RV RENTAL AUSTRALIA

Australia RV rental SPECIALS: If you place your Australia motorhome rental booking request with Motorvana online, our software will apply any relevant specials from the RV hire vendor as well as our own Motorvana QUANTUM online discount.

Book early to secure availability. Many clients book their Australia RV hire months in advance. Moreover, said discount tends to be higher the earlier an Australia motorhome rental booking is made.

Australia is a continent and one of the largest countries in the world. Roughly the size of the lower 48 United States, Australia has less than one-tenth the number of people. Any way you cut it, Australia — "Oz" as the Aussies call it — is epic. Separation is the essence of Oz. Nowhere is a holiday-home-on-wheels more poignant. Good roads and ample services provide for relatively easy motorhome or campervan travel in Australia. Driving is on the left but of course that convention is far from prohibitive to folks accustomed to driving on the right. Grand scale itineraries are limited to proximally coastal routes coupled to the central road through Alice Springs — but there are plenty of opportunities for truly adventurous embellishments into mountains, hill countries, jungles, national parks and desert Outback.

By the way, we recommend you not venture in Australia without a copy of Bruce Chatwin's classic Songlines.

Tropical Queensland, the Northern Territory and the northern part of Western Australia are best visited during their dry, wintertime season (summer in the Northern Hemisphere). Conversely the southern half of the country, including the island Tasmania, is best visited during the Australian summer.

The main areas of interest in Australia are the following: Southeast (including Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide), Tasmania, Queensland (Brisbane and especially Cairns), Alice Springs and environs (including Uluru), Darwin and environs (including Kakadu National Park), and Western Australia (including Perth and the Kimberleys).

There are three types of camping spots to choose from: private campgrounds, state campgrounds, and rest areas (free of charge). Amenities of course include powered sites and waste water disposal facilities. Many campsites can be booked in advance. Some campgrounds operate partially or entirely on a first come, first served basis.

The relatively untouristed territory of Western Australia (WA) comprises over one-third of the continent while harboring only about 3 million people. WA is our favorite. Its tangential capital Perth, closer to Indonesia than to Sydney, is a metropolis of some two million people who still commonly speak of intra-city distances without invoking the concept of time. Perth stands out against the nature and the mining and ranching cultures of the huge "Outback" as a remarkably signal oasis of high Western culture. Almost every young adult in Perth owned a mobile phone within a few years of the technology's advent. In fact Perthians take to high tech so well many companies choose to test-market new gadgets there. Tellingly a mining company sponsors the city's "Fringe World Festival", an annual summertime multi-arts festival. Perth's intimate connection to a vast land and the rock and minerals (especially gold and iron) beneath it is striking for an oceanside city. Yet the connection to the sea is just as strong. Every summer day at about 2 pm a delightfully cooling breeze nicknamed "The Doctor" comes in off the ocean and across the long frontier of white sand beaches for a visit. Conversely the Swan River year round dilates past a stand of impressive modern skyscrapers as it moves toward its peaceful, wide communication with the sea. When the elements give her even the least permission, the Swan carries a host of windsurfers and sailboaters on her brownish-blue back. Just to the south, the adjoining port of Fremantle, "Freo" as the locals call it, seems to inhale and exhale cargo ships. Though rightfully proud of its central yet desultory network of narrow, antique streets lined with trendy shops, cafes and restaurants and anchored by the "Cappuccino Strip", Freo can smell like a barn. A story is told there of a shipload of 70,000 sheep which left Fremantle for Saudi Arabia only to sink mid ocean. Perhaps nowhere on Earth does the land meet the sea as unmediated but as congenially as in Perth. Perhaps nowhere is a person's consciousness of lonely spaces as equally divided between a continent and an ocean. Despite living in a jewel of a modern city, a Perthian cannot help but feel especially alone in this world. They are great travelers, Perthians. Their lives are extremely akin to the lives our progeny will lead at fantastic removes in space and time. Perth is the place on Earth which will superficially change more but at bottom change less than any other. Maybe it's no mere coincidence one of the greatest living science fiction writers, Greg Egan, calls Perth home.

It's to be expected, then, that travelers setting out from Perth are interested in if not compelled to largely maintain that special Perthian communion between land and sea. Journeys up to Darwin, Northern Territory, for example, rather than follow a quicker, rectilinear path, tend to hug the shore. Concomitant are plenty of seaside campgrounds. Cook a meal on one of the wheelbarrow barbies — a wheelbarrow-turned-barbecue — which campers share. Pick some mangoes off the campground trees and set them to ripen under the windshield of your camper van or motorhome. In the handful of months around the summer solstice, remark the terrific speed with which night arrives over Australia, the country being bisected by the Tropic of Capricorn. You can see the night bodying forth, purple, with a leading edge of lavender, a veritable edifice; next time you look up it's all smooth purple overhead. What's more, campfires are generally disallowed in this part of Oz, so night is doubly sudden. In October by 7 pm it's already dark. Cask wine helps punch the consciousness deeper into the evening but darkness puts people to sleep. Without artificial light, little choice and little desire remain but to sleep. So go to sleep with the sun and wake a few minutes after it rises, when your motorhome or campveran so quickly becomes uncomfortably warm and bright. After a week participating in this ultra punctual cosmic synchronicity, you'll have never felt better.

About a third of the way to Darwin is the North West Cape. The small resort town Exmouth there is gateway to Ningaloo Marine Park, well known for its coral reefs, snorkeling, and migratory whale sharks. Nearby Cape Range National Park features kangaroos, sheer cliffs and gorges, and adjacent to it is the excellent Kurrajong campground.

Some seven hours inland is Karijini National Park in the Hammersley Range of the Pilbara region. The flat landscape on the way there increasingly gives rise to a sparse forest of cthonian spires — termite mounds — some upwards of six feet tall. Lonely drivers begin to wave to each other in passing. At about the same frequency as these waves, free-range cattle are seen lolling near the road. Cattlemen let these precious beasts wander for years across stretches of Outback as large as Belgium, before harvesting them via helicopter. The land begins to buckle and flute and shoulder up, and then fat, white-trunked ghost gum trees, refreshingly green of canopy, begin competing with the termite mounds for one’s attention. A truckstop ("roadhouse") offers a breakfast of spaghetti and baked beans, but you might opt for meat pies, fries ("chips"), pumpkin soup, chocolate ("choc") milk, and iced coffee instead. No omelettes available, no pancakes, no French toast.

Karijini is known for its scenic gorges, waterfalls, and natural swimming pools. Hike to the head of a long, deep gorge and camp nearby for a night at an oasis swimming hole. Make a meal of pasta to enjoy with a cask of wine. The night makes its move overhead. The sheer walls of the gorge — flowering black at their tops with the silhouettes of ghost gums — render almost pitch black most of the skyward but leave directly overhead a long swath, rounded at end by the curvilinear termination of the gorge and bulging a bit as the walls run past the eyes; an altogether very oblong oval portal onto the universe, blue and thick with stars. Orthogonal to the long axis of the gorge cuts the concentration of stars that is our Milky Way galaxy. It's as if a giant goddess swung and dumped a pail of stars across the floor of the heavens. It's as if you are in a spaceship traveling in the plane of our galaxy toward its center and this oval above is your window on the universe. You are standing here on your rocky ship and looking out toward your destination.

Broome to the north is western gateway to the huge Kimberley region, perhaps the most varied, remote and wild in Oz. Rumor has it some bands of Aboriginal Australians still live the old way here, hunting and gathering. A four-wheel-drive (4WD) vehicle is required if you want to go off the beaten track, so probably you'll stick to the main highway which cuts diagonally inland and north toward Darwin via Kununurra on WA's eastern border. The Kimberleys' hallmark is the swollen-trunked boab tree, which seems a tree-of-life sort. In fact boabs often live for well over one thousand years. This species exists only here and as twelve other varieties in Madagascar and South Africa. Scientists believe boab seeds — which look like smallish coconuts — took root in this region of Oz after floating across the Indian Ocean. Similarly humans first arrived in Australia on this northwest region's shores, probably about 50,000 years ago and presumably from the Indonesian archipelago by way of the world's earliest known ocean-going crafts.

You are finally nearing Darwin and the world-reknowned Kakadu National Park. But, again, best you visit in Australia's wintertime. For in late October every year thunderstorms arriving northern Oz mark the beginning of "The Wet", the rainy and stormy season which lasts through March. On Christmas Day 1974 The Wet delivered to the Northern Territory a hurricane which virtually wiped Darwin off the map. Rebuilt into a city of strikingly ubiquitous modernity, Darwin's public spaces, such as the cinema and the wonderful museum, offer air-conditioned relief from the heavy heat which plagues the 150,000 residents throughout most of the year. Ganged up on by both the holiday and wet seasons, Darwin suffers a remarkable number of suicides each December. Yet her citizens do, in a sense, look forward to The Wet, for it washes much of the humidity out of the air. Here you will notice people carrying a large bottle of water slung over their shoulder in a specially designed holder made of leather or the like. The average resident stays in Darwin for only two years.

Returning to a brighter note, Australia is one of the best places in the world for stargazing. Oz is now home to three official "Dark Sky Places" as accredited by the International Dark-Sky Association (IDA). The Jump-Up, on the way between Darwin and Brisbane — and some six hours SW of Townsville, Queensland, adjacent to the central section of the Great Barrier Reef — is part of the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum. Warrumbungle Dark Sky Park, six hours NW of Sydney, New South Wales, boasts the country's top astronomical observatory. Warrumbungle National Park offers camping (book in advance) and great hiking around its mountainous, volcanic landscape. River Murray Dark Sky Reserve is only 90 mintues from Adelaide but is shielded from the urban glow by the Mount Lofty Ranges. Of course there's a lot of great stargazing elsewhere in Oz as well. Just an hour north of Perth, for instance, is the Gravity Discovery Centre and Observatory where astronomers present celestial tours using five large telescopes. In Tasmania, just 30 minutes outside Hobart you can see the Milky Way.

At Motorvana we are big advocates of one-way RV rental — especially in Australia, where separation is king. If you have the time to incorporate both the West and East Coasts into your trip, you should consider flying in to and/or out of Perth. Darwin is another good choice for such linchpin. So too are Alice Springs — smack dab in the center of the continent — and Townsville or the more northerly Cairns and the adjacent Daintree Rainforest. The other major cities are far easier to incorporate into a roundtrip campervan or motorhome rental itinerary. Tasmania, of course, is an animal unto itself, being an island and one of the world's most pristine and naturally beautiful places.

Just two hours west of Sydney is the famed Blue Mountains National Park. On the way from Sydney northward to Brisbane, Byron Bay, with its hidden coves and rain forests, is a favorite. The Gold Coast is just south of Brisbane, and the Sunshine Coast is just north. Nearby explore the white sands of Great Sandy National Park. The K'Gari section comprises the lion's share of the world's largest sand island (56,000 hectares, 140,000 acres). The island, formerly known as Fraser Island, is characterized by extremely pure freshwater lakes and very secluded beaches. An iconic roadtrip is to drive northward to Cairns on the Bruce Highway.

From Sydney you can travel south to the Grand Pacific Drive on the Princes Highway through the rainforests and adjacent many of the great beaches of the coast from Royal National Park just south of Sydney all the way to Melbourne, Victoria. After some 15 national parks along the initial three quarters of the way, a jog northward at Bairnsdale will take you to the Great Alpine Road and thus up into the Victorian Alps. Returning past Melbourne you can join the the famed Great Ocean Road on the way to Adelaide, South Australia, experiencing along the 250-km way The Twelve Apostles, Great Otway National Park, and Bells Beach. Midway a short drive northward takes you to mountainous Grampians National Park in the heart of wine country.

From Melbourne you can take your campervan or motorhome by Spirit of Tasmania ferry to Devonport, Tasmania.

From Adelaide directly to the fantastic Uluru in the center of Oz is about an 18-hour drive, with Alice Springs about five hours from Uluru. From Alice to Darwin is another 16 hours.

We've discussed the route from Perth to Darwin, which is about 45 hours of driving. However, we'd be remiss not to mention that a proper trip to Perth should take in some of the marvelous landscapes, wineries and sights of the southwest, including the towns of Margaret River and Albany. You can hike 6 km roundritp to the top of Bluff Knoll in the Stirling Range National Park, at 1099 m the hightest summit of the range.

RV camping culture and infrastructure is vibrant and pervasive in Australia. Private holiday parks, national parks, and state and community parks abound and offer facilities and campsites designed for RVers. Free camping is common throughout the country at primitive campsites within these parks and at roadside rest stops (20-hour limit at rest stops). Discovery Holiday Parks is Australia's largest network of holiday parks. BIG4 Holiday Parks features 170 parks, each with 24/7 on-site management. Moreover Australia boasts hundreds of national parks. Camping fees at the national parks are modest but higher at the better appointed facilities (hot showers, flush toilets, power) of the more popular parks, and many of the parks offer free primitive campsites with basic (water, open-pit toilets) or no facilities. Book in advance if possible. With state and community parks there is usually no need or opportunity to book in advance. Discreet free camping in an RV — alias freedom camping, dispersed camping, dry camping, wild camping, boondocking — is a good option in many areas. Each state has designated areas in state forests or reserves where free camping is allowed.

Moreover, many vineyards, olive groves and farms allow you to free camp on their land. See HipCamp Farmstays.

A motorhome or campervan tour visiting all Australia's primary scenic areas will entail about 15,000 km (9500 miles) of driving and about AUD 500 in terms of park entrance fees. Holiday parks charge about AUD 50 per night. For national parks, figure about AUD 15 per adult, half that per child. Road tolls in general are minimal to non-existent.

Here are links to the national parks by state or territory:

Download the free Campermate app to find campsites, toilets and waste dumping stations. The app also includes lots of other helpful information such as tips from other travelers and areas with WiFi access.

And here are links to other very helpful resources for finding and booking campsites:

By the way, if you are planning to travel by RV in both Australia and New Zealand and with rentals commencing within three-months of each other, you may qualify for additional discounts if you make the bookings more or less simultaneously. Contact Motorvana to learn more.

The main trouble many visitors face when driving in Australia or New Zealand is that they must drive on the left side of the road. Not only is the traffic flip-flopped, but the steering wheel is on the other side of the vehicle — and the gear shift is at your left hand instead of your right. (Although the shifting pattern is the same; and the accelerator is still at the right foot, with the brake pedal off to its left.) It's virtually impossible to practice driving this way before arriving in a country where driving is on the other side; the best you can do is use mental imagery to shed the right-side-of-the-road mindset. Yet the adaptability of the human brain is remarkable. In a matter of days a North American or continental European, say, driving in Australia can largely supplant the mindset assumed over a whole lifetime. It reminds us of an experiment in which scientists convinced a man to wear a contraption that inverted his vision. At first, the upsidedown world confused the man so much he stumbled around and could hardly feed himself. Within a week, however, he was functioning normally. When the scientists finally took the contraption off the man's head, the rightsideup world seemed upsidedown to him. Again he stumbled around and could hardly feed himself. In a couple of days the man re-adjusted to the base reality. If the human mind can adapt so quickly to the inversion of the whole world, surely you'll adapt to sitting on the right side of a vehicle, shifting with your left hand, and driving on the left side of the road.

Not only will you quickly adapt, but the benefits of driving will counteract the anxiety you'll experience in the transition period. In the meantime, the right attitude can minimize both this anxiety and the real danger that fuels it. Be cool. Take your time. Most Aussies and Kiwis, experienced in motoring on the continent of Europe and/or North America, empathize with and are thus tolerant of disoriented foreign drivers. When someone does honk at you, open your smile like Crocodile Dundee's knife and wave at the irritated bloke like a bloody fool. Who cares? Remember, all will be OK as long as you don't hit anything. Soon you'll be zipping around like nothing. The whole experience will make for good stories when you get home, and the you'll feel a genuine and justified pride in your accomplishment.

Apart from our Motorvana QUANTUM online discount, the prices and policies presented on the Motorvana website match the prices and policies of our motorhome rental suppliers. You aren't paying extra by going through Motorvana — in fact you're paying less, thanks to our unilateral, QUANTUM discount.

Motorvana facilitates the whole Australia RV rental booking process, presenting a single total cost you can count on — and acting for you as an accessible resource and, if necessary, as a mediator.

Motorvana: Free Your Travel.