wco81

I'm going to be spending 11-12 full days in early November, split between Sydney and Melbourne.

I had entertained the idea of driving between the cities but my understanding is that this drive isn't really that interesting, unless I was to do a lot of detours off the main path, which would eat up days to be spent in the cities.

Maybe one detour would be to spend a night or two around Blue Mountains but I'm more leaning towards doing a day trip. My only previous visit to Australia, I did the day trip via train on the same date. There are coach tours which probably cover more than I did starting at about $65.

I've been told it would be better to drive the Great Ocean Road out of Melbourne instead.

So that's been my thinking but I did a quick check of rental rates on rentalcars.com and was surprised to see a lot of rates under $100 for 2-day rentals out of either Sydney or Melbourne. These go from Economy to Standard cars, automatic, from Hertz.

I was reading the other thread about tolls so the costs would be higher than just the car rental. Plus parking if I stay in the CBD.

Are these rates typical? Well this is still 6 months out but they seem much lower than in Europe and IIRC lower than what I paid in New Zealand this past February.

Almost tempted to do a 2-day rental in Sydney (in addition to renting in Melbourne) if the parking situation isn't too bad, to drive out to Bondi or across the bridge to the northern suburbs.