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May until early September seems to be safe for Scotland, June through August for Norway and Sweden. Everywhere else is temperate enough on the cold end of things.
The other determining weather factor is Australia. I plan to go west from Perth, north to Alice Springs, and on through Kakadu National Park to Darwin.
Kakadu is nearly impassable by any type of vehicle in the rainy season. So I need to be there during the dry season which runs from April to September.
The total trip through Australia should take between 2 and 3 months.
The things I still am dying to see in Europe are the southern parts of Oslo and Sweden (want to take pictures of where my great-grandmother grew up), Amsterdam, Hamburg (where my other great-grandmother is from), Bonn (to have a beer with a friend), and anywhere else I can get in 3 months. The whole Schengen Area thing pisses me off. You can be a tourist for 90 days out of every 180 as a US citizen.
In the UK I can see whatever I like pretty easy. They give US citizens 6 months of tourism without a visa and it's a small country (e.g. a straight line course from D.C. to Clemson, SC is almost 500 miles and a zig-zaggy course from Glasgow to London is just over 500 miles).
So if I start in Australia in early March (time pressure!) I'm in continental Europe by June, if I drop the India leg, and in Scotland by the end of August. Depending on how much the flight to India would cost I could go there on the way back to the U.S., but it's likely to be about $1,000 more than I want to pay to see the Taj Mahal and have Tikka Masala in India.
Going the other way around is kind of a nightmare logistically. I still haven't figured out how best to do it, but it would let me hit the India leg. Tourist high-season in Europe, severe drought in Australia, running low on money in the tail-end because I didn't budget well enough during the most expensive part of the trip.
(I get pretty lengthy talking about this trip idea. So I don't mind if nobody reads them, they help me figure out things.)
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