Australia Bound (1 Viewer)

May 23, 2008
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After months of preperation the time has arrived to do the trip to Australia. On Saturday morning we fly from Newcastle to Sydney via Dubai and Bangkok arriving in Australia on the 5th and collect the van on the 6th.
We started planning last August and after contacting a motorhome forum out there we have had a massive responce to all our questions. The help is similar to what we expect from Funsters and now have a wealth of information for our 9 week trip. Members out there have sent us simcards and we are to visit many of them and stay on there driveways. Our adventure starts in Sydney and we intend to travel down to Melbourne via the coast then back up through the bushlands and the Blue Mountains. Our hire vehicle is a 7.5 metre VW Grafter (Sprinter) van conversion so downsizing a little in order to visit out of the way places.
Are any Funsters out there at the moment?? Please let me know and maybe we could meet.
Back soon,
Wilf
 
Feb 26, 2013
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wow wow wow, I am green with envy. I did a road trip in Oz last year and would love to go back and do it in a motorhome. Keep us posted with your amazing experiences :thumb:
 

Mel

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Oct 6, 2012
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Nice trip.
Enjoy it

Mel

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DBK

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Jan 9, 2013
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Can you give us some idea of costs and who you are going with - assuming you are renting? A quick bit of Googling suggests to me that flights, MH hire plus living expenses wont leave a lot short of £10K and you could easily spend a lot more. Is that about right?

What was the Oz forum?

Enjoy the trip - and keep us posted.
 
Last edited:
Dec 5, 2013
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Have a great time

Wilf, have a great time, & just to let you know the vinyl numbers arrived ok. Here is a tip while you are in Oz you may want to buy a pair of "R M Williams" boots they cost a fortune over here, & they are the most comfortable boots ever. Worth trying a pair on while you go walkabout.

Mike

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Sep 5, 2012
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Enjoy your trip, I did a road trip in 2012 staying in Big 4 holiday parks in their cabins but would love to do them in motorhome. :thumb:
 
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wiljoy
May 23, 2008
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Wilf, have a great time, & just to let you know the vinyl numbers arrived ok. Here is a tip while you are in Oz you may want to buy a pair of "R M Williams" boots they cost a fortune over here, & they are the most comfortable boots ever. Worth trying a pair on while you go walkabout.

Mike
Hi Mike, Glad markings arrived safely. Thanks for the tip on boots.
Wilf
 

Soaringman

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Jan 24, 2012
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Hi we are envious, we have been to Aus once in 2001 on the British Lions Tour.
3 great weeks. We would love to go back sometime.
What is the name of the Australian forum?

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Jun 30, 2010
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When you go south, Pop into Canberra and visit the Museum there. Further south take the Ocean Road, great scenery.

If you spend any time in Sydney try to visit the Revesby Workers Club
Just show your Passport and they'll give you Guest Rights, Magic place! 5 Restaurants Silver Service to Bistro etc etc

Don't know if you'll get to Cairns but there's a great place there to get breakfast right on the front stand on the grassy bit and it's to the left of the Green Frog Car and scooter Hire.
 

Brendan

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Nov 25, 2012
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Hi Wilf,
I did pretty much the same trip exactly 2 years ago, and enjoyed every minute.
You may already have heard on the aussie forum about Camps Australia Wide map book.
http://www.campsaustraliawide.com/product/camps-7-spiral-bound/
It's not cheap at Aus$60, but well worth it for the listings of cheap or free campsites - soon pays for itself.
I have lots of great memories from that trip, and can recommend visiting Eden, Lakes Entrance, Orbost and Mornington Peninsula.
Don't be afraid to get off the main roads, there are lots of quiet places to stop along the coast, usually mentioned in the book.
Your rental van will almost certainly not be insured to take on to unmetalled roads, but I must admit to having done so - provided I knew it would only be for a few kilometres to get to a recommended site.

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JohnH

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Just seen, someone has suggested "the Great Ocean Road". If you go south of Melbourne you really should see it. Great campsites and scenery. Done it twice and would do it again if I had the chance.
 
Feb 26, 2013
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We did the Great Ocean Road in the car, staying in motels and it was amazing. The highlight was when we got to Victor Harbor and took a boat out to see the fur seals and dolphins. We also climbed to the top of seal point which I think was near Mount Gambier and suddenly discovered there were dozens of kangaroos all around us, amazing experience!! If your schedule permits it is an amazing route. :thumb:
 

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wiljoy
May 23, 2008
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Just seen, someone has suggested "the Great Ocean Road". If you go south of Melbourne you really should see it. Great campsites and scenery. Done it twice and would do it again if I had the chance.

Thanks, it is on our will do list as well as a hidden extinct volcano full
of wildlife.
 

Chris

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Sounds fantastic:thumb:

Watch out for some of the road surfaces in the out of the way places in Queensland if you venture there. More pot holes than over here.

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pappajohn

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After months of preperation the time has arrived to do the trip to Australia. On Saturday morning we fly from Newcastle to Sydney via Dubai and Bangkok arriving in Australia on the 5th and collect the van on the 6th.
We started planning last August and after contacting a motorhome forum out there we have had a massive responce to all our questions. The help is similar to what we expect from Funsters and now have a wealth of information for our 9 week trip. Members out there have sent us simcards and we are to visit many of them and stay on there driveways. [HI]Our adventure starts in Sydney and we intend to travel down to Melbourne via the coast then back up through the bushlands and the Blue Mountains.[/HI] Our hire vehicle is a 7.5 metre VW Grafter (Sprinter) van conversion so downsizing a little in order to visit out of the way places.
Are any Funsters out there at the moment?? Please let me know and maybe we could meet.
Back soon,
Wilf

excellent route and you will really enjoy the adventure.

We drove, by car, from Sydney to Melbourne using a bit of both routes....coast for a couple of days then inland for four days then back on the coast around the bottom bit.

No rush, no hassle......hotel or motel each night
 

Movinon

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Good luck on your trip. If you stick to nice safe expensive CPs you won't have much of a problem, but Oz is the world's easiest place to freecamp.
If you do use rest areas expect to be mostly on your own as it's winter and most travellers are crowded into CPs up north. It can be very cold down south, especially at night away from the coast.

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Nov 30, 2009
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http://www.britz.com.au/campervan-hire-locations/pages/adelaide.aspx
We hired one from here when we did it a few years ago.
We'd never had a Motorhome. Only caravans. We went small purely for the cost, but wish we'd gone a bit bigger. It was like a very basic panel van conversion, now we know what we know about motorhomes.
The bigger vans are more geared up for the out of the way places. Better on board equipment , suspension, tyres general comfort. etc
Everything is so big out there. Big wide roads .
You can wild camp , but there's so many campsites. Not cheap though. Nor is any of the food etc.
We needed the aircon on through the day, and believe it or not the heating on through the night. (We went in September for a month. )
We refused the first van as it was very grubby smelly and bashed about. The one we ended up with was still grubby , but once I'd cleaned it it was better.
Very stinky drains.
But we know why now, after owning one.
Considering the hire cost and arriving at the hire place straight from a very long flight, added to our disappointment though.
They also had certain days of the week , I think it was Wednesday in South oz , when the petrol was cheaper at all the petrol stations! Worth knowing.


The trip itself was fantastic , we loved it, we only did South Australia , as that's where we were planning on emigrating. We had gone through all the visa process etc. But we decided to stay in GB.
We would definately like to do it again. But we'd make sure we had a better vehicle to do it in this time.
Enjoy your trip. Post lots of pictures.
 

staging lady

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Have a great trip and keep us posted about your progress. We did the trip to see daughter working in hospital 2 hours from Sidney. Make sure you do the wine tours in the Hunter valley. We stayed in log cabins and had a tour in a minibus so we could taste the wines. The best was
http://www.peppertreewines.com.au/vineyards/hunter-valley/ Magic and very hard to find this wine in UK. Also stayed in ecolodges in the Blue Mountains- beautiful. We've hired a motorhome in NZ but not in Oz and would love to do it. Bon Voyage!

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Momo

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Sep 19, 2008
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This is an old thread - Jan 2014 - and Wiljoy was going to Australia for 9 weeks! So he should be back by now! :confused:

Funny he didn't return to the forum ....:(
 

wasp

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Dec 21, 2008
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Funny I thought it was an old thread, we goin in September for 6 weeks but stayin with my son in Brisbane an travellin about with them:):):):):):):):)
 
Jul 5, 2013
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Can you give us some idea of costs and who you are going with - assuming you are renting? A quick bit of Googling suggests to me that flights, MH hire plus living expenses wont leave a lot short of £10K and you could easily spend a lot more. Is that about right?
I would be interested in knowing this too.

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tambo

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Jun 21, 2014
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Maybe he didn't come back!

Maybe he's still there .....lost in the outback somewhere with only roos and wombats for company
 
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wiljoy
May 23, 2008
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Hello everyone and many apologies for not responding as soon as we arrived home from our Australian jolly.
Just to give anyone interested a taster of our trip we arrived in Sydney and collected our motorhome. This was a well presented Apollo LWB Mercedes Sprinter for our 8+ weeks. One problem it only came with 1 set of bed linen, 2 tea towels, in fact two of everything. It also was fitted with a compresser fridge which was totally useless working from the batteries after a few hours. Whilst wildcamping we had to fill the fridge with ice packs to last until the next morning. We found out that gas operated fridges in hire vans out there are becoming less and less. Australia is slowly becoming very Nampy Pampy, just like the UK, health and safety insanity.
From Sydney we headed into the Blue Mountains as they were billed as spectacular. North West Scotland is just as beautiful but not as hot.
From here we decided to keep to the coast all the way down to Adelaide including the Ocean Drive and lots of Koalas. After travelling inland for a look, the scenery just wasn't to good so it was the coast for all our trip. One thing that surprised us was the continuous row of trees between the road and the sea which meant you had no sea views on route and very few viewpoints. After a few weeks we called our journey the three T's, tarmac, trucks and trees. The coastline is fantastic with loads of campsites and many places to wildcamp in some spectacular locations.
In total we travelled 4500 miles and the motorhome was fine apart from the world war one automatic gearbox that Mercedes fit to the Sprinter. Our biggest shock was the food prices which were much greater than our research had shown. To finish off we had 4 days in Sydney and this was a fantastic location at Harbour Rocks. Once again everywhere in Australia is V E R Y expensive so budget for this if you intend to go touring there.
If anyone would like more information on our trip please PM me. I don't want to give a full roadtrip account to possibly bore people.
Wilf & Joyce

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