Australia - $221.49 Per Day
Australia is the nation we’re spending the longest continuous amount of time in during our 13 months of travel, but it’s also another country we knew we would have a hard time staying within our budget, and boy were we right! We spent 60 days in Australia, and at our daily budget of $194 we were hoping to spend no more than $11,760. However, we actually spent $13,289, breaking down to a cost of $221.49 per day.
Our largest category of expenses was food, including all of our groceries during our campervan road trip, as well as restaurant meals and a multitude of coffee runs. We spent $3,732 on food, accounting for $62.19 of our average daily cost. Most of the time we tried to eat out at reasonable places and have meals in our accommodation as often as possible, but Australia is a country of terrific cuisine so we quite frequently failed and became victims of our appetite. There were so many amazing restaurants to try in many of the big cities and hidden coffee shop gems everywhere we went, leading to us often overspending in a day on good food. We also lost two grocery shops when the fridge in our campervan stopped keeping our food cool and we couldn’t figure out how to fix it, these two shops alone ended up accounting for $3.15 of our daily budget across our entire time on the continent.
Our second largest category of expenses was Lodging, which for us was a combination of campgrounds, hostels, hotels, and short-stay apartments. Even after spending many nights in our campervan at free camping sites, our total lodging costs still come in at $3,531 or $58.85 per night. Admittedly there were several nights that we passed on the cheapest possible accommodation to get something that was a bit nicer or had a bit more space for the two of us plus our enormous backpacks so some of this higher cost per night is definitely on us. However, there is just no getting around the fact that unless your camping, accommodation in Australia is more in line with pricing in the US, Canada or western Europe, and even then it’s not as inexpensive as some other countries. We did redeem points for our nicest stay during our time in Australia, three nights at the Pullman Melbourne City Centre, a great experience and a very welcome change of scenery after 20 days in our campervan.
Our third and final large category of expenses were our Rental Cars & Gas, which ran us $3,419 or $56.98 per day. Australia is a big country with lots of amazing experiences, but many of them are outside of the bigger cities and without an expansive train or bus network you’ll need a car to reach them. We rented 4 separate vehicles across our two months of travel, first a campervan for 19 days to drive from Perth to Melbourne, second a car for four days in Alice Springs to reach Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, third a 4x4 for five days in Brisbane to reach K’gari and Noosa Heads, and finally a car for five days in Tasmania. All in all we had a rental car for 33 of our 60 days in Australia, and with the high price of gas this accounts for a significant chunk of our costs in the country.
Additionally we had smaller per day costs coming from various Activities, our Visas, Other Transportation costs like ferries or trains, and various miscellaneous bits & bobs. We used 210,000 AAdvantage points to fly extensively within Australia, allowing us to take 11 Qantas flights including our flight from New Zealand and to traverse the continent at next to no cost. Using American passports we had visa fees of $13.50 each, for a per day added cost of only $0.46, hardly a big dent into our budget. Other transportation costs, like the ferry to K’gari, Ubers to and from our flights, and various transit tickets added up to $856, or $14.26 per day. Fair warning: ferries are seemingly all run by SeaLink, so their monopoly over the market creates very high costs. For example, a return ticket for one vehicle to Kangaroo Island racks up a whopping AU$472!
We stuck to free activities as much as we could in Australia since we knew it was going to be an expensive destination and because there are honestly so many amazing free things to do. However, there were certain activities we knew were a must for us on this trip, like our pass to visit Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park, a one-day Whitsundays snorkeling cruise, and tickets for various shows at the Adelaide Fringe festival, among others. These activities all added up to about $868 or $14.46 per day. We also had miscellaneous expenses like laundry, pharmacy runs, and cash, which I can’t remember how we used, that added up to another $846 or $14.09 per day.
We knew Australia was going to be another expensive country, similar to our experience in New Zealand, and that we would be generally over budget through our first few months of this trip. We’re expecting to be under budget over the next few months as we have a lot of rewards redemption travel coming up and as we transition into South East Asia. Keep an eye on this space to see how we do…