Hey there, I'm interested and will be travelling to Australia or New Zealand in the not too distant future and have heard different things about the costs of living in both.
The currently costs 85 GBP. The currently costs 265 GBP. Both costs go up every so often, but should stay in the same range.
"Extremely expensive" for Australia means that it's in the same range as western Europe; mostly due to the rather unfavourable exchange rate over the last few years (back when I first went, in 2004, it was still quite cheap). New Zealand is cheaper - generally ~10-15% in pure dollar values (AUD compared to NZD), and then another 10% or so due to more favourable exchange rates for the New Zealand Dollar. Also, as distances are shorter, transport costs tend to be cheaper too, and as the most popular places in New Zealand are less popular than the most popular places in Australia, there's also less of a "peak season" effect (which you'll particular notice in accommodation costs). All of this means that New Zealand is still not exactly cheap; but your money will last noticeably longer.
Of course, you'll also earn less, so spending you kiwi-earned money in Australia will feel particularly harsh. Best to earn as much as possible in Europe before setting out.
As a rough guide for how much money you'll need: NZD $65-70/day should serve as a decent baseline for a relatively frugal (but not too constrained) backpacker lifestyle; it's easy to spend way more, but if you watch your expenses, that's a good daily budget to aim for. Over six months, that'd be about 5,800-6,300 GBP. If you don't think you'll manage to save that much, then getting a WHV for New Zealand definitely seems advisable.
(For Australia I'd say AUD $75-80/day, or about 7,300-7,800 GBP for the same 6 month period.)
[ 02-Jan-2014, at 07:17 by Sander ]
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