Getting Around Australia

Choose how to travel

Six modes carry a useful part of a visitor's itinerary. The rest — light aircraft charters, cruise repositioning, the occasional regional ferry — serve particular places rather than a national plan.

Fares on all six move constantly and several operators publish figures that do not survive to checkout, so we have given the basis of the charge rather than a number. Where we quote a price below, we say what it includes and when we checked it.

The journeys that shape the route

The six journeys below are not the only ones worth making. Each teaches something that applies everywhere else in the country, and between them they cover most of the ways an Australian itinerary comes apart: the corridor everyone overthinks, the train that is really a holiday, the train that is really transport, the crossing with a deadline, the day trip that is not one, and the state that breaks your sense of scale.

Sydney to Melbourne: the flight is shorter than it looks, and so is the drive

The sector is ninety minutes in the air, with twenty to thirty departures a day. But that's gate to gate time. Add on the train to Sydney Airport, the hour the airlines ask you to allow, the airport to city leg at Melbourne (no airport rail link, only a twenty-five to thirty minute bus ride), the honest figure is three and a half to four hours door to door. Against that, the Hume Highway is about nine hours of fast but very dull driving. WIth the the breaks the road authorities recommend (a stop every two hours) you are looking at ten or eleven hours between the cities. So flying is roughly a third of the driving time, not a tenth of it.

We have driven it by both inland routes and flown it. Our judgement: if you do not have time for a leisurely trip between the cities, fly. The Hume demands a lot of concentration for a lot of hours and gives very little back. It is a road for getting somewhere, not for being on.

If you do have the time, avoid the Hume. Go via Canberra. Stay overnight in the capital, look round it properly, then drive south through the mountains on the Monaro Highway to Cann River and join the Princes Highway there. It is a pretty route and a far more interesting one. Or take the coast the whole way — Sydney to Melbourne on the Princes Highway is a three-day trip if you let it be: South along the Sapphire coast to Eden, then West into Victoria, past the Gippsland lakes and into the Melbourne area.

Mobile coverage can fail at points south of Canberra — the government's own black spot programme funded a mast at Bombala specifically to plug gaps along this highway — so offline maps are not optional.

The Monaro Highway is a single carriageway the whole way through New South Wales, currently mid-way through a safety upgrade, so expect roadworks and take the overtaking opportunities when they come.

Adelaide to Darwin on the Ghan: an experience, not a service

If you're think about going North through the centre by train, the Ghan is an option but it's sold as a holiday, priced and timetabled like one. It runs twice a week northbound between March and November — not at all in high summer — takes three days and two nights, and the cheapest bed Adelaide to Darwin starts around $2,290 per person, all meals, drinks and off-train excursions included. ALternatively, Adelaide to Darwin by air is a sector of about three hours fifty, but allow six or seven hours airport to hotel.

Don't book the Ghan as transport. Book it because you want to watch the country change from red sand to tropical scrub through a window over three days, with a whisky in your hand. It is very good at being that. Shorter segments — Adelaide to Alice Springs, two days and one night from about $1,590 — could suit the budget more. The Indian Pacific, which crosses to Perth once a week over four days, and the Great Southern, which runs only in December and January, are sold the same way and should be judged similarly.

Brisbane to Cairns: the one long train worth taking as transport

The Spirit of Queensland covers 1,681 kilometres in a little over twenty-five hours, four times a week each way. What makes it different from the luxury trains is the RailBed: a seat that converts to a flat bed with proper sheets, lunch and dinner in your seat, and a shower on board. Last published fares were $389.25 for a RailBed and $221.40 for an economy seat, Brisbane to Cairns one way; that fare sheet has since lapsed, so treat those as indicative and check the live booking before you count on them.

A flat bed, food and a wash for under four hundred dollars is a real alternative to a flight, and it puts you up the coast in daylight rather than at an airport. It also connects by coach to Airlie Beach and Hervey Bay, which is how most people use it.

Getting to Cairns otherwise: the Sydney sector is three hours fifteen in the air, with a couple of direct services a day, so five to six hours door to door once you add the airport at each end. The coach from Brisbane is about twenty-nine hours. The coach, like the train, suits journeying up the coast in stages with a pass, not for getting to Cairns quickly.

Melbourne to Tasmania: the crossing that decides your whole vehicle plan

Tasmania is the one place where how you arrive changes everything afterwards, because the island is made for driving and has very little public transport. The ferry sails from Geelong, not Melbourne, to Devonport. The crossing is nine to eleven hours, but that is dock to dock: add an hour or so from central Melbourne down to Geelong, and check-in closes strictly forty-five minutes before departure. Devonport is also the top of the island rather than the bottom, so Hobart is a further long drive south once you land.

Two dates matter if you are travelling this October. There are no passenger sailings at all between 23 and 30 October 2026, while crews train on the replacement ships. From 31 October the new vessels, Spirit of Tasmania IV and V, take over — and with them the daytime sailings end, leaving night crossings only. If you are travelling to Tasmania in late October, check before you book anything else.

The harder question is whether you can take your vehicle. The ferry operator does not object; your rental agreement might. Hertz requires written permission in advance. We could not establish the position of the major campervan operators from their published terms, and this is not a thing to assume: a refusal at the terminal, with a booking on the other side, is an expensive afternoon. Confirm it in writing with your rental company before you buy the ferry ticket — or do what a great many visitors do: simply hire a second vehicle in Devonport or Hobart.

Alice Springs to Uluru: not a day trip

Parks Australia puts it at 465 kilometres and about five and a half hours each way. People routinely arrive in Alice Springs expecting to see the rock and come back, and it does not work: that is eleven hours of driving before you have looked at anything.

Either stay at Yulara, or fly directly into Ayers Rock Airport, which is twenty minutes from the resort and has direct services from Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Cairns. The road itself is sealed the whole way — south on the Stuart Highway, then west on the Lasseter at Erldunda — with roadhouses at intervals that sell fuel and food. It is an easy drive. It is simply a long one, and the map makes it look shorter than the desert does.

Perth to anywhere: the scale correction

Western Australia is a third of the continent and it defeats the mental model people arrive with. Margaret River is a comfortable 280 kilometres from Perth. Esperance is about eight hours. Exmouth is 1,250 kilometres up the Coral Coast Highway. Broome is far enough that the tourism authority's own touring route runs to nearly 4,000 kilometres over seventeen days.

Nobody drives Perth to Broome as a transfer. Fly it, or give it the better part of three weeks and treat the road as the holiday. And if you do drive in the north or the interior, Main Roads Western Australia publishes free route-by-route guides to rest areas and fuel stops - worth downloading before you leave as fuel stops out there can be hundreds of kilometres apart.

Using the national system

Flying

For journeys between Australia's major regions, flying is usually the default rather than the indulgence. Sydney–Melbourne, Melbourne–Adelaide, Adelaide–Perth and the long routes into the Red Centre or tropical north can consume whole days by road. Three airline groups carry almost the whole domestic market: Qantas, its low-cost arm Jetstar, and Virgin Australia. Between them they held 98.8 per cent of domestic traffic in January 2026, on the competition regulator's own figures.

Two names that still appear in older guides no longer belong there. Bonza collapsed in 2024. Rex withdrew from capital-city jet routes in 2024 and the company that ran them went into liquidation in 2025; Rex today is a regional turboprop airline serving about fifty destinations, useful for country towns and useless for Sydney to Melbourne. Its own website still carries an undeleted news item about its Boeing fleet, so this is an easy mistake to make from what looks like an authoritative source.

The difference that costs people money is baggage. Qantas includes a checked bag and a generous fourteen-kilogram carry-on allowance even on its cheapest domestic economy fare. Virgin's Lite fare and Jetstar's Starter fare include no checked bag at all, and Jetstar's carry-on is half the weight. From 2 February 2027 Jetstar changes its carry-on rule from weight to size, and the included allowance becomes a single underseat bag of 40 × 30 × 20 cm; two bags will require a paid or bundled upgrade. If you are flying Jetstar after that date with a normal cabin bag, you will be paying for it.

If you are flying into Australia on Qantas, the Qantas Explorer fare gives 30 per cent off domestic base fares to more than forty-five destinations, and — more usefully — applies your international baggage allowance to the domestic legs. It must be booked with the international ticket and the journey must begin outside Australia.

One cost nobody mentions: Sydney Airport levies a station access fee of $18.61 per adult on top of the train fare, each way. Melbourne has no airport train at all, and the rail link under construction has no published completion date.

Watch the clocks, because they will eat a day. Australia runs three standard time zones — Western Australia on UTC+8, South Australia and the Northern Territory on UTC+9:30, and the eastern states on UTC+10 — and from the first Sunday in October to the first Sunday in April, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT put their clocks forward while Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia do not. So for half the year there are five effective zones and the spread from Perth to Sydney is three hours rather than two. Flying west you gain most of the afternoon back; flying east you lose it, and a morning departure from Perth can put you into Sydney in the evening. If you are travelling to a schedule, check the arrival time in local time rather than counting the hours in the air.

Driving

Australia drives on the left. There is no national licensing rule: each state sets its own, and an overseas licence in English is accepted in every state and territory we checked. The Northern Territory is the exception worth knowing — three months only, and an International Driving Permit is required if your licence does not make the vehicle classes obvious, even in English. If your licence is not in English, carry an accredited translation or an IDP everywhere.

Speed limits are set by state and the defaults differ: 100 km/h on open rural roads in Queensland and Victoria, 110 on the open road in the Territory with 130 sections on the Stuart, Barkly, Victoria and Arnhem Highways. School zones vary more than anything else — 40 km/h in most states at signed times, but South Australia's handbook specifies 25. Mobile phone detection cameras operate continuously in New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia, and they are not looking for you to be holding the phone: in Queensland the phone may not be resting on any part of your body. South Australia's penalty, as at July 2026, runs to $592 plus a $108 levy and three demerit points.

Melbourne has two rules found nowhere else. The hook turn — where a right turn is made from the left lane, waiting in the intersection for the cross-street lights to go green — is compulsory where signed. And you must stop behind a tram at a roadside stop and not pass it until the doors close, then proceed at 10 km/h. Both are enforced.

There is no law regulating rest breaks for ordinary cars, only advice, and the advice is consistent: stop every two hours. Being awake for seventeen hours impairs you about as much as a blood alcohol level of 0.05, on figures both Transport for NSW and Main Roads WA publish, and Transport for NSW reports that fatigue crashes are nearly three times as likely to be fatal as crashes without it. Caffeine buys you very little. Sleep is the only real remedy, and a twenty-minute nap is the useful one — but if you are at the seventeen-hour end of that scale, stop for the night rather than for twenty minutes.

In the outback, three further things apply.

Tolls exist in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane only. Most hire companies handle them for you by opening a toll account in your name at the first use and charging the tolls to your card with a daily administration fee on top — Avis charges $3.30 for each day a toll road is used — but check, because the arrangement is the company's rather than a national system. In a borrowed or privately owned car, an unpaid toll in New South Wales escalates to a penalty notice exceeding $230, and then to possible cancellation of registration.

The fine print decides your route. These are contract terms, not laws, and breaching them does not get you fined — it voids your damage cover, which is worse. Standard two-wheel-drive hire cars are barred from unsealed roads altogether, with a short exemption for access tracks to recognised campgrounds. Hertz separately names the Gibb River Road, the Birdsville and Oodnadatta Tracks, the Tanami, the Savannah Way and Cape Tribulation's Bloomfield Track among roads no ordinary rental may use, and K'gari, formerly Fraser Island, at any time in any vehicle. Use a road you were not permitted to use and you can be liable for the full value of the car.

Campervans and motorhomes

An ordinary car licence covers the standard rental fleet. New South Wales, for example, allows a Class C licence up to 4.5 tonnes, which covers the ordinary rental fleet — so the special-licence worry that puts people off campervans is usually unfounded. Check the vehicle's gross mass if you are hiring something unusually large, because above that threshold a heavier licence class is required.

The clause that catches people is elsewhere. Apollo's rental agreement prohibits driving between dusk and dawn. That is not a law; it is a term of the hire, and it quietly removes the late-afternoon push that a lot of itineraries depend on. Unsealed-road allowances are written the same way — a permitted distance on a well-maintained access road, measured in single-figure kilometres — and the permitted distance is not the same at every operator, nor are the seasonal bans on roads such as ski access. Read the agreement you are actually signing rather than the one you read about, and if a particular track matters to your plan, get the permission in writing before you leave the depot.

The consequence is sharpest in Kakadu, where much of the interior — Jim Jim, Twin Falls, Gunlom — is high-clearance four-wheel-drive access only, and some of it is closed outright for 2026. A visitor who books a two-wheel-drive camper for Kakadu has bought a trip they cannot legally take in that vehicle.

Where you may legally sleep is a separate question from where you may drive, and it is decided by the local council almost everywhere rather than by the state — which makes it the commonest source of visitor trouble. Our guide to accommodation in Australia covers it properly: the state-by-state position, what counts as a self-contained vehicle, booking a national park campsite, and where to check on the day.

Trains

Australia has no national rail network in the European sense, and no national rail pass. What it has is a handful of corridors, some genuinely useful. Australia's trains fall into two completely different categories: ordinary regional transport and long-distance journeys sold as experiences. Confusing the two is how people end up comparing a $100 flight with a $2,000 railway journey.

The east-coast XPT runs daily between Sydney and Melbourne in about eleven hours — a real choice if you want the Southern Highlands and the Murray in daylight, and a poor one otherwise. Sydney to Brisbane takes fourteen hours and arrives before five in the morning, which is hard to recommend at all — but the same northern line is genuinely useful if you get off earlier, at Grafton or Casino for Byron Bay and the Northern Rivers. Sydney to Dubbo, at six and a half hours and from $44, is the one to take without qualification. Sydney to Canberra is four hours and competitive with driving.

Victoria is, for now, extraordinary value. Until 1 January 2027 all public transport in the state is capped at $5.70 a day for a full fare, weekends cheaper still, and this includes V/Line regional services. Melbourne to Bendigo, Ballarat, Geelong for the Great Ocean Road, or Bairnsdale for Gippsland costs $5.70 for the whole day's travel, and once you reach the cap the rest of the day is free. That is a temporary measure with a published end date, so check it still applies when you travel.

The Overland links Adelaide and Melbourne in ten to twelve daylight hours, twice weekly each way, with seats rather than cabins from $165. In Western Australia the Prospector reaches Kalgoorlie from Perth in about eight hours. The Australind to Bunbury, the road to Margaret River, returned to service in June 2026 but is running a reduced timetable of four return services a week while new railcars are tested; the parallel coach is more frequent and may suit you better.

Every long-distance service requires a reservation. New South Wales opens bookings 180 days ahead; Journey Beyond has both 2026 and 2027 departures on sale. No operator publishes how far ahead services sell out, so we will not guess — but the luxury trains run weekly or twice weekly, and there is no second departure to fall back on.

Coaches

Coach earns its place on one corridor and a few connections. The Sydney–Byron–Brisbane–Airlie–Cairns run is served by both Greyhound and Premier Motor Service, with multiple daily departures, and the stops are the destinations rather than places you pass through. Greyhound's Whimit passes are built for exactly this, and are priced below. The catch is that they run on consecutive calendar days rather than travel days, so a slow Byron stopover burns one fast.

Elsewhere it is thinner. Darwin to Alice Springs runs daily and takes the better part of a day — around twenty-two hours — through country the plane skips entirely. Firefly runs overnight between Melbourne and Sydney in about twelve hours. Integrity Coachlines describes itself as the only operator between Perth and Broome; Transwa covers Western Australia's south-west and goldfields; NSW TrainLink coaches reach towns no airline serves.

Two honest gaps. Greyhound's own network map, route list and company description contradict each other on whether it still serves South and Western Australia, and we could not resolve it from published sources — if the Kimberley or an Adelaide connection matters to your plan, check the timetable directly rather than relying on the map. And we found no operator publishing a scheduled coach across the Nullarbor between Adelaide and Perth; that does not prove none exists, but nothing we could find offers it, and the flight — three and a half hours Adelaide to Perth — is what people use.

The Bass Strait ferry

One route, one operator. Spirit of Tasmania runs Geelong to Devonport, nine to eleven hours, with night sailings year-round and daytime sailings on selected dates between September and April. Those daytime crossings end on 31 October 2026, when the new ships take over and the schedule becomes night-only. Before that, there are no passenger sailings at all from 23 to 30 October 2026 while crews train.

Bookings open about eleven months ahead and the operator's advice is to book early for summer and school holidays. It does not publish how far ahead sailings actually fill, and neither will we — but deck space for a vehicle is the scarce part, and booking the outward and return together is the operator's own recommendation for fares and space. Check-in opens up to two and a half hours before departure and closes strictly forty-five minutes before; a passenger needing mobility assistance should check in two hours ahead and arrange the assistance separately, more than 72 hours before sailing.

Vehicles are charged separately from passengers, by category: standard car under or over 2.1 metres, campervan or motorhome under or over 2.1 metres, a vehicle towing, a motorbike, a bicycle. Measure including everything attached — drawbar, bike rack, roof box, kayaks, gas bottles. Measurements are checked at the terminal and a vehicle that does not match its booking can be charged more or refused.

Tasmania runs a hard biosecurity border and this is where most travellers come unstuck. All fruit and vegetables must be declared or surrendered, including potatoes, garlic, onions and fresh herbs. The classic mistake is shopping for the drive down to Geelong and arriving at check-in with a bag of fruit. Eat it or bin it before you get there. Dogs need proof of hydatid tapeworm treatment within fourteen days.

If you miss the sailing, there is no later one that day. The fallback is to fly to Hobart or Launceston and hire a car on the island, which is the plan a good many people end up on anyway.

Australia without a car

A no-car trip works, but only along particular corridors, and the honest version of the advice is to choose the corridor first rather than hoping to improvise.

The strong spine is the east coast: Sydney north to Byron, Brisbane, Airlie Beach and Cairns by coach and by the Spirit of Queensland, with several departures a day and two competing coach operators. Sydney south to Melbourne runs daily by train, and Melbourne west to Adelaide twice a week on the Overland. Within Victoria, V/Line reaches the regions often and, until 1 January 2027, absurdly cheaply.

Beyond that the spine thins to a thread. Darwin to Alice Springs and on towards Adelaide has a daily coach but see our comments above about Greyhound services and the need to consult the operator's own website. Similarly we remain cautious about the value of using long distance trains to travel between Western Australia, South Australia or the Northern Territory.

None of these public transport networks reach the parts of the country most people come for: the Great Ocean Road, the Grampians, Kangaroo Island, Tasmania beyond Hobart and Launceston, the Kimberley, the south-west and the Red Centre beyond Yulara itself. All need a vehicle or a booked tour. The substitutes are specific: V/Line to Geelong and then a day tour for the Great Ocean Road, the resort shuttle system at Yulara, a tour or transfer coach for Uluru from Alice Springs, internal flights plus local tours in the Kimberley. Book those ahead rather than on arrival, particularly in school holidays.

Two costs to plan for. The first is pace: a no-car trip runs on other people's timetables, so a week that would hold five places by car holds three, and a service that runs twice a week sets the shape of the fortnight. The second is the last mile. Country rail and coach stops are often some distance from where you are staying and taxis cannot be assumed, so check how you will cover the final few kilometres before you book the bed. The safe fallback everywhere on the spine is to base yourself in the towns the services actually serve and take tours outward from them, rather than stringing together small places between them.

Travelling with luggage, a bike, children, or a mobility need

Luggage is generous on the surface and tight on the connections. Coaches and long-distance trains typically allow two checked pieces of around twenty kilograms each plus a small carry-on, which is more than most airlines give you — but the checked piece has to be carried by you between the coach bay and wherever you are staying, and country stops are often some way out of town. The airline allowances are the ones that cost money: a Qantas domestic economy fare includes a checked bag, while Virgin's Lite and Jetstar's Starter fares include none at all, so a traveller moving by air on the cheapest fares should price the bags into every sector rather than the first one.

Bicycles are carried, but on quite different terms. Sydney and Intercity trains take a bike free, at any time, unboxed and unbooked — which is what makes the South Coast Line the easy way back to Sydney from a ride that ends at Kiama. NSW TrainLink regional services treat a bike as checked luggage that must be booked in advance. Queensland Rail Travel carries one bike per passenger on services with a luggage van, including the Spirit of Queensland, at $15 per sector, pre-booked, and will accept it unboxed with the handlebars turned and the pedals off. Greyhound charges $49 and carries bikes subject to room, which is not the same as a guaranteed space. Electric bikes are refused by Greyhound outright and are being restricted on the New South Wales rail network, so if you are travelling with one, check before you rely on it.

Car Rental and children. Children require an approved restraint up to the age of seven, rear-facing to at least six months, and a booster or harness after four. Restraints must meet the Australian standard AS/NZS 1754, which a seat brought from Europe or North America will not carry. Hire companies supply infant, child and booster seats, priced and confirmed at the equipment step of the booking rather than published — so book them with the car, not at the counter. The trap is fitting. Hertz states plainly that its staff cannot install a seat and that it is not liable for any fine or injury arising from one that was not fitted properly; the other major companies are less explicit, and we could not establish their positions from published terms, but the safe assumption is that fitting and the consequences are yours. Allow time at pick-up, ask when you book, and do not assume help.

Visitors with mobility needs The constraint is capacity rather than willingness, and it is tight. The Ghan and the Indian Pacific hold only a few accessible cabins per departure, bookable by phone or email and subject to a fitness-to-travel form completed before booking. The Spirit of Queensland has two accessible RailBeds and three mobility-device spaces on the whole train, with a device limit of 720 mm by 1,200 mm — and Queensland Rail states that the Spirit of the Outback, the Westlander and the Inlander cannot accommodate most mobility devices at all. Greyhound carries manual wheelchairs and walking frames but not electric wheelchairs or mobility scooters, and requires that a passenger can transfer to a coach seat unaided or travel with a carer. Some NSW TrainLink regional trains cannot take a wheelchair unless it folds and the passenger can board without it.

Only the Tasmania ferry publishes a deadline: book online more than 72 hours out, contact them directly inside that, medical clearance at least 48 hours ahead, and check in two hours before departure. None of the land operators publishes a lead time at all, which given how few spaces they hold is the real risk — book the accessible space before you book anything that depends on it, and confirm by phone rather than online.

Passes worth the money

Most Australian travel passes are not worth buying. Three are.

The NSW TrainLink Discovery Pass, at $232 for a fortnight, does not repay a normal two-week visit — Sydney to Dubbo and back is $88. It makes sense only for a month or more of regional New South Wales. Note too that the Discovery Pass is not a ticket: you must still book each journey separately.

Keeping the journey on the road

Most Australian journeys go exactly as planned. The few that do not tend to fail in the same three ways — a service that runs twice a week rather than twice a day, a road gone under water, or a vehicle that stops a long way from anybody — and all three are cheap to guard against before you set off.

• Put a buffer night in front of any infrequent service. The Ghan runs twice a week, the Indian Pacific once, the Spirit of Queensland four times: where a flight connects to one of them, there is no next train.
• Check the road on the morning you drive it, not the week before. Every state runs its own live service and there is no national one: Live Traffic NSW, VicTraffic, QLDTraffic, Traffic SA, which also runs an outback road warning service, the Main Roads WA travel map, and Road Report NT, which takes calls on 1800 246 199. Tasmania splits it three ways, between the transport department, Tasmania Police and TasALERT. Find the one for your route and keep it on your phone.
• Settle roadside assistance before you leave the city. Ask the hire company how far its cover reaches and what number to ring; if it stops short of where you are going, join a motoring body with 24-hour assistance, which the Territory government recommends explicitly for remote travel.
• Carry water, and if the car stops somewhere remote, stay with it. Out there it is a shade and water problem long before it is a mechanical one, and a vehicle is far easier to find than a person walking.

When the season closes the road

Two seasons rearrange the country. In the north, the wet runs roughly October to May, and it does not merely rain: roads flood, remote crossings become impassable within hours, and major attractions shut. As the campervan section notes, much of Kakadu's interior is four-wheel-drive access only and parts of it are closed outright for 2026. Check Road Report NT or QLDTraffic the morning you travel, not the week before.

In the south, summer is fire season. On a Total Fire Ban day, do not travel through remote country — the New South Wales Rural Fire Service says so plainly — and be aware that a ban restricts campfires and may restrict gas cooking, which matters if you are in a campervan. Warnings across Australia now use one three-tier national system: Advice, Watch and Act, Emergency Warning. Learn those three phrases before you go; they are the same in every state, even though each state issues its own.

Emergency is 000. From a mobile, 112 also works.