What does it cost to live full time on the road in Australia?

A difficult question to answer as everybody is different in their setups, wants and needs. For us, a couple on the road towing a caravan with their dog, taking our time getting around. Below is a breakdown of what it has cost us so far.

This is our second 5 months on the road, our first 5 months was covered in this post.

Expenses – Jan to May 2025

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What Happened?

Looking over these totals, you can see we have had a few unusual (one off) expenses. Below I will go through some of these.

• Tolls: Due to an overseas trip in June, we spent some time going between Sydney and Oberon. Since we are towing a caravan and are unfamiliar with this area we stuck to the motorways which involved toll roads, expensive ones at that!
• Experiences: We have pre-paid a Horizontal falls tour for September, that was expensive.
• Subscriptions: We seem to have a lot of subscriptions, i.e Google, Microsoft, Binge, Netflix, the list goes on, need to look at this.
• Medical: It’s a fact of life that as you get older, things don’t work as well as they should, both of us have minor medical issues that require medication and visits to the doctor and/or specialists from time to time.
• Caravan repairs/Maintenance: No our caravan is not falling apart, it actually is holding up quite well. As you travel you can end up in places where some items you thought would not needed, suddenly become needed. i.e a gas heater, shade sail track for the right side of the caravan, Stone Stomper, this also includes a service and some minor repairs.
• Dog Expenses: Shadow had to go to the vets to fix some problems, the other cost is mainly grooming. He does not malt, so he needs regular visits to the groomer, otherwise he turns into a smelly ball of fur.
• Caravan Parks: As stated in the earlier 5 months, we are hoping to spend less in this area. In the first 5 months we spent $4,400, this time $3,400. That’s a good improvement.

Things to Note

Car & caravan insurance and registration, both are expensive. Registration is not something you can do anything about. After spending some time on getting insurance quotes from about 6 companies, we stayed with our present insurer RACQ, who turned out to be very competitive. We pay about $4,500 in total.

Phones & internet – we are with Telstra. The phones, tablet and a mobile hotspot for the caravan are on plans. We only use Starlink when going remote otherwise it is paused. Our Telstra bill is about $230 / month. We are buying phones as part of the plan, about 1 year to go.

Summary

Now that another 5 months have passed, how are we going with our budget? Again unusual expenses crept in. The caravan modifications were a big one. Next week will be some new tires for the Patrol.

Also, due to a previously planned overseas trip (planned 2 years ago), and also a Rugby British Lions game in Adelaide, we have been at the bottom of the country in the middle of winter when we originally planned to be north at this time of year. Once these 2 items have been completed, we will be heading back to the right area of Australia for this time of year.

We did make progress on our accommodation expenses, with a reduction of about $1,000 over the 5 months.

Takeaways was also improved on, another $500 or so saving there. We need to save more in this area. Maybe a seperate list of what we actually buy in this category will help.

Fuel

Fuel, a slight change there. we did 10,100Km which cost $4,000, which works out at $21/100Km.

Subscriptions is an area that needs to be looked at. I think we have too many, currently running at $286 / month. Wow, that’s out of hand.

So our new average per month, EXCLUDING the caravan mods, insurance, rego and phone plans is –

Average/month = $5,582 or per week = $1,395

Previous 5 months

Average/month = $6,300 or per week = $1,600

An improvement, lets see what the second half of this year brings.

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