Outback Articles

Fuel Costs for traveling around Australia

Fuel Costs

I stumbled across a little gem the other day at the Brisbane Caravan and Camping Show, in the form of a booklet titled ‘Fuel Prices – The Good News’. Naturally it caught my eye – anything to help the wallet, right?

The booklet is put out by the Caravan and Camping Industry Association NSW, and looks at various scenarios; from a 14 day 600km driving holiday right up to a 180 day trip around Outback Australia (“The Big One”). It covers family cars, 4WD’s (both towing) and motor homes. The study, conducted by KPMG (international audit, tax and advisory services) covers all costs that a family would reasonably incur whilst holidaying. The study looks at the cost of food, site fees, maintenance, entertainment etc, but draws our attention to the impact (or moderate impact) that various price increases in fuel will have on the overall cost of a holiday. And there lies the secret – it gets us to focus on fuel costs for what they are – a component of your total holiday costs, not the huge cost we might otherwise think it is. The study concludes that a 20c per litre increase in the cost of fuel results in an overall increase in daily costs of about 2% - the cost of a cup of coffee.

I checked out their website Caravan-Camping  as well when we got home, and that gives you even more detail, including a handy calculator to help you estimate any scenario that you might encounter.

Thank you CCIANSW – a very handy resource and good to see a glass (or tank) half full focus on holiday costs.

A footnote – not everything is more expensive in regional areas or the outback. Rents and wages are a component of costs adding to prices of everything you buy and both are under less pressure in regional areas. For example – A tenant of a new shopping mall in a city will pay hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in rent (factoring in the cost of land etc), that has to be passed onto the consumer. Often this cost is lower in regional areas, offsetting the cost of transport and therefore helping the budget a bit.

June 17 2011