Backpacker – Part 2

As previously mentioned Australia is a paradise for backpackers and individual travelers. You can get places to stay and community equipments for every budget, as well as different options to travel. Those who have limited time take a plane from Sydney, Brisbane or Melbourne to Cairns or Darwin (for only 99 Euro) and proceed with their travels from there. Those with smaller distances (or more time) take the greyhound bus which is quite expensive and not really comfortable. Most of the backpackers take a rental car. You can get all sorts of cars with all sorts of prices. Less people hire a ‘normal’ car and stay in a tent (as the 2 of us). Mostly they rent a camper which you can get for 35 Euro/ day e.g. from a rental company called ‘Wicked’. However you need to be careful! These Mitsubishi mini- vans with stylish graffiti are really old and used. Most of them have more than 300.000 km! Therefore the interior is everything but clean!

There are better options like Camper Man, Hippie Camper and Backpacker.







Other options - quite luxurious ones - are Jucy and Spaceships.








They are less camper vans rather camper cars which offer a lot of space. And then there are the traditional ones like Britz, Maui and Apollo.

All those campers are permanently on Australians roads. Especially along the coast you can find them everywhere. Btw. often you meet people again and again. Thus we met Kathrin from Hamburg who we made acquaintance with on our sailing tour at Whitsunday Islands, one week later 500 km further up North. Moreover, we met Hannah and Paul from Canberra in Airlie Beach where they told us that they were camping at the same time like we at Mission Beach 500 km further up.

However, if you drive into the hinterland away from the coast there are far less campers. After 2 days we were missing them as they were part of our travel community. Even though we are not 100% members as we camp in a tent and compared to the real backpackers only in Oz for 2.5 months while most of the backpackers stay in Oz for 1 year….