Although it may seem a trivial matter, the direction to tour around Australia is a critical issue. In a nutshell, you go around anti-clockwise.
Why is this critical?
Because you take advantage of the prevailing winds, which will be East to South-Easterly when driving up the east coast - Easterly when travelling
westwards across the top of the continent - North-Westerly when driving south
down Western Australia, and generally of a westerly component when finally
heading east from Perth towards the East coast towing Australian caravans.
Just consider heading the other way around. You are bucking into a 15 kph wind as you drive from, say Mount Isa eastwards towards Julia Creek. Your safe travel speed will be about 80 kph, so your fuel consumption goes way up due to the headwind. Your transmission and engine would probably start to overheat.
If you were travelling in the other direction, you would have a 15 kph tail wind helping you along, and your fuel consumption would be down below the average for the trip. The overall fuel consumption for a six cylinder car pulling a one ton loaded australian caravans anticlockwise around OZ, would be about 17 miles per (Imp.) gallon (16.5 litres per 100 km). Going the other way around it would increase to about 14 mpg or 20 litres per 100 km.
Below you can read a few pages to get the feeling of this unique
and very useful ebook.
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