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Car Hire

From the hot and dusty red centre to the snaking Great Ocean Road and the deep sand of Fraser Island, one thing is sure. Australia is awesome drivers territory.

Cheap, it isn't.

A month of car hire set us back just over £1,000 - and that's including the multi-hire discount which Trailfinders have negotiated with Avis.

We were tempted by hiring a campervan, but in the end, the cost of a comfortable car and nice hotel wasn't so much more :o) If we'd gone for longer, it might have made more of a difference.

In order to get the multi-hire discount though, you have to stick with the same class of car throughout. We went with a standard front wheel drive Vectra size model, as the best compromise.

Had we wanted to venture off the beaten track in the Outback, a 4WD would have been both essential and much better fun. We did have to turn around once after getting caught out around Alice Springs - and driving on the shocking inner roads of Kangaroo Island would have been a lot more comfortable too - but on the whole, it was no big deal.

Whatever you choose, there's a bunch of extras you have to pay on car or campervan hire out there. Excess reduction, road tax, one-way drop off fees, airport pick-up fees, all sorts.

Fortunately, the cheaper fuel makes up for it! We paid between $1.50 and $1.90 a litre at the height of the oil price stampede.

Some of the smaller hire offices also shut up early, particularly at weekends - so make sure you don't get caught out.

Our top driving tips

Number one, you should only expect to hire a car if you are 25+. Some companies allow drivers from 21 to 24 to hire a car, but it does get a fair bit more expensive.

Aussies drive on the left, just as we do at home and you'll recognise most of the sign posts.

You'll recognise the speed cameras too! Not so many fixed cameras as we see here, but the police are handy with a hair dryer and we saw a fair few on our way round.

Our Australian Tom Tom maps were brilliant. It's definitely worth having a decent road map as well, but that's more for planning your route round than it is for when you're driving.

With the sat nav, especially if you have setup a whole bunch of points of interest before leaving the UK, you don't waste any time getting around - it's just plain sailing.



Night time driving is frowned on because of the sheer number of roos bouncing around the place. It's not that you won't see them in time - it's more that they have a fatal attraction to nice bright headlights!

We were pretty careful to avoid late finishes, but - without meaning to be irresponsible = on the couple of occasions that we had no choice, it wasn't a problem. Just call us lucky perhaps!

Night driving on Seventy-Five mile beach on Fraser Island was a different story - it was hell.

It goes without saying that you need to be careful about which type of fuel to use. Unleaded seemed the most common, but the pumps are different colours to those we are used to (and often inconsistently so!) and the fuel itself can be called by different names in different places.

In the Northern Territory, Opal fuel is commonly used. It is designed to be non-sniffable in order to help address problems within the Aboriginal community. This fuel is perfectly safe to use as a substitute for normal unleaded. It can even be mixed with regular fuel, as it has the same octane rating.

A fueling tip we found handy was to look for the little triangle indicator on your fuel gauge. This points to the side of the car with the petrol cap and helps you avoid those moments of uncertainty as you pull up!


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