Sydney Caravan Storage options

In the middle of our Big Lap of Australia, we decided that we’d fly home to Perth, from Sydney, and leave our Hybrid Camper and 4WD somewhere, for the better part of 5 weeks. We actually booked this months in advance, and as it drew near, I started to look into Sydney Caravan Storage options.

Like usual, I rang around and got a heap of different quotes, and submitted a number of different request forms online, and sent emails out.

I was shocked at some of the prices that we got, and seeing as this question is asked often, I figured I’d share it here, and hopefully save other people the running around.

Flying back to Perth from Sydney
We flew back to Perth for Christmas, and needed a Sydney Caravan Storage option

What are your options?

Sydney is a big city, and an awfully expensive one at that. If you only have a vehicle your options increase dramatically, but the moment you are towing anything expect to have to pay a substantial amount, or find parking much further out.

Pay a ridiculous premium for close to Sydney Airport Parking

Out of curiosity, I submitted a couple of quote requests for parking our 6 metre hybrid camper and 6 metre Isuzu Dmax not far from the Sydney Airport. There’s an oversize parking option offered by Park on King, and they emailed back $3000 for 5 weeks. I said is that in total, and they replied no, $3000 each. Would you like to proceed?

I almost couldn’t believe my eyes; six thousand dollars to store our car and camper for 5 weeks? That’s $171 a day, and literally more than 3 times our flight costs to Perth and back!

Store it in the outskirts and use public transport to get in

The next most logical option, which I’d thought would probably be where we ended up was to find somewhere near a train station, leave the car and camper there and train into the airport.

There’s quite a few options here, but the Sydney train network took a fair bit of investigation, and that leads onto another problem. A lot of the places that store your car and camper won’t allow you to camp there, which is a problem when you have two young kids, and a commute to and from the airport.

Ideally I wanted to stay a night before we flew out, and the night that we flew back in without having to move anywhere.

We got a number of different quotes, all ranging from about $10 to $20 per day, so looking a lot better. 

My Paddock wanted $470, but you can’t camp there before or after, which made for a bit of a problem.

Leave it on land somewhere

I actually put the question out to some larger camping groups, and had a lovely lady message saying that we could leave our setup on her block a couple of hours out of Sydney for free.

We were very grateful for this, but questioned what our insurance company would think if we told them we’d left it on someone’s block that we had never met, and something had gone wrong. Most people don’t have public transport right at their door either, which would have been another hurdle to overcome.

Leave it on off the book storage

There are a number of places that advertise on Gumtree and will happily store your gear, but they are private properties with no business attached to the storage, and that’s not necessarily a good thing either. Obviously these are cheaper, but how safe are they? Maybe they’re fine, but is it worth the risk?

Split your car and caravan

One option that I did consider was leaving the camper somewhere in storage, and just driving the car to the airport. You can get relatively reasonable parking online at the Sydney airport, where someone picks your vehicle up and takes it to storage, and brings it back when you arrive.

This was in the realms of $350 for the 5 weeks, which isn’t too bad for the convenience of being able to drive yourself right into the airport, and back out again when you return.

What did we finally land on?

Someone suggested that we leave our car and camper at Poplar Tourist Park, which is about an hour South West of Sydney, and whilst I was doubting that they’d be competitive, I shot an email off anyway.

To my surprise they quoted $10 a day, and were happy to have us stay the night before and after. A total of $402, and then the cost of public transport (or an uber on the way back if it wasn’t running), which we felt more comfortable with.

It was stored on a formal business property, with more eyes on it than out in a paddock on someone’s property.

As it turns out, they’ve got a bus stop right out the front of the caravan park which meant we could get straight on to the train station, and then take the train directly to the airport.

It’s also opposite a nice local produce store, and close to plenty of shops and playgrounds for the kids, is nice and quiet in the unpowered section and all round was a great option.

They looked after our setup just fine, and I’d happily use them again.

Poplar Tourist Park
We left our 4WD and camper like this for 5 weeks

Our total cost then, was about $650, to camp for two nights prior to flying out, store the van for nearly 5 weeks and then stay 2 more nights when we returned, to sort all of our gear out. It also included the public transport costs (about $170) to get 2 adults and 2 kids to the airport and back, which we thought was really decent, and reasonable.

Our camp site at Poplar Tourist Park
Being able to camp right there in the days prior and after was hugely helpful

If you’re looking to leave your 4WD, camper, caravan or anything else, and want some reasonable priced Sydney Caravan storage options, Poplar Tourist Park is a great option.

Poplar Tourist Park has lots of room
There’s always plenty of room in the unpowered section

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