The Great Aussie Road Trip for Seniors: The Tech Guy – Dr Al


Note from the Editor:
This article was kindly written for the SDC by member @Doctor Alan.

As we’ve gotten older, my wife and I have developed a certain dislike for flying when we decide on holiday destinations. There’s the hassle of getting to the airport in good time, the hassle of queuing up several times once there and the ‘sardiniation’ (my word – it means ‘being treated like a sardine!) to which we’re subjected when travelling ‘economy’.

Of course, we realise that if you’re travelling within Australia, it’s a lot cheaper to travel by plane and hire a car than to drive yourself and stay in hotels on the way, but money isn’t everything when it comes to enjoying a holiday. As tedious as it sometimes is, in a way, it’s more relaxing to simply pack your bags and drive!

Australia’s a huge country, and there are loads of places to stop at and have a look around that you’d never see if you’re travelling at 35,000 feet up. This is why I advocate for seniors at least – the Great Aussie Road Trip.



Where to go:
Of course, your destination, unless it’s a round trip, is dependent upon several different factors: The time you want to set aside, the money you can safely afford, what you hope to achieve for your holiday and when you want to travel.

If you have a pet or two, you’d have to decide whether they’d be OK in kennels, for example, or you’d like them with you. It could be that you’d rather they didn’t have to stay with other people, and that would affect the duration of your holiday.

If you’ve decided on a road trip, you probably have quite a healthy budget anyway.


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Will Fido join you? Image Credit: Shutterstock



The ‘time you set aside’ varies depending upon your circumstances and your age, of course. I must admit, from our home in Queensland, a trip to Sydney that we used to cover with only one stop at Port Macquarie, we find is far more comfortable with two or even three stops on the way. Travelling more than two hours seems to be quite tiring. Teenagers would cover the 800km or so quite easily in one hop, often sharing the driving with a partner while they slept in the passenger seat. To me, that’s not enjoyable. You really do have to stop and ‘smell the roses!’

The ‘money you can safely afford’ for the trip includes the number of stopovers you want to make. When we were younger, we drove from Brighton to Blackpool after seeing a ‘Wednesday Play’ about a group of miners from Newcastle who made the trip. We were newly married and found it fun to pull off the road and sleep in the car in somebody’s orchard. (I even took a spanner and removed the steering wheel to give us more room!). We used to simply pack the car and stop when we felt like it, in those days. We’d see a sign saying: “Bed and Breakfast”, and if it looked good, we’d stop for the night. As we got older, we found that the bed configuration became important, so we’d often stop at several places to check that aspect out before settling on one we preferred. We found we had to have either a king-sized bed or two singles as a minimum.



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My wife and I did the half around Oz trip in 1999, stopping in holiday lets, or park cabins along the way. Melbourne to Adelaid, Perth via Esperance & Albany etc, then north up the coast to Broome, across to Katherine, Darwin, Alice and home via Flinders Ranges. A great trip over two months at a cost of almost 20,000 all up. Saw a lot of our great land along the way complementing earlier trips up & down the East coast and Tassie. Our last holiday car trip was to Adelaide via the Great Ocean Road, five days with lots of sightseeing incl. Kangaroo Island which was a great disappointment for elderly people. A great life of trips sadly now over.. just too old. :rolleyes:
 
Our road trips were courtesy of ADF postings, and by the time my husband retired I never wanted to do another road trip again. However, with a grandson in Newcastle, a 99 year old godmother living on the Central Coast together with the friends still living in Sydney and us living in Brissie, trips down south are now down to just over 7 1/2 hours and I find myself doing it once every 3 months. By the time the freeway goes around Coffs Harbour and Heatherbrae/Hexham who knows how long it will take, we may even have flying cars by then, :ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:
 
Has anyone done the Melbourne to Perth trip recently. We toyed with the idea now & then but accommodation & food concern me a bit. Is it an interesting trip? I would really love to take our new car to Perth, but don’t want to sit on a train for days. Any tips would be appreciated, might help make us decide. If only I could shrink the car & take it on the plane.
 
Has anyone done the Melbourne to Perth trip recently. We toyed with the idea now & then but accommodation & food concern me a bit. Is it an interesting trip? I would really love to take our new car to Perth, but don’t want to sit on a train for days. Any tips would be appreciated, might help make us decide. If only I could shrink the car & take it on the plane.
The Indian Pacific trip is really very boring, and we found it quite hard to sleep (even though we had first class sleepers). The standard of service had noticeably slipped on our last trip as well. The train has to stop for some time on occasion, becuse goods trains share the same line, and have priority. It's also quite an expensive way to travel. I'll be writing an article about crossing the Nullarbor pretty soon - I would certainly recommend driving, as boring as some parts are, or you could simply hve your car transported (by flat-bed truck etc.) and fly - probably the cheapest option. (Driving could inclde the Great Ocean Road).
Alan.
 
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We have just finished an 8,000 km trip, crossing off from our bucket list another few places. We live in Brisbane and our bucket list places were mainly in South Australia. We have travelled there on numerous occasions but either the weather was too hot and the places we wanted to go to were closed or we had to be in other places by a certain time. So this time it was like a discovery tour. We stayed in places we hadn't before, we went to towns that we missed the other times and we just took our time. We did the Googs track (not all the way only to the memorial) We saw the end of the Dingo Fence (or wild dog fence as it is called in South Australia). We have seen the start of the Dingo fence in Queensland over 5000km from the end and crossed over it many times in out travels. Also went to Farina Bakery. It's only opened 8 weeks of the year and run by volunteers and has an underground bakery. The bread, pies, all the food is made onsite and made fresh everyday and is so yummy. Farina is a abandoned town in ruins and the volunteers are slowly restoring it. We also saw the geographical centre of New South Wales on this trip. Taking it easy without putting time limits on your trip really makes it very enjoyable. We bought a caravan because we had travelled many times and some of the hotels were a bit sus or fully booked and at least we know what our bed is going to be like each night.
 
we did from adelaide to melbourne and with our beautiful places in NZ I didn't find the Great Ocean road that wonderful.
It used to be a really nice drive in the early 90's but with the amount of people that drive the Great Ocean Road they have blocked off a lot of places which was very disappointing, the last time we went there was over 13 years ago
 

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