re: Australia - 9 Days Down Under (Uluru, Melbourne, Cairns, Sydney) - Leave Wednesday

First off, sounds like you have a good plan and I hope you enjoy. I studied abroad in Brisbane 6 years ago and really enjoyed it, only place on your list I didn't get to was Melbourne.

Uluru: I did a hiking/camping tour that was awesome. It ended up pouring down rain and our guide was playing Thriller to the beat of the lightning, was pretty amusing . The awesome part was the next day at Uluru, there were waterfalls all over the place coming off the rock. If you can, make sure you book a campsite for this part of your trip. You can stay in hotels in Sydney/Melbourne/Cairns, but this is the true nature portion

Sunset pic


Hope you're not afraid of snakes cause I am and don't remember how I pulled this off (this was at the Alice Springs reptile center)


Cairns: There is a nice little shopping complex right along the water with good restaurants and shops. We did a snorkeling trip that also had the option of scuba diving. Thinking back I probably should have done the scuba, but snorkeling was just as awesome. Bring some sea sickness pills because the water can get very rough (as experienced on the way back to land). We also were supposed to go skydiving, but the weather did not cooperate. Instead we did this in Byron Bay (in Queensland).

Sydney: Sign up for a tour. I did two: one of the city and one to the blue mountains. Blue mountains were gorgeous with quite a few hiking trails around. There's also a few wineries if I remember correctly.
The city tour was okay, they showed us the opera house and some old historic battleground areas as well as the bridge and Bondi and Coogee (forget how to spell it) beaches.