NSW Family Holiday - Britz

Six nights and 1,010 kilometres in a loop from Sydney in a campervan, north up the New South Wales coast and back, planned around families.

Newcastle comes first, a steel city that has turned its waterfront over to swimming and surfing, then Anna Bay on Port Stephens, with a campsite at One Mile Beach and the largest coastal sand dunes in the state immediately behind it, which can be walked, sandboarded or crossed by camel.

Crescent Head follows, a headland with an inlet on one side and the ocean on the other, which makes it unusually safe for children and a long-standing longboarding spot. Port Macquarie comes next, with a koala hospital that takes in several hundred animals a year, then Lake Macquarie on the way south, the largest coastal saltwater lake in Australia, and Nobbys Head at Newcastle before the run back into Sydney.

Britz supply the camper and the day-by-day plan, and the hire is priced live per vehicle rather than per person; campsites, fuel, ferries, park fees and activities are all extra, with a nil-excess insurance pack available at booking. Seven days and a thousand kilometres is a gentle pace by Australian standards, which is the point of a family itinerary, and every stop on it has a beach. School holiday periods fill these campsites completely, so the dates are worth choosing around them rather than within them. Sydney is also the easiest city in Australia to collect a camper in and then leave quickly, since the route is heading north out of town rather than across it.