The Grey Hound Experience

---

This is a must! The previous 2 trips I did were with up to 3 friends, so we had the numbers to hire either a car or camper van, but this time around I was traveling up the coast just with another friend, so between the 2 of us, hiring cars for 4 weeks plus petrol were certainly out of the budget range... So the solution is pretty straight forward, grey hound bus! We found some passes called the hop on and off passes from Sydney to cairns at around $350 per person, meaning you can go in a single direction towards Cairns and get off at towns or cities the bus stops at and stay there for few days and once you are ready to be on the road again, then book yourself onto the bus for the next destination. For instance, we had a hop on and off pass from Sydney to cairns, we booked ourselves in for a trip to go from Sydney to Newcastle first, getting off at Newcastle, staying there for a few days and then booked another journey on the pass from Newcastle to coffs harbour and so on until cairns. The problem with this system is that you have to reserve that seat on the bus, days and days in advance, especially for remote or popular routes, you can reserve your seat on the grey hound website with you hop on and off pass reference number, finding the date and time the bus leaves at your departure point, but once all the seats on the bus are taken, then that departure date and time disappears off the webpage, so you have to find the next best available bus time. We had to learn this the hard way, because I assumed that hop and and off means you can jump on the bus whenever and there will always be a seat, but in New Castle, we called a day in advance to get seats on the bus leaving for Coffs Harbour the next day, Tanja found a seat, took the last seat on the bus for that day, that was cool, she can go first, maybe I get a bus the next day and meet her in coffs harbour. But the next bus to go to coffs harbour was not for another 3 days!!! So yeah,pretty annoying... So make sure you book your seats in advance! As mentioned, the grey hound bus is designed to be cheap, getting you from point A to B, but it has nothing to do with comfort level... The buses are usually completely packed, at the bus pick up point you will be hurried onto the bus like a flock of sheeps and after few hours hurried off, obviously the length of your bus trip depends on the length of your journey... Brisbane to Sydney takes 16 hours, very very painful... Two of the Swedish backpackers, Tobias and Pontus took a bus trip from Brisbane down to Sydney, suppose to take the suggested 16 hours, then half way through, their bus broke down in the middle of nowhere, they waited 3 hours for replacement, so 19 hours of pain! So to sum up, if you are traveling alone or with just another friend, greyhound bus is the way to go to travel Australia, as they have routes to almost every Australian town, it is very economical, but book you seats early, be prepared for a long, uncomfortable and painful journey, and just remembered, try to get there 15 minutes early, because whatever you do, don't miss the bus... No refunds, you need to buy another ticket!

---

Photos

Grey hound bus
In case you haven't seen one, this is a Grey hound bus, hop on...