Drive Across Australia For Almost Nothing

~ I’ve heard about this sort of thing before, and thought it was an urban myth - but to my amazement it is true.

What am I talking about? A scheme that lets you drive a car, motorhome or campervan right across the country – for next to nothing. In fact, some of the companies involved will even give you up to $500 in free fuel – and pay you an allowance as well!

It sounds crazy, but it’s true. Let me explain. Car rental companies often hire their vehicles out to clients who are travelling in one direction only – say from Adelaide to Brisbane. Once the car has been dropped of at its destination, the rental company then has to get the vehicle back to its home location in Adelaide.

They could of course, wait, and hope that eventually someone in Brisbane will rehire the vehicle and drive it back to Adelaide, but they could end up waiting days or weeks for this to happen. And while they are waiting, they could be losing clients because they don’t have enough hire vehicles left in the yard back in Adelaide to rent out to other clients. Sometimes their only option is to offer amazing inducements to drivers to return the vehicles, and this means that if you are flexible about when you want to travel, you could literally be paid to drive a car or motorhome across the country.

How do you find out which companies are involved and what vehicles are on offer? Go online, dear reader, go online.

For instance Apollo (the campervan and motorhome rental company) have a page on their website where they list the vehicles that need to be relocated back to home base. As I write this, there are 23 such vehicles including a Euro Tourer 2 Berth campervan that needs to be returned to Alice Springs from Adelaide.

As an inducement they are also offering (and I quote from the site): “$1 per day rental, all fuel free (dockets required), $100 travel allowance (no dockets required)”. Yes you read it right. Not only could you be driving this campervan from Adelaide to Alice Springs for a dollar a day, but all fuel is free and they are also offering to pay you a $100 travel allowance! Or you could drive a Euro Deluxe 6 Berth motorhome from Cairns to Sydney for just a dollar a day, and they will throw in up to $500 worth of free fuel! Yes, it sounds crazy – but it’s true.

Head over to the Apollo website now and take a look at what is on offer. By the way, this is why you have to pay a premium if you are hiring a vehicle and only going in one direction. The hire car company often has to offer inducements, like those on the Apollo website, for someone else to return the car to base.

What’s The Catch? Well, for a start, you can’t spend two weeks returning the vehicle to home base! As you will see on the Apollo site, vehicles have to be returned within a specified period of time. However, if you do want to spend a bit more time on the road, you could of course hire the vehicle for an extra day or two and enjoy the trip rather than simply drive between point A and point B in the fastest possible time.

Another ‘catch’ is that you have to be ready to hit the road with very little notice. Again, take a look at the Apollo web site. Some listings want a vehicle returned “Today”, while others have return dates that are several days off.

One more ‘catch’ to consider – once you have delivered the vehicle as arranged – what do you do when you reach your destination, where do you stay, and how do you get back home again?

And finally, you may not find a vehicle which needs returning to your preferred destination. For example, checking the Apollo website again, today if you wanted to drive from Darwin to Brisbane, you would be out of luck, because no vehicles need to be returned to Brisbane from Darwin. However, that situation could literally change overnight, so it is worth keeping an eye on the site.

Of course, there are the usual Terms & Conditions that apply to vehicle hire, and you will need to meet those before anyone is going to let you hire in the first place. However, adventurous readers may well want to give this method of transport a go. You never know where you might end up!

Image: Courtesy of Apollo website

In Review: Down Under, by Bill Bryson

~ I’ve been doing some catch up reading now that I’m shop sitting the Book Box (Quality Book Resellers), on Semaphore Road, Adelaide.

I’ve got two weeks to read as many books as I can squeeze in – in between writing, surfing the internet, swatting errant flies, drinking cups of coffee, and serving the occasional customer.

I’ve decided to start with Bill Bryson’s, Down Under (2000, Doubleday). Yes, I know I’m nine years and about a million readers late, but then better late than never, as the early adopters might say.

It is always interesting to read other people’s thoughts about the country you live in. You generally find the things that matter to you the most, are often the things others find least interesting. Or to put it another way, the things you take for granted; those things you live with everyday, and often never give a second thought to unless you have to, are precisely the things others find the most fascinating.
Things like the kangaroo, the platypus, koalas, wombats and echidnas just for starters. Then there are some of the deadliest snakes on the planet, sharks, fresh water crocodiles, funnel-web spiders, box jellyfish, and the blue ringed octopus.

The other pleasure is discovering the wealth of interesting information writers like Bryson, are able to uncover during their research, which they subsequently include in their books.

For example, until I read Down Under, I didn’t know that the Simpson Desert was named – in 1929 or 1932, depending on the source you choose – after Alfred Simpson, a manufacturer of washing machines. Say, What? Apparently Simpson funded an aerial survey of the area and as a result had the desert named in his honour!

Thanks Bill, I will never look at my aging Simpson washing machine in the same way again.

Good writers also notice strange quirks that locals have long forgotten or simply don’t ‘see’ anymore. Like when Bryson writes:

“Two of the leading explorers of the nineteenth century were called Sturt and Stuart and their names are all over the place, too, so that you constantly have to stop and think, generally at busy intersections where an instant decision is required, ‘Now do I want the Sturt Highway or the Stuart Highway?’ Since both highways start at Adelaide and finish at places 3,994 kilometres apart, this can make a difference, believe me.”

He is right of course. And since I live in Adelaide myself, I must make a mental note of that to ensure I don’t end up in Alice Springs the next time I want to drive to Sydney.

I was delighted to find that Bill Bryson and I share a common interest, and that is the habit we both have of buying the local paper of whatever city or community we are passing through. As Bryson says:

“What a comfort it is to find a nation preoccupied by matters of no possible consequence to oneself. I love reading about scandals involving ministers of whom I have never heard, murder hunts in communities whose names sound dusty and remote, features on revered artists and thinkers whose achievements have never reached my ears, whose talents I must take on faith.”

The more I read, the more I liked Down Under and it’s very observant author. In a recent post on this blog titled, Something About The Light I wrote, “There is something about the late afternoon light that seems to be uniquely Australian.” Of course, it is presumptive of me to assume the Australian landscape has a monopoly on the uniqueness or otherwise of light, but Bryson also makes observations about the light while driving along our country roads.

“Do you know how sometimes on very fine days the sun will shine with a particular intensity the makes the most mundane objects in the landscape glow with an unusual radiance, so that buildings and structures you normally pass without a glance suddenly become arresting, even beautiful? Well, they seem to have that light in Australia nearly all the time.”

One of the things Bill Bryson is noted for is the humour he brings to his writing. He seems to have the ability to see the funny side of a nations many quirks and foibles, and Australia is no different. His description of listening to a cricket match while driving from Sydney to Adelaide, is one of the funniest I have ever read.

I won’t try to quote from the book since that would spoil the fun for you, if you are yet to read Down Under yourself. Suffice to say that I had to put the book aside because I was laughing so uncontrollably.

Bill Bryson was born in Des Moines, Iowa, and after living for many years in Britain with his English wife and four children moved back to America. He is the best selling author of The Lost Continent, Made in America, A Walk in the Woods, and many other great travel books.

If you haven’t read Bryson’s Down Under you should put it on your reading list now. Despite the fact that it was published in 2000, it has never been out of print, so you will have no trouble finding a copy, either in your local bookshop, online shop of choice, or good secondhand book resellers like the Book Box.

Down Under, Bill Bryson. Pub: 2000, Doubleday

Supported Volunteering

~ Why Choose Supported Volunteering?
by Bruce Haxton

Travelling and volunteering abroad can be a life changing and amazing experience. Volunteering is a brilliant way to broaden your travel experiences and your perspective on the world; you may even come back an entirely different person! A change of place, pace and people can be wonderfully exciting, but it can all seem a little daunting!

A Helping Hand
If you want to go out and explore the world and make a difference too, it can be a little harder than you first thought to leave everything you're used to behind. It can also be tricky arranging all of the details of your own volunteering experience but there is a travel solution waiting in the wings…Projects! Choosing a supported volunteering project will give you a mixture of the best of most volunteering programs. You'll have unique opportunities to be part of schemes that directly benefit the community, plus there'll be tons of support available before you go and the whole time you're there, as well as insights from in country staff. On top of all that, you'll also get flexible time frames; a chance to really become part of a county's culture in a way you simply couldn't on a normal travelling trip.

These types of trip offer plenty of independence too; help and advice are usually available but not mandatory! You can be as independent as you like but will have the incredibly useful resource of in country co-ordinators to help you get to grips with your new surroundings, and to make sure you get everything you possibly can out of your experience!

Cultural Immersion
This kind of travel will give you not only the chance to see the world on your own time scale and back up if you need it, it will also enable you to make a real difference. It's a good idea to check out the credentials of the company you choose to volunteer with first. The most important thing is to make sure the projects they work with are set up by the community for the community. That way not only do you know you're making a positive contribution while you're there, you also know that the work will continue once you've left.

Another cultural bonus is that projects set up by the community will give you a chance to work directly with the locals, so you can see just how much you're helping and get a unique insight into their culture. You can also get a real understanding of the individual needs of the community; from why wildlife conservation is so important in New Zealand to why teaching is so important in India. Living with locals, working for locals and socialising with locals will definitely make you feel like part of the community!

What sorts of projects are there? There are literally hundreds of volunteering choices out there so it seems almost impossible to find the right one! Volunteering itself will always prove a brilliant and fulfilling experience but it's always best to choose something you're passionate to make it feel even more worthwhile! So what inspires you? Is it working with people, nature or wildlife; or all three?! Generally projects fall into four categories;

• Community work

• Nature conservation

• Teaching

• Wildlife Conservation

Each offers a valuable, unique and worthwhile experience; so it's up to you whether you want to work with elephants in Sri Lanka or get involved in community work in Mombasa. Projects will help you step into another life and culture as well as giving you the opportunity to give something back!

Take a look at this volunteering company for a few ideas; http://www.i-to-i.com/

About the Author, Bruce Haxton
I'm totally passionate about travel, it's been my life and work for a good few years! My travel adventures haven't really been about seeing monuments etc but far more about people and getting off the beaten track. I would like to share my many experiences and offer a little advice if I can to fellow travellers or anyone who is just about to set off on a life changing trip!

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