Britz Coastal Explorer - Britz

Six nights and 1,315 kilometres from Melbourne to Sydney in a campervan, along the south east coast with a detour inland to Canberra.

Phillip Island comes first, where several thousand little penguins come ashore at dusk every evening of the year and walk up the beach to their burrows, which is the best known wildlife spectacle in Victoria. Lakes Entrance follows at the mouth of the Gippsland Lakes, the largest inland waterway system in Australia.

Bega comes next in dairy country across the New South Wales border, then Batemans Bay on the Eurobodalla coast, and the route turns inland to Canberra, which holds the national galleries and museums and is a good deal more interesting than Australians generally admit. Bowral follows in the Southern Highlands, with the Bradman Museum in the town where he learned to bat against a water tank.

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 is comfortable for this distance and the coast road is sealed throughout, so a standard camper is all it needs. Spring and autumn are the better seasons, since the school holidays fill the coastal campsites along this stretch faster than almost anywhere else in the country. One-way hires between the two cities are common enough that the vehicle availability is usually good, and the Canberra detour adds only a short leg while changing the character of the trip completely.