But, convictions freshly quashed, he has wasted no time leaving the state where he was imprisoned for more than a year.

Cardinal Pell spent his first full day of freedom on Wednesday in the back seat of a friend's car on a road trip to Sydney after the High Court overturned five convictions for child sexual abuse.

After leaving the Carmelite Monastery in east Melbourne, he arrived at around 9pm at the Seminary of the Good Shepherd in Homebush where he has lived briefly in the past.

He will initially stay at the seminary for trainee priests, but the Catholic church would not comment on his movements.

But he was jovial when earlier greeted by cameras at a petrol station in Glenrowan, in Victoria's north, where he paused to look at the day's newspapers.

"I was very pleased," he said about Tuesday's High Court verdict.

He apologised for not dressing better, saying he wasn't expecting company on the trip.

"Before you arrived, it was better here," he told media at the service station when asked about life behind bars, before adding his prison experience was "not too bad".

Cardinal Pell was put up by the Sydney archdiocese in 2018 after he returned from his job as Vatican treasurer to fight the abuse charges, having previously served as Archbishop of Sydney.

Australian Associated Press