Driving Sydney to Melbourne

Diddums

Diddums

Diddums

Caporegime
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We're going to Oz in January and would like to drive the above route. There are packages like this which seem great but then again we don't want to be rushed or have to hang around so we're going to look further.

This thread is more to discuss this, maybe some of you guys have some tips or advice about Oz in general, anything goes :)

Obviously we'll post up loads of photos once we're on the road but for now this is in the planning stage, and there's no escaping it as we have to attend a wedding :D

I can't freaking wait, neither can my wife. I think this may well be the road trip of a lifetime!
 
Don't book a package, just rent a car and book your own hotels.

Watch for the enormous excess on Australian car rentals - purchase third party excess cover before you go.
 
Did almost that exact tour about 10 years ago. Was pretty nice, just a lot of driving i.e. most of the road signs say hundreds of somethings (km's I think) rather than tens of miles you get in this country.

Lakes entrance had literally nothing there, Merimbula was much the same. We stopped at the Blue Mountains west of Sydney first though, it was worth it, was very nice.
Philip Island was nice as well , you'll probably see the penguins come ashore at night, thats the big thing there to see.

The beaches are amazing, I think that tour mentioned 90 mile beach which we stopped at, it was very wide and very pretty and deserted, which was great but when you know you have another 100 miles to drive to the next hotel kind of puts a downer on it.

Don't get me wrong, its a really nice place but I think it would be worth researching some places to stop along the way as the two places I mentioned above really weren't that great (Lakes Entrance and Merimbula).

Also you wont find pints, we went out with my Mate in Melbourne (really nice place), I think it was a bar called Madame Brussels and ordered "3 pints" they gave us 3 half pints, turns out they only drink schooners, which is nearly half a pint. Had to order 3 more drinks.
Also, don't jay-walk - Aus $50 fine.
Chocolate tastes different on account of the wax they put in it.
Bonday beach is quite nice, best at sunset but packed all the other times.
Manly was nice - worth getting the boat to but again - packed.
In Nandos you can put your own perry dust on your chips - random memory.
 
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Cheers for the replies!

Getting really excited now, also looking at the prospect of the Gold Coast but this doubles the travelling time so may have to negotiate with work. Either way it's going to be one hell of an adventure :D
 
This is something I have a passing interest in, we have friends who have moved to Brisbane and have thought about driving from Melbourne to Syndey and then to Brisbane (all along the coast) over the space of about 3-4 weeks.

The idea would be about 5 nights in each place (probably only 4 in Melbourne) and the rest spent doing the drive.

I can't offer any advice to the OP other than I'm interesting in doing something similar so would be grateful of any information you come across whilst doing it.

Oh thongs = flip flops.
 
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Diddums said:
Cheers for the replies!

Getting really excited now, also looking at the prospect of the Gold Coast but this doubles the travelling time so may have to negotiate with work. Either way it's going to be one hell of an adventure :D
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Dont contemplate the Gold Coast, if you have the time and the budget do it. I had said before on other Oz threads, for me this is pretty much as good as it can get on this planet, let alone Oz.
 
As much as I'd love to do the Gold Coast, it's not really viable with our itinerary.


The reason I'm popping in is to ask if anyone knows where I can rent something a bit more exotic over there. Hertz and Budget both claim to be able to rent me a Mustang drop top but when I try and book one, they show me their usual run of the mill cars. I don't know if I'll be able to rent something like that but it'd be nice to see what the costs are like anyway. Who knows, maybe a Mustang / Corvette / Camaro could be an option :D
 
Car hire is expensive in Australia and exotic cars are uncommon. It isn't the USA and mustangs etc do not fill rental fleets. They don't do a Camaro in right hand drive anyway.

An exotic hire car would be a 320d. You may be better off trying for an Aussie sport saloon like a Falcon XR6 or a Holden Commodore SV6.
 
Ended up paying a bit more for a Ford Falcon XR6.

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About as sophisticated as a house brick, as spacious in the cabin as an A380 and enough space in the boot to import an entire Mexican cartel. That 4l straight 6 is brilliant though, happy to hit the redline of 6k over and over as well as drag this tank along at 50kph in 6th. The slushbox is the most slushiest of boxes I've ever experienced, never ever in a hurry and a good right foot booting gives it a two or three second time frame to sort itself out before that beast of an engine propels you towards the horizon in a rather blurry mess of "what the hell is going on?" and "get the hell out of my way". Most of the time I couldn't guess what gear I was in, the box could've been a two speed, it could've been a 24 speed, I couldn't tell. I only know it was a 6 because I had to google it. The brakes would probably struggle to stop a golf cart, never mind a two tonne tank. This car makes absolutely no effort to hide its Aussie heritage and the fact that it's also a very popular ute. It was an absolute blast to cover 1200 miles in and a bit of mild off roading to see some of the weirdest and most beautiful places I've ever seen. I managed to get it to 26mpg but make no mistake, flooring it will make this thing drink like a V8. Nice rumble from the exhaust too. The speakers are dire, the nav had an irritating glitch where it wouldn't load the maps and the only way to reset it is to power the car off and open / shut the doors to fool it in to thinking that the car was parked. This happened about 50% of the time we stopped somewhere. The nav itself isn't spectacular, but I'll give it one thing, it always found signal. We also rented a nav from Avis which lasted about 5 mins in Sydney before getting packed up again as it simply couldn't find anything amongst the skyscrapers and sent us all over the place. It was also funny to be parked next to someone in an A6 and absolutely dwarf it. Even funnnier was watching this poor guy try and squeeze all his stuff in, using every single nook & cranny he could find. I stood next to him loading this thing up like a freight vessel, I reckon this thing has about 150% of the boot capacity of the A6. The suspension is ace, it was always comfy, even on roads which would usually batter my spine this thing just soaked it up like it was a magic carpet. The waft is very strong here.

Loads more photos here.
 
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I forgot he even mentioned it :p

It's a great car, it was the first rental I was sad to see go. I'll probably buy one when I move there. Or a Commodore.
 
I had the G6E which is the premium version of the standard falcon when we went to Cairns up to Port Douglas.

Huge boot as above, took four or five suitcases no problem. Remember it being perfectly average, performance wasn't mind blowing.

Sydney to Melbourne is a pretty dull drive but then most drives are simply due to the huge distances.

I prefer the Commodore over the Falcon. Not sure how sporty the XR6 is but the SV6 commo has a reasonable sport mode. Falcon and Commodore sales have died hence they are stopping/stopped making them. People don't want huge thirsty cars anymore. Country people who do tend to buy 4wd instead.

People don't tend to go too crazy on the roads simply because the fines are so huge and it doesn't save you that much time, it's not worth risking 10kmh over the limit. Just put cruise on.

Most Aussies bag out the Gold Coast, over run with bogans and school/uni kids!

When are you moving, is it just a dream or actually happening.
 
Berger said:
Sydney to Melbourne is a pretty dull drive
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Really? I thought it was absolutely amazing, but then we stopped many times, took the touristy bits, went to loads of beaches, found small towns which were absolutely surreal to see, etc.

Berger said:
When are you moving, is it just a dream or actually happening.
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It's going to happen eventually. We have loads of loose ends to tie up here and my wife has to go through the process of getting a British passport before we go but the goal is 3-5 years.
 
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