Pacific Coast Drive NSW | Sydney to Brisbane - Britz

Four nights and around 950 kilometres from Sydney to Brisbane in a campervan, up the Pacific Coast.

Palm Beach comes first on Sydney’s northern beaches, which has stood in for Summer Bay in Home and Away since the 1980s, then Newcastle and Port Stephens, with the largest coastal dunes in the state behind Anna Bay and dolphins resident in the bay.

Port Macquarie follows, with a koala hospital that takes in several hundred animals a year, then Coffs Harbour and the Big Banana, which has stood there since 1964 and started the Australian habit of building enormous roadside fruit. Byron Bay comes next at the most easterly point of the mainland, with the lighthouse on Cape Byron, then the Gold Coast, and Stradbroke Island, the second largest sand island in the world, before Brisbane.

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. Five days for 950 kilometres is a quick run up a coast with a great deal on it, so this is a route that rewards picking three or four stops rather than attempting all of them. The whole way is sealed. Stradbroke needs a vehicle ferry, which is worth booking, and a one-way hire between the two cities is a standard arrangement. Anyone with a week rather than five days would get considerably more out of the same coast, since Port Stephens, Byron and Stradbroke each merit a full day.