Flicking through the STA travel brochure, we spotted the camper vans - they suggested freedom and comfort for our future trip to Australia, and we were instantly sold. They come in numerous sizes, but we went for the smallest - mainly due to pricing, but also we didn't know if we would feel confident driving anything bigger.
Our 'Chubby Campervan' was booked with Travellers Autobarn. A well-known company within Australia and New Zealand. We had seen some cheaper options online, but were unsure of the companies. Booking through STA Travel, we knew this company would be legit.
We booked our camper van for 16 days and it cost £1,105. Which split between 2 didn't seem too bad, as it was our accommodation and vehicle.
This price included the extra insurance so we would be covered in an accident. You didn't have to have this insurance, but without it you had to give them a deposit on your credit card that was a lot more. Whilst we were picking up our van, there was a couple there that were unaware they would have to do this, and were having some difficulty collecting theirs.
There was also an option to hire a range of camping equipment for an additional cost. This included cooking equipment, crockery, utensils, linen, chars, etc. We decided we didn't need any of that (which shocked the lady in the pick up centre) as we had no plans to cook on our journey. The only thing we did keep was the MP3 lead - music was essential to our road trip and we had a playlist ready and waiting.
Before you are allowed to take your van away, you have to watch a really poor quality and awkward Youtube video and sign lots of documents. They state that you have to check the oil, water and tyres every day before you set off - I wonder if people actually do that.
You are also provided with a book which lists all the campsites in Australia. We found it to be helpful sometimes, but often it would state there was an overnight campsite, and you would arrive to discover it was in fact a day rest area with big signs that say NO CAMPING. We preferred to use the Travellers Autobarn app - this included reviews from other campers, so this gave us a good idea of what to expect.
One thing they drummed into us when we picked up our van was that we were not allowed to drive on dirt tracks. We found this very odd, as a lot of the camp sites suggested within the book and app, had huge dirt tracks to get to them. We did continue down these tracks as we needed somewhere to stay, however we made sure to drive very slowly as we didn't want to cause any damage.
For this trip, I left my driving license in the UK, so unfortunately never got to drive the camper van. Hollie picked it up very quickly, and after the initial confusion of the indicator switch being on the other side of the steering wheel, she was soon a camper van driving pro.
Driving in Australia
Driving in Australia is pretty much the same as England. You are still on the left, the camper van was manual, and putting petrol in was exactly the same (that was one of the weird things I had worried about prior to the trip). We did however notice a few differences.
1) They don't seem to have any undertaking laws, or if they do, no one seems to care about them.
2) Speed and distance is kilometres.
3) The Petrol is different colours in different places (eg. It's not Green everywhere for unleaded like it is in the UK)
4) They can do U-turns legally at traffic lights.
5) When turning left you often have to give way to pedestrians.
6) Lorries do not seem to have any restrictions, they drive crazy speeds and even drive in the inside lane on the highways.
7) You legally have to park in the direction of the traffic. You cannot pull over from the other side of the road and parallel park, because you will be facing the wrong way.
Parking
We were initially also confused by the parking signs, but soon worked out that if for example it said '2P' that meant you could park for 2 hours. Parking was generally easy. The only time we had difficultly was when we went to Sydney. We had some difficulty finding the unrestricted parking that had been advised by our Air B&B host. We lost about half a day trying to find somewhere.
We found that it was only really within the cities that you had to pay to park. All the smaller towns just had restricted time parking.
Petrol
There were plenty of petrol stations on all of our routes. Service Centres were sign posted well in advance, and if there wasn't going to be a petrol station for while, the would also be sign posted before you passed the last one. Petrol was pretty cheap. We could fill up our van for about $45-50 which we worked out was about £25. This got us quite a distance each time, and we took it in turns to pay.
Camping
It wasn't the most comfortable experience. We were travelling with 2 big suitcases, which at night time there wasn't much room for. We ended up putting one case up on a shelf at the back and the other one had to stay on the bed with us. If we had smaller bags we would have been able to store them under the bed.
I stopped in K-Mart the mall to buy some pillows before we set off, which I'm glad I did. Hollie however slept just with her inflatable travel pillow, and seemed to have no issues with that. We both just had sleeping bags, and the beds were not very comfortable. We could have bought more blankets etc however it was SO hot some nights that I'm not sure we would have appreciated them.
One problem we did encounter was that our mosquito net on our window broke - it wasn't very secure in the first place. This resulted in one horrific night of bites - I'm not exaggerating, I had about 100 bites over my body. It was horrible, uncomfortable and ruined a couple of the days for me. This was the end of our camping experience as we ended up booking hotels for the rest of our journey. Luckily it was fairly near the finish line.
Essential Items
- Offline Maps - we potentially wouldn't have survived our trip without Google Offline Maps. For those of you who don't know about this you need it in your life. When you have wifi you can download sections of Google Maps, which you can then use whilst your phone is offline/in airplane mode. It's basically a sat-nav.
- USB dual charger - this ensured both our phones were always fully charged. We rarely stayed anywhere with power, so we kept our phones charging whilst we were driving. This was also good as Google Maps drained the batteries quite quickly.
- AUX Cable - because can you even do a road trip without cheesy music to sing along to.
- Earplugs and a eye-mask - okay so this was just me, I'm a really light sleeper.
- Snacks - the amount of cheese and bacon ball Cheetos I ate was actually disgusting.
- Bug repellant spray - not that it worked... (yes, that is my incredibly bitten legs below)
Would we do it again?
This is something Hollie and I discussed quite a lot towards the end of the trip. We do not regret getting a camper van - we are both glad we can say we did it. We experienced it, and we have tried it.
We did however agree that it is not something we would do again. If we were to re-do this trip, we would hire a small car, and book cheap hotels along the way. There were plenty of cheap hotels and motels along the way, and we probably wouldn't have spent much more money.
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