Renting a Car in Australia

Car Hire from Australian airports and cities including the following major locations; Darwin, Townsville, Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Cairns. The Car Hire Group also provide car rental from many other smaller towns in Australia, simply click on the link above to get full online quote or to book securely online using our smart booking engine which scans your pick up and drop off times to see if you could save a whole days rental by possibly slightly changing them.

Please call our reservations helpline on 0800 358 1229 quoting Ref : 72004514. or simply book online.

Darwin | Townsville | Perth | Adelaide | Brisbane | Sydney | Canberra | Melbourne | Cairns

Booking & receiving your car hire voucher:

Ordering your rental car is simple, just enter your car hire pick up & drop off locations, your dates and click the "Click to Quote" button. You will be shown several groups of cars all you have to do is select the group you're interested in. From here you will be shown all hire cars in that group along with the price for your rental period in GBP£. When you finally select the rental car you are interested in renting you will be then shown several options to the rental such as extra (baby seats, roofracks. cancellation cover etc..), just select any you require and continue. You will then be required to enter your own details such as address, flight number if required etc.. and finally you will be asked to enter your credit card details to pay securely online. You will receive your car rental voucher via email immediately with your unique booking reference number and all other booking details. If your car hire start date is sooner than this then don't worry we will be in touch via telephone to arrange safe and speedy receipt of your rental voucher. If you have any questions etc.. regarding your booking or any other aspect of our car rental site then please call our dedicated call centre helpline on 0800 358 1229 quoting Ref : 72004514.

When you receive your voucher it will give full details of which fleet provider has been used and exact details of how and where to find their desk.

Australia

Roads are mostly of good design and repair. Australia has a land area equivalent to the lower 48, but has only 16 million people and most of the population resides in the 8 capital cities. The Northern Territory contains 1/6 of Australia's area, but has only 1% of its population. As a result, there are vast areas with few people and few roads. In the populous southeast, roads are plentiful, though many are "unsealed" (dirt). There are a few roads of interstate quality forming incomplete links between Melbourne, Sydney, and Canberra, otherwise, it is two lanes. There is not the infrastructure to make cross country motoring the effortless wonder Americans enjoy. Particularly frustrating is the lack of city freeways. To transit most major cities, you must drive in stop-and-go traffic on two lane roads. Like the rest of the civilized world, Australia uses the metric system.

Speed limits are reasonable with open highway limits being 100-110 km/h, though the Northern Territory sticks to the "safe and reasonable" unlimited speed once enjoyed in the American West. It is quite enjoyable to be able to cruise under good road and weather conditions at a speed you're comfortable with, not one created by a bureaucrat with a chauffeur. You're usually safe from harassment when travelling less than 10 km/h over the limit. But at 15 over, things are different. Fines are heavy and the cops display little humor. Radar detectors are strictly forbidden. The latest rage has been the use of speed cameras. It is generally understood that these are used more for revenue than to improve safety and there is an effort to ban them. Manned radar setups are well hidden and they use unmarked cars. Watch out too for RBT--Random Breath Testing--a roadblock where you talk into an alcohol measuring device. Less than 1% of those tested exceed the limit, so they are not catching many, but they seem to think it is a good deterrent. With a BAC limit of .05 (that's sniffing a wine cork), high fines and license suspension for a first offense, driving while even not very intoxicated is serious. In over a year, I've only been stopped once (cold sober), but it's quite humiliating. Not doubt, this has made big sales in pubs of low alcohol (but very tasty) beer. As in the Unites States, they don't seem to realize it's not the individual with less than .1 BAC who cause accidents. The strangest law? In Melbourne you make a right turn from the left lane.

Driving in the outback has its own risks. You can get to most places without a 4x4, as long as you don't mind a dirt road and don't go in the north during the rainy season. Night driving is a risk, with kangaroos, emus (ostrich-type birds), cattle, and even water buffalo and camels, each having the potential to make a mess of more than your paint. Fuel is often unavailable late at night.

Driving Etiquette - Australia

The Australian Outback is really huge, and this has given rise to the important hand-waving rule. Because you might not see another car for hours at a time, it's polite and customary to wave at every car you see.

This is fine in the Outback, but when you get into a town it can be very hard not to continue waving at every car you see. This, however, is not advisable as it can be very hard to steer when constantly waving. As you drive towards increasingly urban areas, you might like to bear in mind the following:

Melbourne Driving Etiquette

In Melbourne there are trams everywhere slowing down the traffic and generally annoying everyone which, whilst quaint, are adept at stopping you from getting to work on time. It's generally regarded as polite if when behind a tram that is stopping you also stop, and don't seize the opportunity to overtake on the inside lane to get in front of the slow moving annoyance. In fact, more than etiquette, this is a law which is aimed at stopping drivers from running over innocent pedestrians as they unwittingly disembark.

The problem with the above is that in Melbourne nobody wants to stop. Everybody seems to be running two hours late for everything, and as a direct consequence you can never swap lanes or take turnoffs. Also, you can't ask for directions whilst stopped in traffic, because everyone is too busy swearing into their mobile phones.

Driving etiquette in Melbourne can be summed up as follows: do whatever you damn well like (except running over pedestrians), just do it with conviction, otherwise those people swearing into their mobile phones will start swearing at you. And then you'll definitely never be able to change lanes.

Perth Driving Etiquette

The masterminds who designed inner-city Perth decided that what was really needed was a whole load of one-way streets and two pedestrian malls. Therefore, if you see drivers frothing at the mouth, with glazed-over eyes, and gripping the steering wheel with white-knuckled hands, they are probably trying to get to somewhere that is impossible to approach from that angle, and are now trying to find the Town Hall so they can drive their car straight through the front door to register their discontent.

As if that wasn't bad enough, the same masterminds have just reversed the directions of many of these one-way streets. It's now quite an adventure to drive in the city because the chances of ending up where you wanted to go are quite remote, so you can spend your time trying to wipe out those pesky bicycle couriers who flit about everywhere.

Thus, in Perth, few rules apply. When parking, particularly in the parallel parking bays along the beach-front (for example, in Cottesloe) park as close as possible to the car in front of you, to make it just that much harder for them to get out of the parking bay. This is especially important if you are the last car in the long line, and have plenty of space behind you.

Helpful Information:

Australia Sport and Tourism Division

Frequently Asked Questions:

Please click here to view the frequently asked questions. If these FAQ's do not help answer your queries regarding Australia car hire then please feel free to contact us with them.

The Car Hire Group: