October Long Weekend Budget: Fuel, Food, Tolls and Last-Minute Costs

Monday 5 October 2026 is a public holiday in New South Wales, the ACT and South Australia, where it is Labour Day, and in Queensland, where it is the King's Birthday. Western Australia takes its King's Birthday earlier, on Monday 28 September 2026. If you live somewhere else, check your own state or territory's public holiday list before you book anything.

Three days off is not automatically a cheap weekend. The tank, the tolls, the servo stop, the bag of ice, the pet boarding you sorted late. None of it is enormous on its own. Together it is usually why the following fortnight feels tight.

Here is a plain way to cost an October long weekend before you reverse out of the driveway, starting with how to estimate fuel using actual numbers.

Build the cost stack before you build the itinerary

Most long weekend budgets fail the same way. The big-ticket item gets a number and everything around it gets a shrug. Accommodation is rarely what blows the budget. The small categories orbiting it are. Write the full stack down first, on your phone, in one go:

• Fuel both ways. Not the cost of one fill. The cost of the whole trip.
• Tolls. Checked on the actual route, not remembered from last year.
• Food on the road. Coffees, lunch stops, the drive-through on the way home.
• Groceries at the other end. Holiday-town supermarkets are not cheaper.
• Accommodation extras. Cleaning fees, parking, linen hire, late checkout.
• Activities and entry fees. Including the one the kids will ask for on day two.
• Pets, plants and the house. Boarding, a sitter, or a mate you owe a carton.
• A buffer. Ten to fifteen per cent on top, because something comes up.

Adding it up is the whole trick. A weekend that costs $640 on paper is a weekend you can decide about. A weekend with no number attached is one you find out about on Tuesday. Drop the categories into the budget calculator, or track them alongside your usual spending in Budgeting and Insights.

Estimate your fuel with maths, not vibes

Fuel is the cost people guess at most and get wrong most. The formula is simple enough to do at the kitchen table. Distance one way, divided by 100, times your car's litres per 100km, times the price per litre. Then double it for the return trip.

Your litres per 100km is usually on the dash display or in the owner's manual. A mid-size SUV with a full boot, a roof box and four people in it will do worse than the sticker figure, so round up rather than down.

A worked example (illustration only)

Say you are driving 400km each way, and your car uses 8.5 litres per 100km on a highway run.

400 divided by 100 is 4. Four times 8.5 is 34 litres one way. Doubled for the return trip, that is 68 litres.

The ACCC's weekly fuel report for the week to 12 August 2026 put the average across the five largest cities at 200.9 cents per litre and the regional average at 209.5 cents per litre. At the regional figure, 68 litres is about $142. At the city figure it is about $137.

Treat that as an illustration and nothing more. Prices move week to week and street to street, there is no single published national average, and your real number depends on your car and your load. Check a fuel app the morning you leave. We have rounded up seven apps that help you find cheap petrol, and if you want to shave litres off the trip itself, there are 11 ways to maximise your car's fuel economy that mostly cost nothing.

Check the tolls before you drive the route, not after

Tolls are the classic silent cost. You do not hand over money at the time, so the trip feels free until the statement arrives a fortnight later with six line items on it.

Map your route in advance and look at what your toll road operator publishes for it. Most operators list current pricing per road on their website, and most navigation apps let you compare a tolled route against an untolled one before you set off. Sometimes the toll-free option costs twenty minutes and saves real money. Sometimes it costs an hour of stop-start driving and burns more fuel than it saves. Look at both, then choose on purpose.

Also check your tag account has enough balance, so you are not paying an administration fee for an unmatched trip, and check whether you need a visitor's pass for a state you do not normally drive in.

The esky beats the roadhouse, most of the time

A roadhouse stop for a family of four can quietly cost more than an hour of the drive. The same food packed from home is a fraction of it, and you get to stop where the view is instead of where the servo is.

Pack the esky the night before. Sandwiches, fruit, refillable water bottles, snacks portioned out so nobody eats the lot in the first hour. Freeze a few bottles of water as ice bricks you can then drink. Buy ice from a supermarket rather than the servo counter.

You do not have to be joyless about it. Plan one proper stop somewhere decent and budget for it, then let the esky handle the rest. If the shop before you go is where things get away from you, our tips on cutting your weekly grocery shopping costs work just as well on a holiday shop.

Pets, plants and the house you left behind

Boarding is one of the most commonly forgotten line items and one of the most expensive per day. Kennels and catteries book out early over a long weekend, and late bookings cost more when they are available at all.

The options are usually a boarding facility, a paid sitter, or a swap with a neighbour where you return the favour next time. The swap is free and it needs the most notice, so ask now rather than on the Thursday.

Accommodation extras that are not in the nightly rate

The advertised nightly rate is a starting point. Before you confirm, look for cleaning fees, service fees, parking charges, linen or towel hire, resort or facility fees, pet fees, and what a late checkout costs if you want a slower Monday.

Read two other things properly: the cancellation policy, and the security deposit or bond, including when it is released. A bond sitting on your card for two weeks after the trip can make the next pay cycle feel tighter than it really is.

The last-minute costs that catch everyone

These are never in anyone's plan, and they are remarkably consistent:

• The forgotten deposit. A booking balance due on arrival that you had mentally already paid.
• Servo prices on ordinary things. Sunscreen, phone chargers, thongs, hats. Buy them at home.
• Gear that dies on day one. The esky lid, the camp chair, the beach umbrella from three summers ago.
• Parking at the destination. Especially near beaches, markets and anywhere with an event on.
• The souvenir round. One per kid, decided before you walk into the shop.

Setting a limit before you leave the house works better than deciding in the moment. Pick a number, keep it in your phone notes, and check it once a day. If something unplanned tempts you and it is not urgent, the 48 hour spending rule is a good filter.

What to do this week

Five things, none of them long:

• Do the fuel maths. Distance, litres per 100km, current price, doubled. Write the number down.
• Price the route with and without tolls. Then decide once, before you are driving.
• Book the pet care. Today, not Thursday.
• Read the accommodation fine print. Cleaning, parking, bond, cancellation.
• Set the weekend number. One total for the three days, buffer included.

A long weekend that has been costed is still a long weekend. It is just one you get to enjoy without doing arithmetic in the car on the way home. If you want to get further ahead of the next one, we have a longer guide on how to save for the long weekend. This article is general information only. It does not take your personal circumstances into account and it is not financial, tax or legal advice.