So yes, the plan is for DH and I to take the kids across on the Spirit of Tas on the day trip (kids will be nearly 4, nearly 2.5 and just turned 1) and stay in Melbourne that night and then start driving to the Sunshine Coast to spend Xmas with our families.
Soooo... I need some help puhhhleazzze....
We will be taking the shortest drive possible, so up the middle of Vic and NSW. We sorta plan to start driving at 7am, stop at 9am for breakfast for an hour, drive for 2 hours, stop at 12 for an hour for lunch, drive till 3, stop for an hour for a break/arvo tea, drive for 2 hours, and stay that night wherever we end up at 6pm. So however many days this would take us - apparently it takes 19 hours to drive? So we would cover approximately 8 hours of driving a day.
Can anyone help out and suggest good places to stop in for breakfast/lunch/rest breaks on the way through - or alternatively good accommodation that is very kid friendly and not that expensive?
All suggestions welcomed!
(oh, and wish us luck with 3 young kids in the car... bwahaha)
Day trip on the boat? Are you sure? It is much easier with kids to go overnight and be in the cabin. I have done the night trip and been very happy with it. Two separate lots of friends with kids did the day trip one way and then changed their booking to go overnight on the return.
Anyway back to the road trip. I assume you are travelling the Hume. Pretty good drive really. Lots of toilet stops. As for food, we normally stop about an hour of of Melbourne, I think it is Seymour and a Mobil station/roadhouse. We normally stop for fuel there and their steak sanga is not bad. Just can be very busy in the holiday period. After that, unless you pull over in small towns, there are the Macca's and BP at Glenrowan. Also can be quite busy, so look at drive through and pulling over at the next rest stop. For the return trip the next truck stop is quite good and has a bit of a nature walk if you need to stretch legs. After Glen rowan you next stop would be Albury/Wodonga unless you take the bypass. About 45 minutes past Albury is Holbrook (the town with the Submarine). The bakery there is pretty good, have eaten there a fair bit as we often visit DH's family there.
Have fun!
Last edited by Astrid; March 16th, 2010 at 08:34 PM.
: missing info
Something to think of is trying to avoid the bigger cities during rush hour. We got stuck in rush hour coming home going through Windsor (so traffic from out west of Syd going into Syd in the morning), didn't think about it! No advice of where to stop tho.
Another idea is to have an in car DVD player. We just did a 9hr cross NSW drive and the DVD player was a godsend. We managed to do a 3hr drive, stop, 2 hr drive, stop and 2hr drive, before Lily puked in the car and we had to stop overnight, lol! The kids were angels until then and only Liam complained on the last 2 hr stretch a little bit.
That's the Newell highway.
We stopped in Dubbo overnight and did the drive in two days stopping every three hours or so.
I think you do it it in three days driving 8 hours a day.
It takes about 17 hours of straight driving to get from Melb to Toowoomba so add a couple more hours to get to the coast.
The drive is pretty easy.
We stopped in Shep from memory, Dubbo (overnight), Moree and then drove all the way to Toowoomba. They were the major stops were some smaller pit stops along the way at parks/servos.
DD was 3 at the time, only had the one then, she was well over it by the last couple hours but we did the drive in two days.
I'd also go overnight on the boat. It's a long time to keep the kids occupied and there just isnt that much to do on the boat after a while. If its raining then you have to stay inside, too hot and you'll all get burnt from sun wind water reflection. So while it is doable, I think it would be much easier at night. Just depends on how game you are
p.s just re read what I wrote and its def time for bed, can hardly write a sentence so I apologise lol
Road trip!!!
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