Australia, New Zealand & the South Pacific - Can you take rental cars into the Outback?

The last time I drove a rent-a-car into the Outback from Adelaide (well over a decade ago), I'm pretty sure I violated the terms of my rental car contract. Have times changed -- are you now allowed to drive rental cars into the Outback? Or is it still a standard exclusion on the rental contracts?

Thanks.

Short answer - yes. Within reason, you're planning to drive on the road, right? :p

I've not rented in SA or NT but wouldn't expect too many restrictions aside from the standard ones - e.g. no offroad or sand driving. :)

There may be one or two areas proscribed but unless you're going during Wet Season and planning to drive the car through river crossings, you'll probably not be too restricted.

Take this with a bag of salt but don't worry! :D



(Slightly off-topic, we rented in NZ Norrth Island, to drive from AKL to Russell, which is in the Bay of Islands and is normally accessed from the bay via ferry. Thanks to a Qantas 767 fault taking hours to fix, we were hourslate, missed the last ferry and had to drive a dirt track at midnight to get to Russell. It was slightly treacherous as it was 100% windy roads, so lots of fun and very noisy. No trouble at all with returning the car. No issues whatsoever.)

Short answer - yes. Within reason, you're planning to drive on the road, right? :p

Yeah, on road. :)

I just remember that there used to be an exclusion saying you could drive into the Northern Territory. Kind of like how in Alaska there's an exclusion for dirt roads (which thousands of people violate every summer!).

Given a reasonable choice, I like to keep everything "legal." Especially when you're talking about a $20,000 piece of machinery.

When I rented a car in Australia last December, with one of the main car-hire companies, there were various conditions in the small print about where it couldn't be driven. This was only of academic interest to me, since I was driving from Sydney to Brisbane, but the prohibited areas included above the snow line from May to October and various points in the "outback", mostly of the Northern Territory and Western Australia — these outback areas were defined by location, direction and sometimes road (not west of town X on road A; not north of town Y except on road B; not south of town Z; and so on). I think that the car could be driven on the main sealed road everywhere in the outback, but it was not allowed to be taken into some of the more remote parts. (Mind you, it was a small Audi sedan, so one wouldn't really have wanted to drive it anywhere too far off the beaten track.)

If you want to do some serious exploring, I'd suggest you contact one the car hire companies or perhaps talk to a travel agent that has an interest in Australia (such as TrailFinders in the UK, but I'm not sure where you are based?).

Some rental companies will not allow you to drive sunset to sunrise in the outback.

Some rental companies will not allow you to drive sunset to sunrise in the outback.Wisely so (unless you are renting a car with roo bars). In general most of the prohibited areas are unwise to enter without the proper equipment (satellite emergency beacon PLB and/or satellite phone). The paved roads in the outback are all permitted (but beware of the road trains, going at 100 mph).