Driving distances and fuel stops in Australia

Distance is not the plan; hours are

Most poorly planned Australian trips begin by dividing a total distance by an assumed speed. That works on the Hume Freeway and nowhere else. The useful method is to estimate each leg in hours using a realistic average for the road type, then check whether the resulting day is one you want to have.

As working averages, including the stops you will actually make: a sealed highway with few towns runs at about 85 km/h; a busy two-lane highway such as the Bruce runs at about 75; a winding coastal or alpine road such as the Great Ocean Road or the Great Alpine Road at 45 to 55; and a corrugated gravel track at 50 to 60, sometimes less. Towing removes roughly twenty per cent from all of them, and more on hills.

Apply that to a real example. Melbourne to Port Campbell along the coast is 230 km. At a naive 90 km/h it looks like two and a half hours. At a realistic 50 km/h through the Otway section, with three stops, it is closer to five — which is the difference between a morning and a day.

Fuel gaps that decide the itinerary

On most Australian long-distance routes, the constraint is not the total distance but the longest stretch between reliable fuel. A vehicle with a 600 km range can cross the Nullarbor without carrying extra fuel; one with a 350 km range towing a van cannot do it comfortably, and that changes where each night is spent.

The gaps that most often catch people out are the Eyre Highway across the Nullarbor, where roadhouses are spaced widely and keep their own hours; the Stuart Highway between Alice Springs and Coober Pedy; the Barrier Highway west of Cobar in New South Wales; the Lyell Highway in Tasmania, where there are effectively no services for 85 km between Derwent Bridge and Queenstown; and the entirety of the Gibb River Road, where fuel is available only at a handful of stations and the price reflects it.

Two rules cover almost all of it. First, treat every roadhouse as the last one until you have seen the next: fill at each, regardless of the gauge. Second, on unsealed roads assume consumption thirty to forty per cent above your highway figure, because it will be — soft surfaces, low gearing and lowered tyre pressures all cost fuel.

What changes your range

Manufacturer fuel figures are measured under laboratory conditions and bear little relationship to a loaded vehicle on an Australian highway. Four things move the number, and they compound. A roof rack or roof-top tent costs fuel constantly through aerodynamic drag, typically adding one to two litres per hundred kilometres at highway speed. A full load of water — 60 litres is 60 kilograms — adds weight that matters most in hilly country. Lowered tyre pressures for gravel increase rolling resistance. And air conditioning in 40 °C heat is not optional, so its cost is a fixed part of any summer inland trip.

A caravan changes the picture entirely. A vehicle returning 9 L/100 km unladen commonly sits at 14 to 16 with a van behind it, which cuts range by roughly forty per cent. That is the figure to use when working out whether a fuel gap is comfortable, not the one on the window sticker.

The practical approach is to measure rather than estimate. On the first two fills of a trip, note the odometer and the litres, and calculate your actual consumption under real load. From that point on you know your range, and every fuel-gap decision for the rest of the trip becomes arithmetic rather than optimism.

Road trains, wildlife and the time of day

Two features of Australian highways change how you plan a day. The first is road trains — prime movers hauling up to four trailers, common on the Stuart, the Barrier, the Eyre and the inland Queensland highways. They are long, they travel at speed, and overtaking one requires a genuinely long clear stretch. On unsealed roads the correct approach is to slow down, pull well left and let the dust clear before continuing; the dust behind one is completely opaque for several seconds.

The second is wildlife. Kangaroos, wombats, emus and, in pastoral country, unfenced cattle are on the road at dawn, dusk and through the night. This is the reason almost every experienced traveller in remote Australia plans legs that finish by mid-afternoon. An animal strike at 100 km/h in a place with no phone coverage is the largest avoidable risk on any of these routes, and no schedule justifies it.

Fatigue is the third factor and the one people discount. Long, straight, featureless roads are more tiring than complex ones, and the standard advice from state road authorities — a break every two hours — exists because monotony degrades attention long before you feel tired. Build the breaks into the plan rather than treating them as lost time.

A method that works

Write out the legs. For each, note the distance, the road type, the working average and the resulting hours. Add stops. If the total exceeds six hours of driving, look for somewhere to break it. Then check the longest fuel gap on each leg against sixty per cent of your realistic range, and note where you need to fill even if you would rather not stop.

Finally, check the arrival time. If a leg has you arriving after four in the afternoon, either start earlier or shorten it — that single adjustment removes most of the wildlife risk, most of the fatigue risk and the problem of arriving at a full campground with nowhere to go.

The trip planner lists every route on this site with its distance and the number of days we consider realistic, which is a reasonable starting point before you break it into legs.