Connor

Jun 136 min read

Vanlife Australia: Road tripping from Sydney to Adelaide

Updated: Jun 14

Driving around Australia can be a task, but it’s also really fun! Sydney to Adelaide is a great first road trip, not too long but still enough to get a taste of vanlife and sample the Australian outback.

Stats

Drive time: 4 days (15 hours without stopping, we were in no rush)

Distance: 1,400 km

Highlights: Parliament House, Lake Alberta, Hay

Recommend: Hell yeah

[For a full list of the camp spots we stayed at scroll to end].

Getting around a country that’s also a continent

Australia really is massive. Which presents a bit of a problem when you want to see everything but only have three months to do it.

Once we got to Sydney we set about working out the best way to see as much of the country as possible, for as little money as possible. Domestic flights? Too expensive. Short-term lets/house sitting? In one place for too long and too much hassle. That’s when we came back to vanlife.

We’d already looked at renting a campervan to travel across Aus, but the prices were insane! Renting a fully kitted out campervan for months at a time was going to cost thousands of dollars which we weren’t prepared to spend. What we could do though, was buy our own camper and then sell it once we were heading off, to recoup some (or hopefully all) of our money. Perfect. [SPOILER: we made all of it back and more!]

After trawling Facebook marketplace we found ourselves an absolute corker of a van - a Toyota Hiace we christened ‘Lenny’ (she was born in the millennium). A quick spruce up and some mechanical tweaks later and we were all set to go on our first cross country road trip.

Though buying a van in NSW wasn’t the most straightforward task, once it was all done we knew we’d made the right choice. Read our detailed post on buying a van in Australia for tips and advice if you’re thinking of getting your own wheels to travel Aus.

Road trip one: Sydney to Adelaide

The plan for our first trip was simple, drive inland from Sydney to Adelaide, then from Adelaide go south along the coast to the Great Ocean Road to Melbourne then back up to Sydney. We set off at the beginning of October with a plan to be back in Sydney in around one month.

The compromise capital

Driving west from Sydney, one of the most of obvious places to stop is Australia’s capital city Canberra. It’s only four hours drive and definitely worth a look if you’re road tripping. Saying that… don’t be expecting big city vibes here, this place feels a bit like a dystopian future where half on humanity has emigrated to another planet.

We headed straight to the Visitor Centre in Acton Park which is actually a really cool place to learn about the history of Australia and the creation of Canberra. Being a new, purpose-built capital city meant its design and layout could be meticulously planned, and there’s some really interesting stories behind its design. Did you know, in 1912 the Australian government held a competition to design the city and received 137 entries from all over the world?

The problem is though, it doesn’t feel like the city ever really took off in the way its designers hoped it would… Huge highways and massive infrastructure look pretty empty and out of place when there just aren’t that many people to use them. The ‘commercial’ sector is a far cry from that of Melbourne or Sydney and probably not worth visiting to be brutally honest. [NB: We visited post covid so maybe it was a thriving metropolis pre 2020]

One thing I would definitely recommend though is visiting Parliament House on Capital Hill. The perk of the city being eerily quiet is that you can stand completely undisturbed in front of the democratic heart of Australia (not something you can do at Westminster or the US Capitol Building). You can wander round the inside for free and even sit in the senate and congress chambers (as long as they’re not in session, obviously). For anyone who’s into their politics this is a must do!

Overall, Canberra is definitely worth a visit but I wouldn’t allocate more than a day. There isn’t much in the way of camp sites close to the city so I’d make a move late afternoon to get to a good spot. Camp Cotter is 25 minutes out of the city and has excellent facilities but fills up quickly (you’ll probably see some kangaroos too).

Crossing NSW

Driving west from Canberra, you really start to see how empty and dry much of Australia is! I’m talking straight roads you can drive along for hours without seeing a soul. Around four hours’ drive later we hit the town of Wagga Wagga. We only stopped for lunch and a walk around Lake Alberta (which is a lovely spot) but the town is big enough to stock up on supplies and fuel if you need it.

Our next camp spot was one I can’t recommend enough. After driving for hours in the unrelenting sun, we were craving some shade and somewhere to chill. Cue the cute little town of Hay. The town is really welcoming of travellers/campers and there’s a huge, FREE camp spot just on the edge of the town called Sandy Point Reserve. There’s plenty of space and free toilets etc - just make sure you have some mozzie spray. One of the best things about this spot though, was that the visitor centre, two minutes drive away, has free (clean) showers, which aren’t always easy to come by.

We left Hay feeling refreshed and ready for some more driving (good job as how else were we getting anywhere). Driving roads like these was actually an amazing experience and is a really fun way to travel. Some good playlists, podcasts and audio books are vital though! (Disclaimer: these roads are a really cool experience but get used to seeing kangaroo casualties, there are a lot…].

There’s not a lot to say about what we did between Hay and our next stop… We drove. A lot. In this part of Australia there isn’t much else you can do. After a long day of driving though we found ourselves searching for a decent camp spot that we could reach before it went dark. Per my earlier disclaimer, you do not want to be driving these roads in the dark.

Aussie ghost towns are a real thing

Fortunately for us, we came across the tiny town of Geranium. When I say tiny, this place was REALLY tiny. We arrived and drove though a selection of normal buildings, a school, a shop or two and a few houses before we hit the oval where WikiCamps told us we could park for free. After a quick chat with a friendly local though (he literally made a bee line for us as soon as we pulled up; first new faces in a while), we found out that the school had closed years ago, the shops were all closed and several of the houses were abandoned. This isn’t the start of a horror movie, I swear. That being said, we had a huge camp spot all to ourselves including a clean toilet block, so no complaints from us. For me, Geranium is actually one of the most memorable spots we stayed in, something about staying in a bit of a ghost town maybe.

Anyhow, the next morning, after four days of driving, we were coming into our first major stop - Adelaide!

We opted to stay in AirBnB’s when we hit cities as the camp spots were so expensive anyway. After a massive fail booking a little AirBnB with a garage that we soon realised couldn’t fit our van (some swearing may have occurred), we found an amazing converted church with a huge drive way that we could easily fit into.

And that was the first leg of the road trip done. Short and sweet. One thing we did find out though, is that we love travelling and staying in the van and we had definitely made the right choice.

Read our full Adelaide post for recommendations and tips on what to see while you’re there (especially if you’re looking for free options - budget struggles are real!).Or have a look at our next road trip post, as we drive from Adelaide to Melbourne.

Thanks for reading and drop a comment with any thoughts, critiques, compliments or deep, dark secrets. If you feel the need.

Bye for now,