About Camping In Australia

I have been going camping for as long as I remember and still never fail to get excited about the next trip into the great outdoors, even though I'm no spring chicken these days!

Being outdoors has so much to offer. For starters you can reconnect with nature which I believe is intrinsically important to human beings. Placing the soles of your feet on mother earth, looking around at the immense beauty before you, walking with the waves splashing around your knees, smelling the clean fresh air, feeling the sun on your skin, and being absorbed in the quietness of it all, is something to be cherished. So I would encourage you, if you have never been camping before to learn a little about it, and give it red hot go!

It is one of the least expensive ways to have a holiday. All you really need is a tent, a few personal belongings like clothes and toothbrush, a bit of easy to prepare food, and some cooking gear.

If you really want to learn about how to keep the costs down, there are some excellent free camps in Australia and an excellent camps Australia wide book which makes it easy to find them. I have a copy myself and it has saved me hundreds, if not thousands of dollars over the last year alone.

Tents are relatively cheap and great for camping - you can pick one up for less than $50 at camping stores, or if you are travelling with children, you might prefer to get a larger model with two or even three rooms. Tents are also a great option for a working holiday in Australia.

The total cost for camping gear to get you started need not be more than a couple of hundred dollars. Now that’s a cheap holiday and a FUN one as well!

If you think camping in a tent isn’t quite your style, perhaps you might prefer to see Australia at a more comfortable level in a caravan. I can personally recommend the lifestyle after having spent nearly 2 years caravanning around Australia.

Australia is very well catered for in regards to caravan parks with several major chains including:

• Big 4
• Top Tourist Parks

Both of these caravan park chains offer membership which will guarantee a discount whenever you stay at one of their parks throughout the country.

There are also RV Friendly towns that encourage the travelling public to come and visit by offering free or cheap amenities. A town must meet a range of criteria before being accredited RV Friendly status.

You can pick up a caravan anywhere around Australia for as little as $5000 or up to around $100,000 for some of the luxury 5 star models. We opted for a mid range model and purchased our Adria Adiva from the Sydney Caravan and Camping Show in 2009.

Buying from the show will save you bucket loads of money, simply because the exhibitors have shelled out huge dollars to get their products in front of a willing audience. I later spoke to one particular caravan manufacturer who refused to go to the big shows as it would cost him over $40,000 and a week or two away from his business premises.

So knowing that the exhibitors have expended that amount of money, you would think that they would be super keen to make as many sales as they can – and believe me they are super keen!

There are some magnificent RV’s in Australia. They range from mid-size motor homes, through to converted buses (some are double deckers), to Australian made 5^th Wheelers, to the big Winebagos and fully imported 5^th Wheelers from the U.S.

The imported RV’s all have to be converted to comply with Australian standards. For example the electrics must be upgraded, and their must be at least one entry door on the left hand side of the vehicle, so that you can enter from the kerb side.

The sheer size and weight of the fully imported 5^th Wheelers has proven somewhat of a problem in as much as Australia has been limited in recent years to the type of vehicle able to tow them.

A Ford F250 was pretty much the only choice in the early days, until recently when more large pickup trucks have also been imported from the U.S. to give people more choice in regards to a tow vehicle. Dodge and Chevrolet are two of the most popular imports.

Another fairly recent addition to tow vehicles is the Iveco Daily twin cab which in my opinion is perfect for the job (see first 2 pics below). When I grow up I want a Sundance 5^th Wheeler and Iveco Daily twin cab ;)