Published: 6 Apr 21 Updated: 2 Feb 23

So you’ve come up with the idea of doing a trip around Australia; the big lap as it’s so often referred to. One of the first things you’ll want to know is how much it’s going to cost. This will tell you whether the idea of travelling Australia should stay a fantasy, or if you should actually give it a crack.More often than not, the big lap is possible for most couples or families. The hardest part is taking the plunge and committing to the crazy idea. The thing is, once you come up with your rough figure of how much it will cost, you can make other decisions on how to tackle the trip to make it work for you and your circumstances.

How will you fund your trip?

Will you save up your trip expenses before leaving or work along the way? Are you going to sell up everything or rent out the home and put your belongings in storage? What sort of set up will you travel with? How long will you go for? There are so many different ways you can travel Australia and they will all have varying financial impacts.

We travel Australia full-time in our off-road caravan and 4WD. You may plan on travelling in a caravan too but there are also plenty of other options! Travelling with swags, rooftop tents, tinnies, camper trailers, motorhomes and troopy/van/bus builds are all different setups we see travelling Australia full-time.

Now you can get plenty of advice from people on the road already, but with so many methods for doing an Australia trip as mentioned above, it can be tricky coming up with an accurate total figure for the cost of the trip you’re dreaming about.

The cost of travelling Australia has increased by about 30% since 2021!

We originally wrote this article at the start of 2021 and the cost of fuel, groceries and anything to do with caravan and camping was very different then to what it is now almost two years later. To put it in perspective, we had budgeted for $1000/week (and thought we were overestimating there) but now that we’re actually travelling full-time and in the current economy, our reality is an average of $1300/week (more on that later in the piece!). That’s why we have done a complete overhaul of this article to bring it in line with the current cost of living and match inflation. We are also now travelling full-time, so have our personal experiences to add in as well.Previous to the skyrocketing costs of living in Australia, there used to be two general formulas you could use to give you a really rough ballpark figure of how much a trip will cost you. They were handy for when you initially began your research to see what sort of money you were up for, and then as you became more serious about budgeting and planning your finances, a more custom approach was recommended. We will quickly run through these old formulas so you are aware to disregard any information that quotes them anymore! They are severely inaccurate now and you will be hurting badly if you use these formulas to budget for your trip!

The First Formula: $1 for Every Kilometre Travelled.

This formula was always a bit shaky in producing an accurate estimate, but even more so now that fuel alone has gone up around 30% the past few years. Expedition Australia does a really good comparison of how this formula can vary drastically between 2 different families with different travelling styles. The $1 per km method probably used to be more accurate for couples with no kids or retirees who were travelling on a really tight budget and didn’t have a lot of expenses at home, pre-2021. We are now in a different financial climate though and this formula needs to be thrown out the window!

The Second Formula: $1000 a Week.

Originally, we found this method to be more reliable when researching what other families and couples spent on their trips. Now that we’re on the road, we’ve chatted to lots of travellers who agreed $1000 a week USED to be a good average estimate but they are spending a lot more than that now.So if these old tried and tested formulas are not much use anymore, how can you get a rough estimate of your Australia trip cost?

Add inflation to the $1000 a week formula.

Since $1000 used to be a good estimate pre-2021, we could just add on inflation to that to get a new ‘good estimate.’ According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, inflation has increased 7.8% since December 2021, theoretically meaning our new estimate should be $1080 per week. Is this an accurate reflection though? No!This is because when travelling, your main costs are fuel, food and camping fees. In this same release by the ABS, they noted one of the most significant price rises this year has been domestic holiday travel and accommodation, the cost of fuel has risen over 13% since December 2021 and food by 9%. While they don’t report on camping fees, a quick scroll through the price tab on Wikicamps will show a huge increase in prices since 2020/2021. From council campgrounds like the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia increasing camping permits by 100%, to caravan parks reportedly having an average increase of 20% since pre-pandemic prices, and more and more free camps shutting down or having restrictions imposed thanks to the masses of travellers now on the road (eg the famous Perlubie Beach). Taking into account these percentages, it would probably be more reasonable to increase the $1000/a week method by 20-30%, giving you a guide of about $1200-$1300 a week.

Research what others are spending.

Another option is to research what others are spending, especially as you can find someone who is travelling in a similar way that you will be eg a family with 2 kids in a caravan, retirees in a motorhome, young couple in swags etc. Just be extra cautious that you’re only taking note of information posted or updated from mid-2022 onwards. Anything prior to that will be really out of date now! This makes it tricky because not a lot of published articles or videos that discuss this have been updated recently. Even when doing research for this article update, most of the recent updates we could find from other travellers were them saying they don’t really track their costs but they know they spend more than $1000/week now. We can give you our weekly spend so you have something to go off and will hopefully be able to continue to update this section as other travellers who track their costs share what they’re spending in these new times.

How much are WE spending?

So as a husband and wife duo in our twenties (with no kids or pets) travelling full-time in a caravan, we have averaged $1300 a week in seven months. This includes ALL costs: fuel, accommodation, groceries, maintenance, bills, insurances, eating out, experiences, replacing parts, repairs etc. It should also be noted that week to week we’re spending between $700-$1200, however it’s the irregular costs like maintenance, insurances, vehicle services, appointments, replacing things (batteries, fridges, drones…haha) that have really driven the total average higher up around $1300/week. It also depends what state you’re in. We have just spent 10 weeks in South Australia, which is known to be notoriously cheaper for camping than a lot of other states and have averaged $970/week here across the 10 weeks.At the time of writing, we have been travelling Australia full-time for a total of 7 months now and have tracked every single expense on a spreadsheet. We’ll summarise our totals for the past 6 months in some of the major categories below (just doing 6 months will allow us to eliminate the first month of our trip as we settled in and also make it easier for you to compare this to what a year may cost you):*A note that in these first six/seven months, we travelled up and down the QLD coast, then down to Sydney, across to South Australia and around the South Australian coast. We travelled A LOT of km’s before finally slowing down once we got to SA. So the fuel prices will be quite high thanks to the first few months of our trip. This is probably a good indication for people doing a one year lap of Aus though, as we’ve done about 15,000km in 7 months and the average one year big lappers are doing 30,000km in a year.

Calculating your own big lap cost!

While the insights from others give you a good estimate, you can also use a specially-designed spreadsheet to estimate how much travelling Australia will cost you for your own personalised circumstances. There are a few spreadsheets out there, but a lot haven’t been updated to reflect the hike in costs of fuel, campsite fees, groceries and JUST EVERYTHING OKAY!! This Big Lap Budget Spreadsheet from My Rig Adventures has every expense you could think of. From your normal big expenses like groceries, fuel, gas bottle refills etc to the costs you might have missed, like laundromats, ambulance cover and gifts. The spreadsheet gives you an easy format and instructions to input the details and estimated costs of your trip, with helpful tips too (Gas bottle refill average prices and how often you would normally fill up). The section on expenses alone is a great tool to help you calculate how much you think you will spend, but then it also includes a section on income.  Here you can input money you expect to earn from long service leave, super, investments, maternity leave, tax returns and of course your savings, giving you a really good idea of your total financial position, how much you’ll need to save and the amount you’ll need to earn from working if you intend to pick up jobs along the way.You can purchase your own copy of the Big Lap Budget Spreadsheet from My Rig Adventures here. It’s $5.95 and you’ll be able to download your own editable copy instantly and start nutting out those figures for the Australia Trip you’ve been dreaming of. So hopefully this all gives you a bit more guidance when trying to figure out how much the big lap will cost you. Are you planning a lap at the moment? Let us know in the comments below what you have used to work out how much it will cost. Your insight will be much appreciated by fellow travellers trying to budget for their trip.