If you’re anything like us and you hate silence when driving on the open road or conversation gets boring, turn up the road trip tunes!
We drive an old bright yellow 1983 Toyota Hiace. It’s fair to say it doesn’t have the best inbuilt radio or CD player system so we play music from our phones through our UE boom speaker.
Australia’s landscape lends itself to some awesome driving songs and listed below are some of my travel inspired faves. I’m a bit of an old soul when it comes to music and think I was born in the wrong era so if you’re after top 40 tracks or anything from the last decade then I’m sorry to say it ain’t featured here.
This song is close to our hearts as it actually provided the name for our travelling coffee business, Round & Round. We loved the lyrics “Round and Round, up and down, through the streets of your town…” and actually contacted the Brisbane band to see what they thought and they were stoked.
This became the theme song for our weekends away when we lived in Melbourne. It just rings freedom and you can’t help but get excited for adventures ahead.
I may be biased as Fleetwood Mac are my favourite band of all time. The three part harmonies in this song and descriptions of the land give me goosebumps. This song is not really about travel but there’s a guitar solo at about 3 minutes in that is perfect for tearing down the highway with the volume cranked. Get your air guitars ready!
A great tune with a strong message. Goanna wrote songs of protest and this song deals with issues of land rights for indigenous Australians.
If you ever watched 90s TV show “Party of 5” then you may remember this tune. Its uplifting melody and penny whistle playing puts you in a great mood to tap along on the steering wheel and enjoy.
I’m a sucker for a harmonica. The Waifs are from Albany, WA and write songs about their travels. This tune talks about living the simple life in remote Australia. Cooking on a campfire, driving long distances, sleeping outside, all the things I’ve loved about life on the road.
Australia’s best storyteller, Paul Kelly is also one of my favourite artists of all time. His ability to paint a picture in your mind with the lyrics is outstanding. This song depicts a roadtrip we can all relate to. I especially like the reference to some terrible coffee purchased in a small town. Who’s been there! “The colour of the coffee was a warning, it was the colour of the river, but not nearly as brown” It also features some awesome harmonica action. Enjoy!
I always loved this song and after further research I found out this song was actually written about the band driving in a hiace just like ours on a stretch of highway between Caiguna and Norseman, WA. Anyone that’s driven the Nullarbor could relate to those vast open landscapes that this song is written about.
Icehouse gets played on the weekly in our van or campsite. This song also features in one of our favorite Aussie films – “Young Einstein” that also boasts an excellent soundtrack and is good for adults or kids.
Saving the best til last. This is the ultimate Australian driving tune. Lyrics “Out on the patio we sit, and the humidity we breathe, we watch the lightning crack over cane fields…” where do you think they are referring to? That would be Bundaberg, QLD. The lead singers’ family moved from England to Bundaberg and he wrote poems about the culture shock, and about his new home, this 80s hit being one of them.
So there you have it. I hope you enjoy these tracks as much as I have out on the open road. You can check out this link to listen to our favourite road trip tunes on Spotify.
Happy listening!
–Jess and Andy, Round and Round Coffee
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