Travel Expenses in Australia

Traveling is a lot of fun but can be expensive as well. To find out exactly how much we spent during our round the world trip we painstakingly keep track of all of our travel expenses and analyse them for you. In this post: our travel expenses in Australia.

Australia was near the very top of my bucket list for many years so we decided to spend 3 months in a campervan, road tripping this enormous country. 89 days of expenses in Australia totalled up to $13,813.40 (€12,432.06) or an average of $77.60 (€69.84) per person per day.

Take note that the dollar amounts mentioned here are US Dollars, not Australian Dollars. The conversion we used can be found in the sidebar.

Average Spending Per Person Per Day

Apart from a total of 8 nights at an AirBnB in Sydney (at the start and end of our trip) we spent our time in Australia driving around in our Spaceships campervan and sleeping at campsites. So that $15.92 for accommodation is basically campsites. We only stayed at paid “tourist parks” with powered campsites, allowing us to charge our fridge and make use of their kitchen, toilets, showers and WiFi. When traveling with a larger campervan (and an on-board toilet) you could definitely cut down this cost by freedom camping.

Because of the campervan the largest cost is $29.25 per person per day for transportation, so let’s take a look at that one in a bit more detail:

Average Spending PPPD for Transportation

We paid $3,743.70 to rent a Spaceships Beta 2 campervan for 82 days with all-in insurance. Our road trip started and ended in Sydney, making a big loop through the middle of the country. Australia is huge so driving this loop was 8,344 miles (13,429 km) which cost us $1,221.32 in fuel.

Keep in mind that we went for a really small campervan (just a large car, basically). If you need some more space or luxury you’ll be spending a lot more on both rental and fuel. So it’s definitely not cheap, but we do feel like the freedom is worth it!

Camping did allow us to save on food by cooking ourselves, so let’s take a look at that category next:

Average Spending PPPD for Food & Drinks

While on our road trip we cooked almost all of our meals ourselves in the campsite kitchen. This definitely allowed us to cut down costs of food & drinks. When in the larger cities we did eat out a lot, so we had a nice balance between saving costs and experiencing the Australian cuisine.

One thing to note is that alcohol is pretty expensive in Australia. That said, we really enjoyed drinking a cold beer in our camping chairs after a day of exploring.

Another notable cost is the $1,148.15 we spent on a 3-day Liveaboard with Pro Dive Cairns, diving the Great Barrier Reef. This was one of the highlights of our entire trip and definitely worth every single penny. Go out there and dive before it’s too late!

The other things to do in Australia usually involve nature, so the cost for activities was not that high. We do recommend the Whitsunday Islands day trip we did and also had a ton of fun in the different Gold Coast theme parks.

Overall our expenses in Australia were lower than expected and worth it in every single way. It’s an amazing country and we’ll never forget our road trip. Hopefully we’ll be able to come back one day and explore the places we missed!

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Travel Expenses in Australia