Australia's Best Scenic Drives You Can Tow a Van Along

A 3.2 tonne van behind a 3 tonne wagon changes what counts as a good driving road. A route that photographs beautifully can be a nightmare to tow if it is tight, steep or short of places to pull over and let the traffic past. I have towed all five of these more than once, and I will give you the real numbers that matter: gradients, fuel gaps and where you should not have the van hitched up at all. Scenery is the easy part. Keeping the rig under its limits and off the neighbour's bumper bar is the bit that takes planning.

Great Ocean Road, Victoria

The B100 from Torquay to Allansford is stunning and busy, which is the whole problem in one sentence. The section past the Twelve Apostles and Loch Ard Gorge is worth every kilometre, but between Lorne and Apollo Bay the road is narrow, twisty and clogged with tour buses and hire cars stopping without warning to photograph a koala. Here is my honest take: do not tow the whole thing at midday in summer. Set up at Apollo Bay, unhitch, and day-trip the tight bits in the wagon where you are not fighting the length of the van through every switchback. Towing at 7am before the traffic wakes up is the other option, and it is a better drive by half. There are pull-off bays, so use them and let the queue behind you clear rather than leading a funeral procession.

Grand Pacific Drive, New South Wales

Only about 140 kilometres from the Royal National Park down to Kiama, but the Sea Cliff Bridge that swings out over the ocean at Coalcliff is one of the best short tows in the country. It is sealed, wide enough for a van and easy going, with proper lookouts you can actually pull a rig into at Bald Hill and Stanwell Tops. This one you can hitch up and enjoy without babysitting the mirrors the whole way, which makes it a rare thing on a list like this. Break it into an afternoon, stop at the bridge, and you will not raise your heart rate once. It is a gentle option if you are new to towing and want scenery without stress.

Great Alpine Road, Victoria

The B500 from Wangaratta to Bairnsdale is the highest sealed road in the country, climbing to about 1,840 metres at Mount Hotham. That number is the whole story, and it cuts both ways. On the climb, a loaded rig can pull fuel figures up around 20 L/100km against maybe 12 on the flat, so plan your tank and fill at Bright or Omeo rather than gambling on the next servo. The descent off Hotham towards Omeo is the part that hurts people, because it will fade your brakes to nothing if you ride the pedal all the way down. Drop to a low gear, let the engine hold the van back, and pull over to cool the brakes if you can smell them. Snow and ice close sections in winter and chains can be required, so this is a shoulder-season and summer tow, not a July one.

Gibb River Road, Western Australia

The odd one out, because it is not sealed, but no honest scenic list leaves it off. About 660 kilometres of Kimberley dirt past gorges like Bell, Manning and Galvans that you will remember for years. You need light-truck tyres, two spares and a van built for corrugations, so read the Gibb River Road guide before you commit a wheel to it. Towing pressures on the dirt sit well below the highway; I run the van around 28 psi on the corrugations and air back up to about 45 for the bitumen at each end. Fuel and supplies are limited and dear along the road, so carry range and food. It is hard work, but the payoff per kilometre is as high as anywhere in the country.

Nullarbor, the Eyre Highway

The A1 across the Nullarbor is not about corners, it is about distance and discipline. The 90 Mile Straight near Caiguna is a genuine 146.6 kilometres without a bend, which is hypnotic, so swap drivers and take breaks. Fuel stops are far apart and dear, so you fill at every roadhouse whether you need to or not and never let the tank drop below half. Carry drinking water for a breakdown, watch for wandering stock, camels and roos at dawn and dusk when they are worst, and pull off at the Bunda Cliffs where the Great Australian Bight drops straight into the Southern Ocean. Mind the quarantine checkpoint at the border where fresh produce is confiscated, so eat the fruit before you get there. It is the spine of any Big Lap.

A couple of practical numbers make the Nullarbor easier to plan. Ceduna to Norseman is roughly 1,200 kilometres of driving, and you cross two time zones plus the odd unofficial one the roadhouses keep, so your watch and your stomach will argue for a day or two. I plan on covering it in three unhurried days with camps at the roadhouses or the free rest areas, rather than flogging it in two and arriving frazzled. Carry at least ten litres of drinking water per person as a breakdown reserve, keep the fuel above half a tank at all times, and slow right down at dawn and dusk when the roos, emus and stray camels are on the move. It is a drive that rewards patience and quietly punishes anyone in a hurry.

A worked example: linking two of these

Here is how the numbers stack up on a run I have done more than once. Leave Geelong, tow the flat coastal leg down to Apollo Bay in the early morning while the road is still quiet, and set up camp for two nights. On day two, unhitch and day-trip the Twelve Apostles and the Otways in the wagon alone, which turns a white-knuckle tow through the midday tourist crush into a relaxed drive with somewhere to park. On the flat coastal legs I was seeing around 13 to 14 L/100km towing the loaded van; on the wagon alone the next day it dropped to about 9, which tells you how much the van and the hills cost you.

From there, cut inland and pick up the Great Alpine Road at Bright, fuel to the brim, and climb over Mount Hotham in the cooler months with the van back on. That climb pushed consumption up towards 20 L/100km, and the descent to Omeo needed second gear the whole way with a stop partway down to let the brakes cool before they faded. Camp at Omeo or push on to Bairnsdale at the bottom. Two very different roads inside one week, and the only real planning was fuel stops and picking the time of day I towed the tight bits. Sort your route and services ahead of time with a decent trip-planning app so you are never guessing where the next bowser sits.

Getting the towing right

Scenery is only half of it; the other half is not overloading the rig or the driver. Know your tow ball weight and stay under your limits, because a beautiful road is no fun when the van is pushing you around on a downhill or the back end is squatting into the bump stops. Weigh the loaded rig on a public weighbridge once and you will know for good. If any of that is fuzzy, our explainer on towing weights, GVM, GCM and ATM is worth ten minutes before you spend a cent on the trip. Use the parks directory and the trails index to line up where you will stop, and build these routes into a wider Red Centre loop or coastal run rather than driving them flat out in a single day.