Campervan Return, Expenses, A380 Cockpit Tour + Bloopers!

It’s a sad day… but it had to come, sooner or later. We’re returning our campervan in Sydney. It’s been an amazing experience that we’ll cherish forever… and we know we’ll be back.

Many of you have requested information about the costs of our trip, so we’ve included a short overview, both in the video and in the text below. We’ve also included some brief footage of our eye-popping visit to the flight deck of a massive Airbus A380.

After all the video we’ve shot on our trip, we knew that no final post would be complete without sharing some behind-the-scenes footage, outtakes and bloopers. You didn’t really think we shot video for three weeks without screwing up, did you? You did!? Awwww. ;)

We hope our experiences in Oz have inspired some of you to take the plunge, and begin planning your own Australian road trip… or at least start considering it. The length of the flight is the most common obstacle we hear about, and frankly, it’s really not that bad. And we sat in coach both ways. The destination is so worth it!

In addition to the resources on our Australia page, we hope the following basic information about our expenses can help prepare you to head Down Under. We’ve converted the prices below into US Dollars (USD) at the average exchange rate at the time of our trip, which was $1.00 USD = $1.30 AUD (Australian Dollars).

Length of our trip: 20 days
Total distance driven: 2,060 miles (Cairns up to Port Douglas, then down to Sydney)
Total amount of diesel fuel used: 99 gallons
Average fuel economy: 20.8 mpg (oh, how we wish OUR motorhome could learn from that!)
Average cost of fuel: $2.98/gallon (USD)
Total spent on fuel: $295.00 (USD)
Maui Ultima Plus Campervan Rental: $3,138.00 (USD) That works out to about $157/night… far less than the cost of a nice hotel and rental car… and you only have to unpack once!
Average Caravan Park Rate: $24.00/night (USD) which generally includes power and access to water & a dump point (remember that full hookups are almost nonexistent in Australia). And don’t forget that Maui renters get 10% off at all Big4 Holiday Parks.
Average Food Costs: $50.00/day (USD) for two people (see the video for a little more detail about how and where we fed ourselves)
Communication Costs: $22.79 (USD) for a prepaid Vodafone Australia smartphone SIM card plan with 10GB of data/month, unlimited texts, and unlimited calls in Australia & to the U.S. (plus 90 minutes worth of calls to Canada)

Having a good Visa and/or Mastercard that doesn’t charge foreign transaction fees is a great plus, too. We travel internationally often enough that we always carry two of those (a Chase Visa and a Capital One Mastercard). And they both provide a far superior exchange rate than we can get anywhere else.

Thanks for coming along on our epic road trip. We appreciate all the interest, support and questions. If we’ve inspired just a few of you to visit this magnificent country at some point, we’re thrilled to have shared.

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Paul Youngman

Monday 11th of February 2019

Hi I am planning a road trip similar to yours which looked great by the way and i loved the videos. My question did you have to do any motorway driving and if you did how did you pay the tolls and was they expensive. Thanks

TheRVgeeks

Hi Paul! So glad to hear you're doing a similar trip... we had a BLAST in Australia and really want to get back there! Our first suggestion re: motorways would be to double-check with whatever company you end up renting from. They will be the best source of information about how to handle any tolls. When we were there, we did drive on a couple of the motorways around Sydney... and if we recall correctly, we were just able to create a temporary account with the tolling authority(ies) to pay the tolls (based on license plate number) that we incurred. We don't remember it being too difficult... since they WANT to get paid! ? Have a great trip!

Corinne

Monday 23rd of May 2016

I LOVE the fact that you converted everything from Aussie to American...no quick task I'm sure. Plus I really appreciate the fact that you took the time to set up multiple cameras to shoot a scene. Well done guys. I'm ready to book my own campervan.

Thanks so much for the comment, Corinne! It's very gratifying to know that the extra effort was noticed and appreciated. :)

Nancy Hale

Thanks so much for a fun spring vacation! Looking forward to you next adventure!,

Russ Iverson

Sunday 22nd of May 2016

My hats off to ya both for always thinking of us, "the monkeys on your back" while trying to vacation....You did a way better job than I would have, mid way I would have told us, after this video, you on your own!.........................:) good nite!

We were happy to share, Russ! :)

Nick

I feel the better in having you guys back home!

Thanks Nick! Good to be back. But we're already dreaming of our next trip down under. ;-)