. Book on 7 4946 5299, www.airliebeach.com.

Right, we’ve been roughing it for a while. Luxury next. If your cruise stops there, jump ship on Hamilton Island (if not, it’s a £25 flight from Proserpine, near Airlie Beach). We’re not staying here — it’s a posh but soulless resort completely out of keeping with the rest of the Whitsundays, just the sort of place you went Flashpacking to avoid — but it does have handy flights to Cairns, with Qantas (www.qantas.com.au), for about £68. We won’t stop at Cairns, either: we’re off to the rainforest.

Daintree National Park is a wonder to behold, and it’s also the sort of place where it really pays to splash your cash. Going budget in the jungle is asking for trouble: for every pound you save, you’ll get five mosquito bites and a bout of heatstroke. So, make for Peppers Bloomfield Lodge (7 4035 9166, or book through Small Luxury Hotels of the World, www.slh.com). An ecolodge only accessible by plane and boat (they’ll pick you up from Cairns airport), with just 17 rooms, it’s tucked in the rainforest, overlooking the dreary-sounding but wonderful- looking Weary Bay. There are rainforest walks, 4WD excursions, bird safaris and a pool — crucial, as stinger jellyfish mean you can’t swim in the sea for half the year. The minimum stay is three days, for which doubles start at about £700. The maximum stay is ... as long as your money lasts. Tempting.

Getting there: fly into Sydney and out of Cairns from £630, with Trailfinders (020 7938 3939, www.trailfinders.com) on Japan Airlines. Or try Austravel (0870 166 2004, www.austravel.com). British Airways (0870 850 9850, www.ba.com ) flies via Bangkok or Singapore from £629 in our summer, with upgrades from £240 per leg.

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()Thailand and Laos

All things are relative, said the Buddha, and Thailand is, relatively speaking, outrageously cheap. The temptation is, therefore, to be all flash and no pack: after all, when an upmarket Bangkok restaurant struggles to charge more than £10 per head, why settle for anything less?

But you should, because this is a matter of yin and yang. Use your money to cocoon yourself entirely and you’ll never touch the real character and excitement of Thailand. So stay in that £4 beach hut, eat that 50p street snack and splash out on some luxury when it’s required.

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