Camper relocations are another great, cheap way to get around Australia. However, unless you really love driving and have company/someone to share the driving with, this is only recommended for relatively short journeys. A lot of the most popular travel routes tend to always be done in one specific direction, especially during certain seasons, when people are either following the sun or fleeing the rain. Hence, whenever camper rental companies are short on vehicles in one place, but have too many in another location, they will offer one way relocation deals. The rental is dirt cheap and you are given a certain number of days to complete the journey (usually the bare minimum it will take to get there). Two days can usually be added on at a higher cost (which is well worth it).
The relocations pop up and quickly disappear again, so you need to check the following websites daily and call immediately if you are interested.
http://www.selfdriveshop.com/relocation_rentals.aspx
http://www.drivenow.com.au/onewayrentals.jspc#/relocations/AU
http://www.standbyrelocs.com/
http://www.relocations2go.com/camper-van-relocations/?country=AU
We did four relocations and had mainly positive experiences. We did Melbourne to Sydney and back a total of three times and Melbourne to Adelaide once. All our bookings went through DriveNow, who were always extremely helpful and friendly. Three of the campers came from Britz/Maui/Kea Campers, whom I can definitely recommend. The vehicles were always in excellent condition and the one time we were given a faulty tent, we were reimbursed for the four nights we had to sleep in Motels. One camper came from Apollo/Hippie Campers, and in addition to the crappy car, the service was useless, too. Luckily we only had that one for 1 night.
Originally we were planning to do more camper relocations, but having figured out that any of the longer distances could only be done by pretty much flat-out driving all day, every day, we changed our minds. Because the rental companies refuse to give you more than 2 extra days, most of the longer journeys would just end up being a rush and it seems a bit pointless to do all that driving if you don’t have the time to actually see anything along the way.
