06 Jun Cost of Travelling in Australia for Five Weeks

Our second stop on our travel adventure was Australia; check out how much we spent during five weeks of travelling in Oz. We use the Trail Wallet app to track our spending, see what we spent for a month in New Zealand here.

Australia Activity/Attraction Costs

Like New Zealand, travelling Australia on a budget can be difficult. Luckily we had done many of the expensive things we wanted to do, like skydiving, in New Zealand so we knew we’d spend a lot less on activities in Australia. We also have family near Sydney and staying with them for a week kept some costs down too. Even though we were trying to save money we did manage a few unique Australian activities, like going on a Neighbours tour, snorkelling on the Great Barrier Reef and sailing around the Whitsundays.

Wallaby at Featherdale Wildlife Park

There are so many things you can do all along the East Coast of Australia, however, it certainly is worth researching the different tours online to find one suited to your tastes and budget before buying. Ask you hostel if they can get you any discounts on trips; we received ten percent off our Great Barrier Reef trip by doing this. Here’s what we did activity-wise while in Australia, we managed to get our Whitsunday trip discounted by agreeing to review it on the blog, but the rest we paid full price for. Some of the most enjoyable things we did were free, like cycling around Hervey Bay or visiting the Blue Mountains.

Australia Accommodation Costs

As with New Zealand, we mostly kept to private rooms in hostels with shared bathrooms. The average cost of hostels in Australia was a bit higher than in New Zealand though, closer to £40 per night for two people compared to £29. Luckily we were able to spend a cheap week just outside Sydney while staying with some of my relatives. Unlike in New Zealand, we played Australia a bit more by ear and didn’t go booking all our accommodation before we got there. We did organise a few rooms in advance but generally we’d just turn up and never had a problem finding somewhere to stay.

Campfire in 1770

We used AirBnB three times in Australia, which proved to be cheaper than hostels. Again (apart from with the week we spent with relatives) we found the AirBnB places to be the nicest accommodation – if you haven’t already signed up to Airbnb, use this link to get £25 off your first booking. We had a couple of problems with some hostels; such as bedbugs and poor internet but overall the accommodation in Australia was of a decent standard.

*The costs above are based on 29 days’ accommodation; we stayed in Australia for 35 days but six of those were spent with my relatives.

Australia Food Costs

Food prices in Australia are much the same as in the UK, so we weren’t expecting to save much money there. We mostly cooked in hostels, made sandwiches for lunch and rarely ate out; when we did go to restaurants we took advantage of two for one deals or just ate the cheapest thing on the menu. Alcohol was incredibly expensive in Australia – around $10 for a pint of Peroni compared to around $6.50 in London – so we made sure to avoid drinking most of the time. The one occasion we did have a few drinks was on the Neighbours Night; fortunately Amy won $30 to pay for part of our bar tab. There were however some ‘happy hour’ deals offering half-price drinks.

Our food on the Derwent Hunter

*These costs are based on 29 days due to staying with my relatives and being constantly fed for free for six days.

Australia Transport Costs

There are a number of ways of travelling around Australia as a tourist if you stick to the main, well-travelled paths. However we did find transport quite expensive; it was quite hard to find cheap car hire in Australia. We did find a good deal for car hire insurance online though; a 12 month policy to cover our excess on any hire car, costing £55 (It would be really annoying to have £3,000 taken from you and not be able to get it back!).
We used quite a combination of transport options, including hiring cars, flying and catching trains, trams and ferries. To drive the Great Ocean Road we decided that hiring a car was best rather than jumping on a tour bus and trying to see it all in one day – we used Wicked Campers for this (£166).

Our Wicked ‘Camper’

We got around Melbourne by train and tram, using the Myki card (like London’s Oyster). We found a couple of cheap flights in Australia, from Melbourne to Sydney and used trains and ferries to get about as well as being driven around by my relatives. We also got a day ticket for about £15 each in Sydney that allowed us to get from Penrith, which is an hour away from central Sydney into the city by train; this ticket also allowed us to get a ferry out to Manly Beach and all the way back again. Our other cheap Australian flight took us to Cairns where we hired a car again to get down to the Gold Coast with Europcar (£345). Incidentaly, buying the car hire online saved us about £100 over buying at the airport or city office.

Total Costs of Travelling in Australia for Five Weeks

We hoped to spend about £3,000 during our five weeks down-under, as you can see we were slightly over by nearly £500. We could have done some activities cheaper but this would probably have meant a lesser experience. For example, we could have spent less money on a Great Barrier Reef Tour but this would have meant a compromise on the quality of the snorkelling equipment and number of people aboard. My parents recently booked a six-week package holiday to Australia that included many of the activities we did, which is another option if you don’t want to organise everything yourself.

The living costs in Australia are quite high and accommodation in particular was more expensive than we had hoped; the only way we could have kept those costs down would have been to compromise on quality or stay in dorms, which we weren’t desperate enough to do. We were fairly frugal when it came to food, eating out a few times but not very often, mostly cooking our pasta and veg. The accommodation and food costs below are based on 29 days rather than 35 as we spent six days with relatives being treated with such amazing food we barely spent anything.

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Now we’ve got the expensive countries out of the way, we’re off to Indonesia and hoping we can keep costs as low as possible; with two months in this new country we should be able to take things slower and save a bit, wish us luck!