Lodging, food , trips, clubbing. All this costs money. And of course it is important to a lot of people - including myself - to know eventually, what you will spend staying in Australia. Everywhere you´re getting few or less information about what you might spend but in the end you don´t know more than at the beginning. That wasn´t enough for me so I listed every single thing I bought within 7 months to give you some numbers. You can find the costs per month and per day and some nice tips along the way. So hopefully I can help you with this and maybe give some good advices. But you should know, that I was living very "economically" to make my budget last as long as possible.
Organisation Costs of a Work & Travel Year
I think starting with the costs for organisation - single costs - would be the smartest. So I´m talking about the money you spend before even leaving the country. In this special case is obviously just about Australia and Germany - where I come from.
In my case it kind of started like this ...
*Reisepass ist the german word for ID... sorry it just slipped in ;)
Costs as I went
I was listing my expenses - as I bought them - for 7 out of 11 months in Australia. Therefor you´ll get this nice and handy summary. When I started this projekt it was already september. I´ve already been in australia for about two months. Considerable expenses I had during this time would be the 3000 $ I spend for the camper-van. By the way - tha´s the reason why there are no costs for lodging ... I was living in this lovely cosy van of mine. I would always safe up as much money as possible to be able to by a car / van / camper cause you´ll find to have 3 serious main advantages!
1st you´ll only have costs for gas but not for any other transport which can be a pain.
2nd you´ll be super flexible and independent in time and position.
3rd of all, you´ll safe a lot of money! Hotels, hostels etc. are getting expensive in the long run. 25 - 46 $ a night ... well you´ll lose your money way faster than you earned it.
I´ve got three catagories. Food, fuel and extras. Trips, tours and day-trips are part of the "extra" category. I almost never booked touristy trips but organised it by myself and gaind more of an adventure and knowledge ... and saved a hell lot of money.
A few of my tours in september for example were the sailing trip to the whitsundays, a guided tour at the most popular rum distillery in Bunderburg and my favourite ... the Fraser Island adventure.
Have a close look and you will recogniz that I travelled from north to south along the east coast.
As everybody knows the costs of living etc. vary a bit from place to place. For example: the Red Centre ist more expensive than the east coast and it´s even differently with the west coast. You can use this detailed list as a guideline of yours to get a bit of an idea of australias prices.
I lived at the sunshine coast in october an parts of november to rent SUPs´ - so called stand up paddle boards - at the beach. I´ve been part of a volunteering program - in exchange for my work they gave me some amazing food and kitesuft lessons. That´s why the costs for food are so low in this month. What a great time! The sunshine coast is worth more than just having a glimpse.
November wasn´t so funny ... not at all. I had bad toothache and straight away I spend 78 $ at the doctors. But to be honest ... I always get tothache while overthinking things. Don´t be surprised because of 3.57 $ a day. As I said this is because of the included food of the volunteering program.
... Ok I´ll confess to you guys ... i´ve got a sweet tooth and i spent more for sweets that a normal person would do. To all chocolate lovers out there: Australia is a bit expensive when it comes to sweets. But even fruits and veggies have their own price. There are a lot fruits coming from local farmers but it´s still very expensive or maybe that´s the reason why?
One tip for icecream lovers: Ice is expensive in restaurants but cheap in supermarkets. 2$ per pack that contains 2 litre. I´ve always found some new friends to share my icecream with or to give an ice cream party.
After my volunteering program I started eating wraps and they were so delicious and extremely healthy. I found out about my preference for beetroot. If there is any interest I would add a category for great backpacker-recipes . Easy and quick to do but healthy. Just foodtastic.
Already New Years Eve. New Year was brilliant and my desire to travel was not satisfied yet ... I suppose I had a sunstroke at that time cause I really bought a 3 litre can of sun dried tomatoes swimming in oil. Wasn´t the smartest idea I guess ... but i was sooo damn tasty. You just can´t blame me. To be fair I might spend some money for sweets and sun dried tomatoes but barely alcohol. With just 2 bottles within 7 months ... that´s almost nothing. Oh I just remembered an other nice tip. Instead of bying waterbottles all the time you can refill them with tab water again and again and save some money with that.
Ok lets sum up.
5 months without lodging costs, living in my van, cost me 1.936,26 $. That´s an average amount of 12.52 $ a day. Monate Australien ohne Unterkunftskosten, in einem Van lebend und davon waren 1 1/2 Monaten Volunteering hat mich insgesamt 1.936,26 $ gekostet. Just think of the amount of money in relation to the time ... half a year with not even 2000 $. It´s impressive what you can get out of life for that! It gets a totally different meaning.
February was by far the most expensive month. At that time I´ve been walking through Wilsons Promontory (national park) bought a ticket to Tasmania and so on , what caused some extra expenses.
March was the last month I was taking notes for my list. With 500$ it is neither the cheapest one nor expensive. But have a look on your own.
And that´s all in total ...
I spend 1.047,85 € for the preparation. That´s 1.542,99 $ having an exchange rate of 1,47 $ : 1 €.
In addition to that comes the car and 7 months of living what brings us to 8.190,72 $. That may sound a lot but in fact it´s not. It´s just 5.562,35 €. You may assume to sell your car again as long as it´s still running ... so you would even get some money back.
If you rise the costs for living up to 12 months; that would be 6.253 $. Plus car and organisation costs, that´s about 10.796 $ in total. That again is about 7.344 €.
If you should know how much money you can spend than I´ve got an other tip for you: subtract the costs for organisation and the tickets. If you want a car substract what you would spend for it as well and divide the rest with the time you wanne be out there. Now you know how much money you wound have to live of and you can compare it to my list. Is it more ore is it less? Do you wanne do more touristy things than I did? Cause that will cost a bit more. Or do you prefer to be even more basic? No matter what ... live your dream!
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You can also find this article on my blogging webside: www.travelistme.com Though most of the articles a written in german!
**What I didn´t include was my health insurence because they were just so different in germany at that time, that you can not really compare the costs.