...is not easy. But there are some ways that you can maximise your time and money and see as much of this interesting country as possible.
The route of our trip was:
Adelaide - Mt Remarkable National Park - Port Augusta - Woomera - Coober Pedy - Flinders Ranges (Wilmena Pound) - Barossa Valley - Coorong NP - Naracoorte - Coonawarra - Canunda NP - Mt Gambier - Picaninnie Ponds NP - Port Fairy - Great Ocean Road (overnight in Peterborough and Johanna Beach) - Geelong - Wilsons Promontory NP - Philip Island - Mornington Peninsula - Melbourne - Mt Koscuisko NP - Canberra - Blue Mountains - Botany Bay - Sydney - Byron Bay - Coolangatta - Surfers Paradise - Brisbane - Noosa - Rainbow Beach - Hervey Bay - Fraser Island - Bundaberg - Airlie Beach - Whitsunday islands - Townsville - Cairns and Port Douglas - internal flight from Cairns to Ayers Rock - Ayers Rock - Kings Canyon - Alice Springs - internal flight from Alice Springs to Darwin - Darwin - Kakadu NP - Pine Creek - Katherine Gorge - Timber Creek - Lake Argyle - Kununurra - Halls Creek - Fitzroy Crossing - Derby - Broome - internal flight from Broome to Perth - Perth - Wave Rock - Kalgoorlie - Esperance and Cape Le Grand NP - Norman Beach - Albany - Cosy Corner - Denmark and surrounding beaches - Southern Forests - Margaret River - Bunbury - Fremantle - Perth
The main purpose of our trip was getting out into the nature so the highlights for us were the drives up into the South Australia outback and the drive from Dariwn to Broome and around South Western Australia.
Visa - most nationalities can apply for a eVisitor tourist visa which is free of charge and is valid for one year, although each visit can be a maximum of 90 days and employment is prohibited.
Accommodation - In Adelaide we stayed at Adelaide Motel and Backpackers on Hindley Street for 2 nights, finding a great rate of A$17 per person on Hostelbookers. It was a nice, comfortable start but after this we mainly slept in our car at designated rest areas along the highway, occasionally pitching our tent as well. It is legal to do this in most places, look for signs permitting 8-24 hour overnight stops. They were easy to find in most places and made even easier if you invest the A$65 in the Camps Australia road atlas. It uses the quality HEMA maps and has extensive notes for camping spots all over Australia. We made do however with just sneaking a look at it whenever we found it, using the standard HEMA map that we picked up for A$11 in a discount book store and using the website 'ozcamps' for other tips. In Western Australia and other places there are local maps offering the same free camping ideas. You will soon meet a lot of locals doing exactly the same thing. These maps also include a number of free campsites, mostly with very limited facilities - some of the best are - at the Narung winch ferry in Coorong NP (SA), Johanna Beach on the Great Ocean Road (Vic), just north of Townsville (Qld), Norman Beach and Cosy Corner either side of Albany (WA) and inside Kosciusko NP, although of course you have paid a park entry fee so it is not exactly a free camp. We used this kind of accommodation for over 90% of our time in Australia. We are regular swimmers anyway so managed to get a shower every few days at a municipal pool (around $3-5 entry) or of course at most beaches where they have either an outdoor shower or sometimes a hot indoor shower provided by the surf or lifesavers club. These are especially prevalent along the Queensland coast. So just pick up a map, look for the rest stops and hope you get there before they fill up! They are the Aussie equivalent of the Kiwi DOC sites. If you don't fancy bush camping like this then the next alternative is to ply the backpacker hostels network across the country. A dorm bed in one of these typically costs around A$25 but the downside is you will have to share your time and space with the legions of young, inane, loud backpackers that infest the east coast. I am not sure what happens to these people when they reach Australia, it is as if they receive a double lobotomy and all they can understand is beer, sex and screaming hysterically at unfunny things. I prefer the peace and quite of sleeping outdoors somewhere under the twinkling Southern Hemisphere night sky.
Where we didn't bush camp are as follows:
In Melbourne we received 3 nights at the City Centre Budget Hotel as a Christmas present. The rooms are around A$60 per night and there is free wifi and a great rooftop terrace kitchen. The rooms have fridges and kettles. In Sydney we stayed at the Lane Cove Holiday Park which is actually inside some sort of nature reserve to the north of the city. We did not realise when we booked it but it comes highly recommended by Lonely Planet. Unpowered sites there were around A$35. As my mum came to visit when we were in North Queensland and the Red Centre I cannot really give any ideas of budget sleeping. In Port Douglas we rented a 2-bedroom apartment at Nimrod Resort for around A$100 per night and in Ayers Rock Resort were upgraded to a room at the Outback Pioneer, normally A$250, we paid A$150. In Alice Springs we stayed at the Alice Springs Motor Inn, a family room for A$65, very friendly and helpful and a very spacious room. In Darwin we stayed at the Melaleauca on Mitchell Street - a cheap backpackers with double rooms for A$56 I think, although it was very crowded and noisy and the rooms were so humid the walls were sweating! Finally, Broome has some great deals in the off season such as dorm beds at Beaches of Broome near Cable Beach for A$20. The hostel next door charged A$15 but Breezes is a steal for the extra $5. A really clean modern place with a lovely pool and massive kitchen. Breakfast was included and you can get wifi access through Global Gossip for about $9 for 24 hours.
Transport - Australia is not an easy country to travel around by public transport. Buses go from town to town but that means that you cannot stay out in the bush and would be forced into the backpackers. There are a couple of backpacker buses that ply pre-determined routes around the country but again these restrict your accommodation options, and do you really want to spend your time on a bus with the same people for kilometre after kilometre. The other drawback is that Australian towns are not really all that exciting, Adelaide and Melbourne are alright for a few days and Sydney is the jewel in the crown but the others tend to be nondescript and identical, the same shops on the same streets. One place that did appeal to me was Bundaberg, somehow it had a personality totally different from other Aussie towns, and I am not even talking about the presence of the famous rum distillery! All this means the best transport option is to hire your own vehicle, be it a car or campervan there are dozens of operators putting various people on the road from the clapped out Wicked campers, to the new style Spaceship and Jucy Toyota Previa's and up to the behemoth Apollo, Britz and Maui campervans. If you book ahead and visit in the shoulder season you can probably get a good deal on one of these. We also found a couple of great deals from Hertz. They offer one-way specials, a small Toyota Corolla cost us A$1700 for 51 days car hire picking up in Adelaide and dropping off in Cairns. We have private excess insurance from Worldwide Insure which cost us £15o for the 51 days. For the subsequent car rentals we also have an annual policy for £55. This was not valid for the longer rental as the annual policy covers only up to 31 day rentals. A litre of unleaded fuel in Australia costs around A$1.28-1.80 with an average around A$145. A full tank of fuel in the Toyota cost around A$65 and lasted for around 750-800km. Hiring a car in the Northern Territory is more expensive as almost all one-way rentals come with a 100km per day limit. Try sticking to that on those journeys! Hertz was cheapest again - A$290 for a 3 day rental including one way drop off fee. It is worth noting that some firms such as the Territory owned version of Thrifty (www.rentacar.au) waive the fee if you hire for 4 days or more. So it works out better to spend at least 3 nights between Ayers Rock and Alice Springs. Above the 100km per day extra kilometres cost 0.25c. We used Thrifty for a 12 day hire between Darwin and Broome. It was probably a bit long but it kept our additional costs down and the scenery through the Kimberley is so spectacular you don't mind taking it slowly. This 12 days cost us $422 plus the 0.25c per kilometre extra. Finally we had a rental with Hippie Campers for a 17 day rental starting and finishing in Perth. Whilst the initial rental was attractive at $37 per day and we were upgraded to an Apollo Hi-top the catch is that they charge the entire excess to your credit card, as if assuming that you have already had the accident, as opposed to just blocking an amount like most car hire companies would do. They also charged us for a full tank of gas when this should have been included, although this was later refunded. It was nice to have the extra space but you can feel like a bit of a twat driving around in one! Fuel consumption was around 10-12l per 100km so quite a bit higher than the average "economy car". The other option is to buy a car and sell it again when you leave. This is probably the most economical option if you are a group of at least 2 people and you will be in Australia for at least 2 months. We heard that it can be pain selling in a different state to which the car was registered which could cost a bit and require extra time so check this first. Remember also to allow enough time at the start and end of the trip to buy and sell the car! A one-day pass for the Syndey transport network including Manly Ferry costs A$21.
Entry fees - Entry to most national parks is around A$8-12 dollars, this includes Flinders Ranges, Botany Bay, Ku-Ring-Gai Chase etc. Exceptions were Ayers Rock and the Olgas at A$25 per person, Kakadu also A$25 and Mt Kosciusko A$16 but this included camping. Wine tastings are normally free but it is good manners to buy at least one bottle every few cellar doors.
Food and other essentials - we generally self-catered for the whole 3 months. A camping gas canister cost A$7.50/11.50 (small/large). Food for 3 days for two people bought in Woolwortsh or Coles cost around A$60 although we do eat a lot of fruit, yoghurt and muesli and other items that are quite expensive. Our general diet consisted of muesli with fruit (banana) and yoghurt for breakfast with juice and filter coffee or porridge and coffee; then something like cheese, salami and tomato sandwiches or hummus with carrot and cucumber and ryvitas for lunch, maybe with some crisps and then an easy to cook on a camp stove instant meal for dinner. You could reduce this by around half if you only ate porridge or white bread with jam for breakfast, tuna or sardine sandwiches for lunch and instant noodles for dinner. We hardly had any exceptions although we did have a takeaway curry on New Year Eve for A$12 per person from Wynyard metro station in Sydney. Some of our meals in the evening were a little more substantial - mince for bolognese is relativly cheap, as are chicken thighs so it does not cost much more to make a curry or bolognese. There are also gas powered BBQ's that can be used for free all over Australia, in cities, parks, by beaches, everywhere. These are great and you can soon become addicted to barbequed meat! A pack of sausages or burgers costs around A$5 or a steak for around A$15 per kilo.
A beer in a shop cost around A$5 for a big bottle, we only went to a pub in Airlie beach that gave us a free beer. A slab of 24 beers from the cold room cost anything from A$35 up. A bottle of Australian wine cost anything from A$5 up in the same supermarkets. The Barossa Shiraz and Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon were the obivous favourites. You can get these in cleanskin varieties for around A$5 and I would recommend these as the wine will almost certainly be better than a branded cheap wine. A litre of Bundaberg rum can be found on special offer for around A$30 and goes down great mixed with Ginger Beer (a Dark n' Stormy they call it).
When we did treat ourselves to eating out we went to Hungry Jacks (a Burger KIng franchise) where a breakfast meal (muffin or wrap with hash brown and coffee) cost A$4.95, a dinner meal (Whopper with fries and coke) is around A$7. Another fast food chain - Red Rooster does chicken dishes at slightly higher prices. Neither are particularly good or to be recommended but they can be found everywhere. Fish and Chip shops are as good as in New Zealand and cost around A$6-10 for a meal. One of the big highlights for us was having a Pie Floater in Vilis Pies in Adelaide, a truly Australian meal, a delicious meat pie served in pea soup with ketchup on top.
As I mentioned spending an hour swimming to loosen up the tired muscles and then a hot shower to feel sparkly clean afterwards is a great way to spend around A$4 for entry, some of the best ones were in Canberra, Townsville and Naracoorte.
One splurge we did make was to go on the Great Barrier reef snorkelling trip, at a cost of NZ$170 per person. Very expensive but it did include lunch and the snorkelling was some of the best we have ever seen, not quite as good as Indonesia though. I also took the one day Fraser island tour, keen to see the worlds largest sand island but at A$180 I felt it was over-priced and not worth it. Lake MacKenzie is beautiful though. We also took a budget 2 nights, 3 days Whitsunday Island cruise on the Venus ship which overnighted at Hook island resort. This meant we would not be stuck on the boat if we were with a massive party group, although luckily we were not anyway. This cost A$342 for the cruise per person including Marine fees, double room upgrade on Hook and 2 nights camping in Airlie Beach and free car parking for the duration, a free drink and a $10 beer and meal voucher for a local bar. It was a good deal.
We spent A$60 per person per day for 84 days, although this includes the 3 trips, without these it is closer to A$50. Travelling in this style you could easily reduce this down by being slightly more frugal with food or by hitchiking rather than hiring cars but we wanted the freedom to stop wherever we wanted.
Exchange rate: £1GBP = A$1.50, 20CZK=A$1
The route of our trip was:
Adelaide - Mt Remarkable National Park - Port Augusta - Woomera - Coober Pedy - Flinders Ranges (Wilmena Pound) - Barossa Valley - Coorong NP - Naracoorte - Coonawarra - Canunda NP - Mt Gambier - Picaninnie Ponds NP - Port Fairy - Great Ocean Road (overnight in Peterborough and Johanna Beach) - Geelong - Wilsons Promontory NP - Philip Island - Mornington Peninsula - Melbourne - Mt Koscuisko NP - Canberra - Blue Mountains - Botany Bay - Sydney - Byron Bay - Coolangatta - Surfers Paradise - Brisbane - Noosa - Rainbow Beach - Hervey Bay - Fraser Island - Bundaberg - Airlie Beach - Whitsunday islands - Townsville - Cairns and Port Douglas - internal flight from Cairns to Ayers Rock - Ayers Rock - Kings Canyon - Alice Springs - internal flight from Alice Springs to Darwin - Darwin - Kakadu NP - Pine Creek - Katherine Gorge - Timber Creek - Lake Argyle - Kununurra - Halls Creek - Fitzroy Crossing - Derby - Broome - internal flight from Broome to Perth - Perth - Wave Rock - Kalgoorlie - Esperance and Cape Le Grand NP - Norman Beach - Albany - Cosy Corner - Denmark and surrounding beaches - Southern Forests - Margaret River - Bunbury - Fremantle - Perth
The main purpose of our trip was getting out into the nature so the highlights for us were the drives up into the South Australia outback and the drive from Dariwn to Broome and around South Western Australia.
Visa - most nationalities can apply for a eVisitor tourist visa which is free of charge and is valid for one year, although each visit can be a maximum of 90 days and employment is prohibited.
Accommodation - In Adelaide we stayed at Adelaide Motel and Backpackers on Hindley Street for 2 nights, finding a great rate of A$17 per person on Hostelbookers. It was a nice, comfortable start but after this we mainly slept in our car at designated rest areas along the highway, occasionally pitching our tent as well. It is legal to do this in most places, look for signs permitting 8-24 hour overnight stops. They were easy to find in most places and made even easier if you invest the A$65 in the Camps Australia road atlas. It uses the quality HEMA maps and has extensive notes for camping spots all over Australia. We made do however with just sneaking a look at it whenever we found it, using the standard HEMA map that we picked up for A$11 in a discount book store and using the website 'ozcamps' for other tips. In Western Australia and other places there are local maps offering the same free camping ideas. You will soon meet a lot of locals doing exactly the same thing. These maps also include a number of free campsites, mostly with very limited facilities - some of the best are - at the Narung winch ferry in Coorong NP (SA), Johanna Beach on the Great Ocean Road (Vic), just north of Townsville (Qld), Norman Beach and Cosy Corner either side of Albany (WA) and inside Kosciusko NP, although of course you have paid a park entry fee so it is not exactly a free camp. We used this kind of accommodation for over 90% of our time in Australia. We are regular swimmers anyway so managed to get a shower every few days at a municipal pool (around $3-5 entry) or of course at most beaches where they have either an outdoor shower or sometimes a hot indoor shower provided by the surf or lifesavers club. These are especially prevalent along the Queensland coast. So just pick up a map, look for the rest stops and hope you get there before they fill up! They are the Aussie equivalent of the Kiwi DOC sites. If you don't fancy bush camping like this then the next alternative is to ply the backpacker hostels network across the country. A dorm bed in one of these typically costs around A$25 but the downside is you will have to share your time and space with the legions of young, inane, loud backpackers that infest the east coast. I am not sure what happens to these people when they reach Australia, it is as if they receive a double lobotomy and all they can understand is beer, sex and screaming hysterically at unfunny things. I prefer the peace and quite of sleeping outdoors somewhere under the twinkling Southern Hemisphere night sky.
Where we didn't bush camp are as follows:
In Melbourne we received 3 nights at the City Centre Budget Hotel as a Christmas present. The rooms are around A$60 per night and there is free wifi and a great rooftop terrace kitchen. The rooms have fridges and kettles. In Sydney we stayed at the Lane Cove Holiday Park which is actually inside some sort of nature reserve to the north of the city. We did not realise when we booked it but it comes highly recommended by Lonely Planet. Unpowered sites there were around A$35. As my mum came to visit when we were in North Queensland and the Red Centre I cannot really give any ideas of budget sleeping. In Port Douglas we rented a 2-bedroom apartment at Nimrod Resort for around A$100 per night and in Ayers Rock Resort were upgraded to a room at the Outback Pioneer, normally A$250, we paid A$150. In Alice Springs we stayed at the Alice Springs Motor Inn, a family room for A$65, very friendly and helpful and a very spacious room. In Darwin we stayed at the Melaleauca on Mitchell Street - a cheap backpackers with double rooms for A$56 I think, although it was very crowded and noisy and the rooms were so humid the walls were sweating! Finally, Broome has some great deals in the off season such as dorm beds at Beaches of Broome near Cable Beach for A$20. The hostel next door charged A$15 but Breezes is a steal for the extra $5. A really clean modern place with a lovely pool and massive kitchen. Breakfast was included and you can get wifi access through Global Gossip for about $9 for 24 hours.
Transport - Australia is not an easy country to travel around by public transport. Buses go from town to town but that means that you cannot stay out in the bush and would be forced into the backpackers. There are a couple of backpacker buses that ply pre-determined routes around the country but again these restrict your accommodation options, and do you really want to spend your time on a bus with the same people for kilometre after kilometre. The other drawback is that Australian towns are not really all that exciting, Adelaide and Melbourne are alright for a few days and Sydney is the jewel in the crown but the others tend to be nondescript and identical, the same shops on the same streets. One place that did appeal to me was Bundaberg, somehow it had a personality totally different from other Aussie towns, and I am not even talking about the presence of the famous rum distillery! All this means the best transport option is to hire your own vehicle, be it a car or campervan there are dozens of operators putting various people on the road from the clapped out Wicked campers, to the new style Spaceship and Jucy Toyota Previa's and up to the behemoth Apollo, Britz and Maui campervans. If you book ahead and visit in the shoulder season you can probably get a good deal on one of these. We also found a couple of great deals from Hertz. They offer one-way specials, a small Toyota Corolla cost us A$1700 for 51 days car hire picking up in Adelaide and dropping off in Cairns. We have private excess insurance from Worldwide Insure which cost us £15o for the 51 days. For the subsequent car rentals we also have an annual policy for £55. This was not valid for the longer rental as the annual policy covers only up to 31 day rentals. A litre of unleaded fuel in Australia costs around A$1.28-1.80 with an average around A$145. A full tank of fuel in the Toyota cost around A$65 and lasted for around 750-800km. Hiring a car in the Northern Territory is more expensive as almost all one-way rentals come with a 100km per day limit. Try sticking to that on those journeys! Hertz was cheapest again - A$290 for a 3 day rental including one way drop off fee. It is worth noting that some firms such as the Territory owned version of Thrifty (www.rentacar.au) waive the fee if you hire for 4 days or more. So it works out better to spend at least 3 nights between Ayers Rock and Alice Springs. Above the 100km per day extra kilometres cost 0.25c. We used Thrifty for a 12 day hire between Darwin and Broome. It was probably a bit long but it kept our additional costs down and the scenery through the Kimberley is so spectacular you don't mind taking it slowly. This 12 days cost us $422 plus the 0.25c per kilometre extra. Finally we had a rental with Hippie Campers for a 17 day rental starting and finishing in Perth. Whilst the initial rental was attractive at $37 per day and we were upgraded to an Apollo Hi-top the catch is that they charge the entire excess to your credit card, as if assuming that you have already had the accident, as opposed to just blocking an amount like most car hire companies would do. They also charged us for a full tank of gas when this should have been included, although this was later refunded. It was nice to have the extra space but you can feel like a bit of a twat driving around in one! Fuel consumption was around 10-12l per 100km so quite a bit higher than the average "economy car". The other option is to buy a car and sell it again when you leave. This is probably the most economical option if you are a group of at least 2 people and you will be in Australia for at least 2 months. We heard that it can be pain selling in a different state to which the car was registered which could cost a bit and require extra time so check this first. Remember also to allow enough time at the start and end of the trip to buy and sell the car! A one-day pass for the Syndey transport network including Manly Ferry costs A$21.
Entry fees - Entry to most national parks is around A$8-12 dollars, this includes Flinders Ranges, Botany Bay, Ku-Ring-Gai Chase etc. Exceptions were Ayers Rock and the Olgas at A$25 per person, Kakadu also A$25 and Mt Kosciusko A$16 but this included camping. Wine tastings are normally free but it is good manners to buy at least one bottle every few cellar doors.
Food and other essentials - we generally self-catered for the whole 3 months. A camping gas canister cost A$7.50/11.50 (small/large). Food for 3 days for two people bought in Woolwortsh or Coles cost around A$60 although we do eat a lot of fruit, yoghurt and muesli and other items that are quite expensive. Our general diet consisted of muesli with fruit (banana) and yoghurt for breakfast with juice and filter coffee or porridge and coffee; then something like cheese, salami and tomato sandwiches or hummus with carrot and cucumber and ryvitas for lunch, maybe with some crisps and then an easy to cook on a camp stove instant meal for dinner. You could reduce this by around half if you only ate porridge or white bread with jam for breakfast, tuna or sardine sandwiches for lunch and instant noodles for dinner. We hardly had any exceptions although we did have a takeaway curry on New Year Eve for A$12 per person from Wynyard metro station in Sydney. Some of our meals in the evening were a little more substantial - mince for bolognese is relativly cheap, as are chicken thighs so it does not cost much more to make a curry or bolognese. There are also gas powered BBQ's that can be used for free all over Australia, in cities, parks, by beaches, everywhere. These are great and you can soon become addicted to barbequed meat! A pack of sausages or burgers costs around A$5 or a steak for around A$15 per kilo.
A beer in a shop cost around A$5 for a big bottle, we only went to a pub in Airlie beach that gave us a free beer. A slab of 24 beers from the cold room cost anything from A$35 up. A bottle of Australian wine cost anything from A$5 up in the same supermarkets. The Barossa Shiraz and Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon were the obivous favourites. You can get these in cleanskin varieties for around A$5 and I would recommend these as the wine will almost certainly be better than a branded cheap wine. A litre of Bundaberg rum can be found on special offer for around A$30 and goes down great mixed with Ginger Beer (a Dark n' Stormy they call it).
When we did treat ourselves to eating out we went to Hungry Jacks (a Burger KIng franchise) where a breakfast meal (muffin or wrap with hash brown and coffee) cost A$4.95, a dinner meal (Whopper with fries and coke) is around A$7. Another fast food chain - Red Rooster does chicken dishes at slightly higher prices. Neither are particularly good or to be recommended but they can be found everywhere. Fish and Chip shops are as good as in New Zealand and cost around A$6-10 for a meal. One of the big highlights for us was having a Pie Floater in Vilis Pies in Adelaide, a truly Australian meal, a delicious meat pie served in pea soup with ketchup on top.
As I mentioned spending an hour swimming to loosen up the tired muscles and then a hot shower to feel sparkly clean afterwards is a great way to spend around A$4 for entry, some of the best ones were in Canberra, Townsville and Naracoorte.
One splurge we did make was to go on the Great Barrier reef snorkelling trip, at a cost of NZ$170 per person. Very expensive but it did include lunch and the snorkelling was some of the best we have ever seen, not quite as good as Indonesia though. I also took the one day Fraser island tour, keen to see the worlds largest sand island but at A$180 I felt it was over-priced and not worth it. Lake MacKenzie is beautiful though. We also took a budget 2 nights, 3 days Whitsunday Island cruise on the Venus ship which overnighted at Hook island resort. This meant we would not be stuck on the boat if we were with a massive party group, although luckily we were not anyway. This cost A$342 for the cruise per person including Marine fees, double room upgrade on Hook and 2 nights camping in Airlie Beach and free car parking for the duration, a free drink and a $10 beer and meal voucher for a local bar. It was a good deal.
We spent A$60 per person per day for 84 days, although this includes the 3 trips, without these it is closer to A$50. Travelling in this style you could easily reduce this down by being slightly more frugal with food or by hitchiking rather than hiring cars but we wanted the freedom to stop wherever we wanted.
Exchange rate: £1GBP = A$1.50, 20CZK=A$1
great post
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