Grand Pacific Drive - Britz

Seven nights and 394 kilometres in a loop from Sydney in a campervan, down the Grand Pacific Drive to Jervis Bay and back, in legs short enough to be measured in minutes.

Stanwell Tops comes first, where the road runs along the escarpment above the sea and the Sea Cliff Bridge curves out over the water below it, and where hang gliders launch off the headland because the updraught there is reliable.

Austinmer, Wollongong and Shellharbour follow through the Illawarra beach suburbs, then Jamberoo inland, with the escarpment behind it and the Minnamurra rainforest nearby, and Kiama for the blowhole. Jervis Bay closes the route, where the sand is quartz and among the whitest anywhere, and the whole bay is a marine park.

Britz supply the camper and the day-by-day plan, and the hire is priced live per vehicle rather than per person; campsites, fuel, ferries, park fees and activities are all extra, with a nil-excess insurance pack available at booking. Eight days for under four hundred kilometres makes this a sequence of short hops rather than a drive, which suits a family or a first camper hire. Everything on it is sealed and within two hours of Sydney. The campsites along this stretch are among the busiest in the state during school holidays, so the dates are worth choosing with some care. For anyone who has only ever driven out of Sydney on the motorway, the escarpment road is the revelation here: it runs for miles with the ocean on one side and a wall of rainforest on the other.