Alright. Time to get down to the itinerary and finances involved for the long roadtrip from Perth to Melbourne. Here's the itinerary.
Day 1 - Perth to Margaret River (Busselton Jetty, Ngilgi Cave, Canal Rocks)
Day 2 - Margaret River to Albany (wine tasting at Redgate, Boranup forest, Dave Evans Bicentennial Tree, Valley of Giants Tree Top Walk)
Day 3 - Albany (Albany Windfarms, Sharp Point, The Gap, Cable beach, Blowholes - the little Peninsula off Albany)
Day 4 - Albany to Esperance (a not Pink Lake)
Day 5 - Camping at Lucky Bay (Cape Le Grand National Park and sights)
Day 6 - Lucky Bay to Norseman (last town before the Nullarbor)
Day 7 - Norseman to Bordertown (1st half of Nullarbor, 90 Mile Straight, WA/SA border-crossing)
Day 8 - Bordertown to Ceduna (Bunda Cliffs, Head of Bight, Whale watching, Port Sinclair Pink lake)
Day 9 - Ceduna to Port Augusta (Streaky Bay, Woolshed Caves, Kimba)
Day 10 - Port Augusta to Adelaide (Lake Bumbunga)
Day 11 - Adelaide to Mount Gambier
Day 12 - Mount Gambier to Apollo Bay (Umpherston Sinkhole, Great Ocean Road)
Day 13 - Apollo Bay to Melbourne
Total distance - 3817km
Total expenditure - A$2948.96
For a 2 week roadtrip for 2 pax, I'd say this isn't too bad. Was it a little rushed? I think it was. We had planned for this to take slightly longer than 2 weeks. But the thing about making these long roadtrips is that it gets tiring. Very tiring. And very expensive the longer we drag this out. Every additional night of accoms is around $100. And since many of these motels don't allow cooking or even have kitchenette facilities, we have to eat out for everyday. Eating out is generally quite costly and even more so at more rural areas. Beyond the cost involved, there was also the weather factor. We wanted to hop over to Kangeroo island from Adelaide for a day, but ended up deciding against it as the weather for the following couple of days weren't great. We had also intended to spend more time at the Great Ocean Road - afterall, it is one of those great roadtrips. Again, it was rainy and windy. And so we'd thought we might as well head on to Melbourne, get there earlier so that we can spend more time settling in and finding a job - which on hindsight wasn't too bad a decision because we actually took almost 2 weeks to move in to our permanent accoms.
One of the key components and therefore cost to such a long roadtrip would be petrol. Abby seems to be quite the fuel guzzler. In the city, she works on around 12.5L/100km which is really terrible fuel economy. Coupled with the fact that we were lugging our prized possessions from rice-cookers to oven and stuff from Perth all the way to Melbourne, these additional weight was going to eat further into the fuel efficiency. One good thing going for us was that due to the rising inflation and the global oil prices climbing rapidly, the then Federal government halved the tax charged on each litre of fuel dropping it from 44.2c to 22.1c per litre in March 2022. The cut was to run for 6 months (which means the fuel tax is being reinstated just about now). So technically if we had done this roadtrip outside of the 6 months window, our petrol cost would probably be around 15-20% higher. Although even with the fuel tax being cut, the prices along the Nullarbor as well as more rural areas are still quite high. When we left Perth, the ULP91 prices were in the 1.60+ to 1.70+ per litre range. At the Nullarbor, the most expensive petrol we paid for was 2.58/L which was almost a dollar per litre more than in Perth. Still we had to pay for it as we wouldn't want to get stuck in the middle of nowhere with no fuel. Especially since we don't have a jerrycan with us. Of course, if you wanted to get from Perth to Melbourne directly, flying is a cheaper option. But for us, given our circumstances, it was near impossible for us to bring the stuff we wanted to bring to Melbourne by flight. And in addition to the prospect of experiencing a once in a lifetime roadtrip experience, this was a non-contest.
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