Is $200 a Week for Fuel Realistic on a Big Lap?
Every time we put a weekly budget up, the same line gets picked out of it: $200 a week for fuel. People tell us that can’t be right, that we must have meant $200 a day, that $200 only buys you a few hundred kilometres and then what?
They’re right about the arithmetic. $200 a week doesn’t cover big driving days. The part of the budget that explains our figure sits somewhere else entirely: how far we actually drive.
– For mapping out the short days and the back roads: Hema’s Australia Road & 4WD Atlas
– For all your caravan and camping gear: CaravanRVCamping.com.au
We Do About 200km a Day, Maximum, Every Couple of Days
That’s the whole answer. We travel really, really slowly. 200km is our maximum for a driving day, and a driving day only comes around every couple of days, not every day.
So a week with two driving days in it is a week with maybe 400km in it. That’s the shape of the trip our $200 sits underneath. Put a family doing 300km five days a week next to it and you’re comparing two completely different holidays that happen to both be called a big lap. Neither one is wrong. They just cost very different amounts of fuel.
Driving Slowly Was a Choice Before It Was a Saving
We didn’t start driving short days to bring the fuel bill down. It just came out that way.
We travel slowly because we like to really explore the little areas we go to. If you cover 400km in a day you’ve seen the road. If you cover 150km and stop, you’ve got two spare days to find out what’s actually there, which is the reason we came.
The other reason is the kids. They don’t like the car. Long days in the back seat are miserable for them and therefore miserable for everyone, so short hops are simply a nicer way for our family to travel. It’s a win win for everybody, and the fuel saving turned up as a bonus rather than as the point.
👉Want to see where your short days could actually stop? Hema’s Big Lap Bible and plan the in-between bits properly!
$200 Was the Conservative Number, Not the Average
Worth being clear about this, because it’s where a lot of the confusion comes from. When we budgeted $200 a week for fuel, we were setting the ceiling, not predicting the spend. We didn’t normally hit it.
Where we did hit it, and sometimes went past it, was any week where we simply had to get a certain distance. Western Australia is the obvious one. You do get those large gaps out there where there’s nothing between you and the next town, and there’s no slow-travelling your way around a 600km stretch of nothing. Those weeks the fuel line goes up and something else has to give.
Across the first three months, on average, it stayed under the $200. That average is doing a lot of work, and it only holds because of the driving pattern above.
Working Out Your Own Fuel Line
Start with the kilometres, not the dollars. The fuel figure is an output of how you want to travel, so decide that first:
- How many driving days do you actually want in a week? Two, three, five?
- How far on each of those days? Ours is 200km maximum.
- Multiply the two and you’ve got your real weekly kilometres.
- Then price those kilometres against what your own rig actually drinks, towing, on the fuel you actually buy.
Do it that way round and the number stops being a guess. It also shows you the lever, which is the kilometres, not the servo. There’s more on the fuel-saving side of things, tyre pressures, weight and speed, in How to Travel Australia by Caravan on a Budget.
One thing to keep in mind: this is a travel figure only. It sits alongside food, caravan parks, maintenance and the bits and pieces, and none of it includes what’s still running at home. Phone, internet, health insurance, a house, storage. Those don’t pause while you’re away.
Our Thoughts
$200 a week for fuel is what happens when you drive 400km in a week rather than 1,500. If you want to cover the country quickly, your fuel line will be several times ours, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Just budget for the trip you’re actually going to take, rather than for somebody else’s.
How many driving days a week are you planning on, and how far? We’re always interested in how differently people set this one up.
- We Budgeted $700 a Week for Our Big Lap. Here’s Where It Actually Went
- How We Keep Caravan Park Costs to About $180 a Week
👉If you’d like to pop your own kilometres and costs in and see the whole weekly picture, have a look at our paid Big Lap budget calculator and planner here.
