Australia Bus Tours

Gaining in popularity in recent years have been bus tours aimed at young travellers. The prime purveyor of this mode of travel is Oz Experience, a company which started in a small way and has grown and grown in popularity. The system works like this. One purchases a ticket for a fixed route, usually involving several days of travel. At any point along the route, one is free to leave the tour and join a later bus when it comes round. Thus one does not travel with the same group all the way. The tour can be spread over as long as one year in most cases.

The object of these tours is to travel at a more leisurely pace than express bus services, to travel less direct and more interesting routes and to allow the passengers to see more of the countryside by stopping at points of interest, or even on request for photographs or replenishing of supplies.

At the end of the day, the driver will usually suggest places to stay, and those places will try to make sure that they have sufficient space available, since they value the regular custom of the bus.

This seems a good way to see in a simple manner places which one would not easily reach otherwise. On the other hand, one is still part of a group, even if that group is constantly changing, and that does tend to limit one’s freedom to some extent.

The different routes offered are too numerous to show here, but at present they cover only the eastern half of Australia. That is to say that the western boundary of places served is the road between Adelaide and Darwin, except that there is a tour to Uluru. There are also options which involve flying one way, or flying certain sectors.

A similar scheme is operated by the Wayward Bus, which has also proved popular enough to expand its routes and now has several options between Adelaide and Alice Springs, between Alice Springs and Darwin, and between Adelaide and Melbourne.