Australia is a very large country and driving distances can be long. Don’t spend all day driving just to keep to an unrealistic itinerary. You will see and enjoy it more with a relaxed schedule. Either plan to travel a shorter distance or allow more time. There may be many local attractions that you will miss if travelling to a tight schedule.

Campervan and motorhome rental offices in Australia regularly get people, particularly from overseas, wanting to do long hires in a short time. Often a rental supply company will impose a minimum hire period on certain hires. For example a hire from Perth to Sydney may require a minimum hire period of 21 days.

Some itineraries that travellers plan to do would require them to travel 600 or more kilometres per day – every day – sometimes for weeks. They may cover a lot of territory but it is not exactly a relaxing holiday and they would certainly be missing out on a lot of local attractions.

Almost all campervans and motorhomes for hire have unlimited kilometres included in the rate. Other than minimum hire periods being imposed there is nothing actually preventing someone from undertaking an unrealistic itinerary if they chose to.

The first step in trying to work out how much time to allow is to establish the minimum distance of your trip; such as the basic distance between cities. If you were intending travelling from Cairns to Melbourne for example, this would be about 3000 kilometres in a direct route.

This direct route is not allowing for any sight seeing along the way. The Australian coastline abounds in delightful coastal towns and beaches that the main roads bypass. There are many amazing places inland along this route that would be essential to visit such as the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney.

There may be many places that you would want to spend a whole day or longer, exploring or just relaxing and taking a break from driving. There are many scenic routes signposted that pass through areas bypassed by highways. Research your itinerary; the web contains a wealth of information about places to see.

In the example above of Cairns to Melbourne, most campervans and motorhomes would be permitted to do this in 7 days. This would require travelling about 430 kilometres each and every day. Even if you averaged 80 kilometres per hour for the entire journey (this would be hard to achieve) you would be driving for more than 5 hours every day without allowing for any additional site seeing.

Allowing about 200 kilometres per day at the most is much more realistic. This would be 15 days for Cairns to Melbourne without any stopovers. Allow a day for a stop-over after several days travelling. If there was an attractive seaside town that was 15 minutes off the main road then you would have time to visit it.

Remember; you are on holiday and you want to enjoy it! Driving all day is very hard work – driving all day, for days on end, is even harder work. So get more ‘holiday’ into your campervan hire and less ‘work’. If you don’t have the time to see it all you can always come back next year.