Would you recommend renting or buying a camper van to drive up the east coast of Australia or get the bus?
Posted: September 11th, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Q & A | Tags: Australia, Buying, Camper, Coast, drive, East, recommend, Renting, would | 4 Comments »Me and my two friends are on quite a tight budget and are looking for the cheapest option really. The main problem is that I don’t have a licence and one of my friends has only just passed her test! The third friend says she is cool with taking on all the driving but I feel bad! Would it be alot of driving? We have six weeks to travel from Sydney to Cairns! Does anyone know roughly how much it is to hire or buy a camper van and how you go about doing it? It is cheap to hire a spot on camp sites? The other other option we were thinking, was to get on the Aussie Experience hop on hop off bus and stay in hostels as we thought we would meet more people that way! Has anyone got this bus? How was it? x
To buy a campervan you’re looking at $100,000, it is MUCH cheaper to rent one.
These are three companies I have heard of:
http://www.apollocamper.com/
http://www.maui.com.au/
http://www.britz.com.au/
You don’t have to pay for a site, you can legally stop in a rest area over night, most have toilets but not all have showers. A caravan park will usually cost around $25-$30 a night.
If you are taking 6 weeks, then you shouldn’t have to do too many hours a day on the road. Get a map and work out some nice towns to stop at within 4 hours of each other.
You could also look at hiring a small car and staying at hostels. But first things, to hire a vehicle you need to be over 21, a campervan may even require you to be over 25. Maui states you must have a full licence and be over 21 years of age.
6 weeks seems allot, Maybe drive from Melbourne to Cairns.
I say rent
User Mel has all the info on the Campervans.
If you are worried about driving, (or not old enough to to rental hires) another option is travel by train. There are backpacker specials where you can buy a ticket from Brisbane to Cairns on the Tilt Train or The Sunlander and can hop on and off as much as you want, (you have 3 months to use the ticket) So if you want to stop off at each town or city up the coast feel free, and hope on the train the next day etc….
See Qld Rail – http://www.qr.com.au
Tilt Train – http://www.tilttrain.com.au
Sunlander – http://www.railaustralia.com.au/sunlander.php
For train from Sydney to Brisbane you take the XPT, short for “express passenger train”, http://www.railaustralia.com.au/xpt.php
.. or do both – Bus from Sydney to Brisbane then train to Cairns…
When you are in Cairns “Gillians Backpackers” are the most popular by far, and right in town. http://www.gilligansbackpackers.com.au
Just to add to the list of camper van rental companies that would be worth checking out: http://www.wickedcampers.com.au/
I have travelled up the coast and campers are great but I appreciate that the driving is a big ask for one person.