Eight Weeks of Awesome!

We arrived home on 23 October - 56 days and 11,651km since leaving on 29 August. Eight weeks of awesome - what a trip! 

What's the going rate for awesome adventuring?  I kept detailed records of our spending and have just calculated a bit under a dollar a kilometre!

The main costs were accommodation, fuel and groceries.  While the overall cost of accommodation averaged $44.50 night, the weekly averages varied depending on where we chose to stay.  There was some free camping along the way but mainly we used paid sites.  Uluru was dearer, even though I used a discount rate when booking.  We splurged on the Coober Pedy underground apartment but that was a planned expense. 

It's worth noting that the Mahindra's fuel consumption was only a third of what Elmer would have used when towing, so that was a huge saving - and a key factor in our being able to travel such large distances, on our biggest ever road-trip! The fuel cost per kilometre was just $0.17.  

Just to emphasise the fuel savings - had we taken Elmer rather than the Mahindra, we would have spent around $6,400.00 on fuel rather than $1,980.00.  That's a massive difference!

There was a little dining out (mostly when Mr Dog was elsewhere, cos he's not really a cafe/pub hound) and some takeaway but we generally cheffed for ourselves, so buying groceries was a bigger spend - and grocery prices were higher in some areas, also.

Bandit's pet-minding and short stay accommodation cost a little under $670.00 - $330.00 at Uluru for day minding, about $150.00 for two nights at the Townsville pet resort and $190.00 for three nights at Hervey Bay.