Arriving in Cairns in May 2010

Hi there,

Im arriving in Cairns at the start of May 2010 and myself and my wife are looking to travel down the east coast to Sydney. I have about 25 days to make the trip.

There are a couple of options for the trip: Firstly i can rent a campervan and do the trip on our own. having looked over the web some companies get some terrible reviews (mainly wicked (old fleet, lots of breakdowns); camperman (again poor service and old); and hippee rentals.

The price of renting a camper obviosly changes for the quality you get, but i was wondering if anyone can reccomend a reliable camper company which wont screw us over. We aren't too fussed about having luxury as we just want to get from A to B.

Another firm i saw on the web is Jucy campervans. Does anyone have any idea what they are like as i cant find many reviews through google.

Also would i be best to do the online booking for a camper, or just turn up in cairns and see who will do me the best deal?

The other option is to get the greyhound (408 AUD for a 45 day pass) plus around 30AUD per night per person for accomodation (this is just a sort of guess from looking at hostels.com)

Any help would be great as im gettin a bit stressed over sorting it out

Cheers

Jon

Hi Jon, I'm not much help with the reliability of campers, but generally they have done high kilometres with minimal maintenance. The ones I see most of are backpacker rentals, hippy campers, jucy and wicked, it seems companies such as Britz and Maui charge significantly more and so are more appealing to the retired crowd.

The other option you could consider is to hire a car through britz or redspot and buy a cheap tent, airbed and stove in cairns and camp your way down, it will be less comfortable but the car might be more reliable.