Camper Van Holiday to Oz - car seat needed?

[henrybaba]

We are going to Australia in November for 2 weeks with DS who will be 15 months. Planning to fly into Sydney for a few days then hire a camper and drive slowly to Brisbane where my brother is getting married.
Have looked online for camper vans but most of them seem to be unsuitable for young children as child seats cannot be fitted - is this right...?
Has anyone done a camper van holiday with young children?
Any advice...?

we have a vw campervan and have car seats in ours as do friends with younger children, i would ask the hire places whether they make provisions for young children (surely they do). obviously vans of this age weren't fitted with seat belts but many have them installed, it all depends on the conversion i suppose.

Hi we are having the same problem, it seems the small 2-4 berth have a double seat at the front which in theory you can fit a car seat on however all the companies we have looked at do not hire car seats for these vans. The bigger vans seem to have captain seats with seats belts for car seats in the back, no use if with wee ones. Sorry not much help but I posted before about this nad no-one seems to know. We will probally take our own seat and fit it anyway.

giggly are they vw vans?

Quad, not sure of the make probally not vw, the sites dont give you the make only the model. All similar though, some are hi-tops and others are like transit van size. As they have the double seat and seat belts I figure that our seat will fit.

not done a holiday but know we have very strict seat belt and child car seat laws. You will need a car seat. Why not hire car and stop over - you can get good hotel deals... might be a better bet. the hire company will then fit an australian legal car seat. Car seats here have to be attached to an anchor bolt etc.

When we did a trip here with our dd1 before we emigrated. We just hired a car - worked out very reasonable and they fitted an aussie legal car seat. You can also get good deals for going one way as well if you are flying out of Bris.

camper vans can be unweildy and the road between Brissy and Sydney is pretty scratchy in parts. One lane either way - no huge motorway even though it is highway 1 as they call it.

Thanks Eidsvold - good advice... Will look into doing that. Think we maybe have romantic ideas of doing the camper van thing in Oz as its something we have always wanted to do but the reality of having a 1 yr old in tow may be less romantic

It's a problem with camper vans in this country too, loads of them don't have fittings for seatbelts or child seats.

We hired a camper van to travel that part of Australia, it was fun, though that was pre-children. The roads were Ok though for driving it - we had an enormous 6-person one as we were relocating it for someone else.

we also had a VW camper in the Uk but we had to adapt it to fit child car seats, you can't just take a seat and assume it will fit a VW van.

with a 1yo - I would look into staying at some of the family resorts on the coast on your way up rather than camping although in a caravan tourist park you can get on site vans if you want to do that - always an option. Think a car/estate would be more comfortable.

Long old drive from Sydney to Brisbane - better to take a few days. Nice places like Port Macquarie or Coffs Harbour, Byron Bay.