Australia can be expensive. It’s true. However, in the past decade, Australia was actually one of our most affordable trips. We were able to spend three amazing weeks in the country for less money than we spent in Portugal or Belize (two commonly cheap countries to visit). I’m not quite sure how we were able to create such an amazing vacation for such an affordable price. Join me in this post as I break down our Australian travel budget and show you (and myself) exactly why Australia can be such an affordable country to travel to.
Why Visit Australia?
First, let me take a minute to tell you Australia is the best country we’ve ever visited. It’s such an amazing place that we’ve repeatedly talked through long term plans to move there. The people are amazing, the wilderness is amazing, the cities are amazing, the wildlife is beautiful, the ocean is all around (literally) and the weather is wonderful. If that plane ride from the US wasn’t so long, we’d be going back to Australia every winter (summer in Australia). While we’re still working out plans to move to Australia, keep reading for a breakdown of our favorite Australian vacation.
Australian Budget
We’ve broken everything down into a 2-week and a 3-week Australian vacation. Why? Plane tickets from Europe and the USA are expensive, so it’s best to spend at least two weeks there – not to mention the long plane rides and serious jet lag. We think 2 weeks should be your minimum time spent in Australia in order to manage your body and your budget best.
However, 3 weeks is even better. The longer you spend in Australia, the less money/day you spend. This is because the plane ticket is one of the most expensive purchases in your Australian budget. Therefore, if you spend longer in Australia, the percentage of your budget spent on the plane ticket decreases. (Okay, yes, this also means your overall budget increases. However, I’m all about the best value vacations and I define this as the cheapest daily expenses. Creative math, I know but it’s how I like to interpret my budgets.)
So moving forward, we’ll give you a two week Australian travel budget and a three week Australian travel budget for each area. This budget is also based on two people sharing a room. Additionally, I’ll be quoting prices in USD, as a majority of my readers (and me) live in the US.
Australian Accommodations Budget
We would budget $90/night for accommodations. Plan on $1260 for a two week vacation and $1890 for a three week vacation.
We stayed primarily in home rentals and we booked far in advance. So we were able to get absolutely spectacular places to stay for this price point!
Plan Carefully To Increase Your Trip’s Value
When we stayed in large cities (Melbourne, Sydney) we stayed in cheap and small homes and looked for budget accommodations. They were all clean and functional but we didn’t want to spend a lot of money in these destinations. Why?
Because the niche home rentals in small towns were absolutely lovely. So we splurged on these accommodations – the best of which being a Bed and Breakfast on a semi-private island with gourmet meals cooked in house! We also spent the night at a farm stay on a banana plantation, ON the ocean in a guest house, at a Bed and Breakfast where we fed birds (above), and on the edge of a nature reserve with kangaroos in the backyard. Way cool places that you will not find in the big cities!
With this booking strategy – booking early and going cheap in more touristy areas while splurging in the rural areas – we were able to significantly lower all our accommodations budget compared to other similar travelers. Most travelers spend $130/night on accommodations.
Here are some of our favorite places we stayed in Australia. We highly recommend them all:
- Hinterlands of Byron Bay – amazing view, sleeps 2
- Central Business District of Melbourne – cheap, sleeps 4, though we’d only put 2 people in here
- Port Macquarie canal home – this one is really close to the house we stayed in where we saw dolphins in the canal 🙂
- Port Stephens Bed and Breakfast – on a rustic beachfront reserve
- Great Ocean Road House – great location, sleeps 6
Australian Transportation Budget
Air Transportation
The biggest price tag you will see on your Australian travel budget is that of your flight to Australia. If you are coming from the USA, plan on spending around $900/flight. The caveat here is that you will NEED to book this flight 8-9 months before your travel plans. The longer you wait, the more expensive those will get. As these tickets are the biggest budget killer, it literally pays to book in advance.
I cannot stress enough how much booking early can save you. Click here and book your plane tickets NOW if you have not already done so.
Transportation within the country of Australia will cost more than you think it will. Australia is huge! While it is an island, it is the size of the continental US or the size of Europe without Scandinavia. Therefore, it’s big. This means that you’ll likely have to buy a few plane tickets or pay for a rental car and gas.
Plane tickets within Australia are cheap compared with domestic US flights. If you book flights well in advance (like 4-6 months) expect to pay $150/person for each domestic flight. You can find flights for as little as $100/person and if you don’t plan in advance you’ll likely spend closer to $300/person for each flight.
For our two or three week Australian itinerary, plan to spend $180/person for flights.
Ground Transportation
If you’re going to spend three weeks in Australia, we think you should include a road trip. This was our favorite way to see Australia and gave us a great experience visiting some of the less touristy towns. If you do a road trip, you’ll need to book a rental car. For a small fuel efficient car, which you’ll want as fuel is expensive, you’ll need to budget $40/day if you’re picking up at an airport.
Whether you’re in a city or on a road trip, we suggestion you budget $15/day for transportation. This includes either gas for your rental car or public transportation and taxis for getting around larger cities. This is the average over the course of a 2-3 week trip to Australia. Some days, we spent $0 because we walked places and other days we had to pay $25 for a taxi from the airport.
Australian Food Budget
Plan on spending $55/person/day on food to eat all of your meals out. A typical breakdown of this would be $10 for breakfast, $15 for lunch and $20 for dinner. However, we were able to save some money on this by following our tips for saving money below and we only spent $35/person/day. This included a few trips to the grocery store to stock up on snacks, breakfast food and a few home cooked dinners.
Remember to tip your servers. Tipping is expected at sit down restaurants at a rate of about 10% of the bill for standard service and more for exceptional service.
Australian Activities Budget
We spent lots of money on activities. A once in a lifetime trip was something we were happy to splurge on. We spent $75/person/day. You can spend as little as $25/person/day and still have a great time.
Most high quality entrance tickets for activities in Australia cost around $30/person. Full day trips cost around $130/day and all inclusive overnight trips cost around $500/night. Below are a few of the day trips we went on.
One of our biggest expenses was our liveaboard diving trip to the great barrier reef for $1050. While this technically gets added into the activities budget for us, it also includes two nights of accommodations and 3 days of food so we thought it was super reasonable.
Australia Travel Budget Overview
Two Weeks:
- Accommodations: $1,260 for a double
- Flight: $900/person
- Ground Transportation: $150/person
- Internal Flights: $200/person
- Food: $490/person
- Activities: $1,370/person
Total Australian travel budget for a couple visiting for two weeks: $7,480
Three Weeks:
- Accommodations: $1,890 for a double
- Flight: $900/person
- Ground Transportation: $260/person
- Internal Flights: $200/person
- Food: $735/person
- Activities: $1,555/person
Total Australian travel budget for a couple visiting for three weeks: $9,190
Extras For Your Australian Travel Budget
We did buy a SIM card and cheap phone plan for our phone when traveling. However, WiFi is very common so we think we could have done the trip without the phone using WiFi when needed and offline Google Maps. This would cost around $30 if you chose to get it. Don’t buy it at the airport but hit up a mall in the big city you land in to get the cheapest rates.
Additionally, we got travel insurance. We normally don’t pay for travel insurance but Scott’s favorite line prior to this trip was “everything in Australia is going to kill us”. With all the dangerous animals in Australia, we were worried about a trip to the emergency room. We got travel insurance for just over $100/person for our three week vacation. Also, we never took a trip to the emergency room.
Tips For Saving Money
1) Book Ahead
I cannot stress enough how much money you will save by planning and booking things long in advance. This will save you money on flights and accommodations.
While home rentals have gone up in price in recent years, they still are one of the most affordable ways to travel in Australia. Hotels tend to be a bit more expensive. Again, booking long in advance will give you the best options for both cheap and interesting accommodations.
Avoid traveling during the school holidays. Australians are out of school for a few weeks in April, July and September/October. They also take a big summer break from December to January/February. Australians traveling will increase the internal travel prices for flights and accommodations.
2) Eating Cheap
Food prices in Australia are high. If you can find ways to save on food, that will really help. If you stay in home rentals, you’ll be able to eat breakfast each morning at home, rather than going out to eat. We brought cereal and oatmeal from home. Additionally, we cooked a few meals in our home stays so that we could save money.
Alcohol is super expensive in Australia. Just skip it. Or if you insist, grab some at a supermarket and drink at home. This will also help you to avoid any problems with the very strict drinking and driving laws. Additionally, the drinking water in Australia is great. Save money and the planet and drink tap water from your reusable water bottle.
3) Walk Don’t Ride Share
Taxis and ride shares are spendy as well. Try to walk places when in big cities or take public transportation. We walked everywhere in Brisbane. In Sydney, we used a hop-on-hop-off bus to get everywhere and to learn more about the town. Melbourne was the best! They have a free trolley that goes through the CBD so we didn’t need to pay for transportation. Avoid taking taxis or ride shares in the CBDs as they go just about as slow as our walking pace.
Is Australia Worth It?
We talk a lot about “worth” after we finish trips. We don’t care so much about how much money we spent as long as we spent the money on things that were “worth it” in our eyes. Was the food worth the money? Did the memories we acquired make up for all the money we spent? Were those overpriced touristy activities fun enough to cost that much?
And while our three week Australian vacation was the single most expensive trip we’ve ever been on, it was also the most “worth it”. We feel like every expensive experience was well-priced and gave us great value for the money. We also thought all the fresh seafood we ate was totally worth the higher prices of eating out, though you may feel differently if you insist upon eating very overpriced average beef. Additionally, we thought that because we stayed for so long in the country, that even those really expensive plane tickets were a good value.
So is Australia worth is? 100% YES. We are already planning return journeys.
We hope this has helped you to create your own perfect Australian travel budget. Now get started planning your Australian travel itinerary! Check out all of our Australian resources here. We had the most amazing time in Australia – and it helped that we came in under our $10,000 budget! Gotta love a deal.
