January 2016: Back to it!

The holidays have come and gone, and just as we’re back to routine there’s another bit of time off coming up! With Australia Day falling on a Tuesday, it’s either a 4 day mini holiday or an odd day off in the middle of the week depending on your negotiation skills – but always a good opportunity to get out of the city. Whatever you get up to, we hope you have fun and be safe! This month we’re debuting booking promo codes, so check out our new specials page for our 4 for 3 Australia Day offer, pod discounts, and any other new deals that might crop up.

Making Plans

Australia Day is a great excuse to get out of the city, and so you can make your own super long weekend, we’re offering 4 days for the price of 3! Go camping, splash in the water, go to that spot you’ve been meaning to see, and make the most of your mini holiday. With most popular weekend spots guaranteed to be busy, we’ve come up with some ideas for getting out of the house without throwing yourself into the crowds. Because we’re not all getting the Monday off, we’ve also included some options for one or two day trips.

Simply enter promo code DAYFREE when making a booking.

Staying local

Sydney With everybody heading out of town, you might be better placed to stay local. Take a walk on the Glebe Foreshore around Blackwattle Bay, and finish with a picnic in Bicentennial Park. Or, head north and check out the very peaceful Middle Head near Mosman, with beautiful scenic walks and Cobblers Beach for a cooling splash. Melbourne The city might be packed, but if you have a look around you’ll find somewhere to get a bit of quiet and solace. Get colonial and pay Cooks’ Cottage a visit in Fitzroy Gardens, or for a more varied Australian history lesson visit the Melbourne Museum and its Bunjilaka Aboriginal Cultural Centre. When you’re done, retire to a shady spot in Carlton Gardens for a picnic and take in the lush surrounds. If you’re up for some outdoor recreation, head north to Studley Park Boathouse and you can hire kayaks, canoes and row boats to get on the water, and you can fill up at the excellent restaurant afterwards.

Day trip

Sydney

If you start early and stay away from the usual suspects, you’re sure to enjoy a nice little day trip out of Sydney. Head up to the Central Coast and you’ll find a huge choice of secluded beaches, our choice is Pearl Beach – but the idea is that they can’t all be busy! Not sure about the coast? Head up to the mountains and find a waterhole at the end of a bushwalk instead (Minni-Ha-Ha Falls is stunning). Melbourne You can put some space between yourself and the city and explore beautiful country towns. Head on past Healsville and the Yarra Valley to the much less busy Marysville, and enjoy the beautiful scenery of Black Spur Drive through tall forests and mountain ash trees. If you want to stay closer to home, the Dandenong Ranges may be a little crowded, but there are enough walks and places to relax for everybody to find their space.

4 day weekend

So you got Monday off? Make it a long long weekend to remember. Sydney The south coast is full of beautiful beaches and campsites that are off the beaten track. Meroo Head Campground in Termeil, just south of Ulladulla affords stunning empty beaches and camping just metres away. If camping isn’t your thing, find a place around Dolphin Point and experience the best beaches in NSW. And yes, as the name denotes, there are often dolphins frollicking in the water! Melbourne Drive up to Beechworth to take in the history while sampling the delights of this growing foodie haven. Or, pack your camping gear and head down to Wilsons Promontory – one of the most beautiful parts of the world (if we do say so ourselves), with beaches, mountains and rainforests abound.

Go interstate

Have tickets to the Australian Open in Melbourne? Going to the warmer waters of of the north? Don’t forget, GoGet has cars at Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane airports, so you can fly in, drive out and have a car for your trip. Book in early before the airport cars sell out!To get 4 days for the price of 3, book an economy car near you between the 22nd and 27th of January and enter the promo code DAYFREE.

Win a Free Weekend

Would you share your secluded holiday secret with the world for a free weekend? Tell us your tip for having a good time without the crowds, and the best idea will get published on our blog. We’ll give you a free 2 day booking in exchange for giving up your secrets. Send us your tip here!

Tip of the Month

We pride ourselves on providing clean, comfortable cars for everybody to use. Our team of cleaners are constantly out on the road cleaning cars in and out, but we also rely on you, our members, to tidy up at the end of your booking. If you ever eat in the car, take home gardening supplies or had a nice day at the beach, please make sure you tidy up. It doesn’t need to be perfect, just how you’d like to see a car when you pick one up.

If the car is beyond a simple tidy up, that’s okay! You can take it to a car cleaner and claim up to $16 in costs (just keep the receipt), or give us a call and book in a special clean. Depending on the circumstances a cleaning fee may be charged for a special clean – but if members leave a car dirty without organising a clean at all, the next member will report it and they’ll get a fine. Remember, it’s always easier to prevent mess than to clean it up, so take towels and sheets if you ever think there might be spillage.

Take the whole squad

A people mover that is easy to drive, comfortable for everyone in the back, and actually looks kind of cool? Just the thing of dreams? At GoGet, where dreams come true, the KIA Carnival is changing the face of people moving everywhere. To keep up with demand, we’ve doubled the Carnival fleet, and have made dreams come true in new suburbs across Melbourne and Sydney. Perfect for an Australia Day getaway, the Carnival lets you load up the whole squad and take off together. Compared to taking multiple cars, it costs less, avoids convoy coordination and the conversation is a lot better! You may have received a new pod alert if a new Carnival was added to a neighbourhood near you, but check out the booking system to see if there’s one in your area. If there isn’t and you’d like one, get in touch here!

Trolley’d

Using gear from Australia’s favourite failed airline Ansett, some Jet Age charm and locally sourced, native and foraged ingredients, Trolley’d is a wicked cocktail bar that comes to you! On our blog, we spoke to Trolley’d about how they use GoGet. Because they use reclaimed airline trolleys, they can pack up an entire cocktail bar into a GoGet van, and rock up to parties all over Australia. When they’re not mixing up drinks, they take road trips to forage for unique flavours and ingredients for their new creations. Do you use GoGet for work? We’d love to interview you for our blog! Get in touch here, we promise the questions aren’t too hard…

New cars and pods: NSW

New cars and pods: VIC

Amy’s Bucket List

To announce our new Audi A3 Convertibles, we offered members the chance to take one for a free weekend and in return write an honest review of their experience. We received nearly 300 entries from all you eager beavers! It took some time, but we read every single entry and finally decided on a winner. Amy moved to Sydney 5 years ago but, because she works weekends, has missed out on seeing everything she’s wanted to. Instead, Amy has been keeping a list of places to go and things to see when she finally gets a chance to – a kind of bucket list. Amy said that, given a convertible and a free weekend, she could finally attend to her list and visit an old railway tunnel full of glow worms, secret hidden beaches, a chocolate factory, Persian restaurants, an amazing cheesecake shop, the RSPCA, old wartime relics, Port Jackson, the old “Women’s Factory” in Parramatta, the Q Station and ghost tour in Manly, fresh food markets and her cousin’s house. We’re looking forward to seeing the photos and reading her review! Stay tuned on our blog.

A library in your street

Have you been seeing these street libraries around? They’re popping up in all kinds of places, from restaurants and community centres to apartment lobbies and neighbourhood streets. These little boxes are a great way to connect with your community, discover new books and share interesting books of your own. You can fill them with your own book collection, or open it up to your neighbours to contribute. If you’d like to have a Street Library of your own, MakerSpace &Company are holding a building session on the 31st of January. Not only will you get a street library of your own, but you’ll learn some woodworking skills, hang out with cool people and get creative! Everything’s provided, and there’ll be a talk on Little Libraries by Kylie Legge of PlacePartners, who’s been running her own street library for years.

Midsumma Festival

Australia Day isn’t just citizenship ceremonies and the Australian Open – it also means it’s time for Midsumma Festival! We’ll be at the Carnival (Sunday 17th) and Pride (Sunday 31st), because who would miss them, but there are heaps of other events all over Melbourne and Victoria to check out too. There’s an Australia Day picnic at Mount Macedon, a talk with Hazel Edwards at Frankston, and the Motafrenz Magical Mystery Tour starting at Como Park and perambling all over. Motafrenz is a car club, but they’re very happy with normal cars like GoGets tagging along on the tour! Check out the Midsumma program to find something fun, sexy and cool to do in the next few weeks.

Cool things our members are doing

Ever wish there was a GoGet for camping gear, an extra table or garden tools? Things you don’t need to own, but could really do with now and then? GoGet member Leon wrote in about his new website Rentalis. It is like an online store for all kinds of things, which you can rent from other users for a day or a week at a time. It’s perfect if you’re having a party, doing renovations or something else that requires specific gear that you don’t need to own full time. If you own a bunch of things that you don’t need every day, consider putting them up on Rentalis. That way they’re out earning money instead of being lazy in your cupboards, and you’re helping out other people who need them. Keep updated with new finds on their Facebook page.