Byron Bay Roadtrip - Britz

Thirteen nights from Shark Bay in Western Australia across to Byron Bay and Sydney in a campervan, which is a west to east crossing of the continent rather than the coastal run the title suggests.

Shark Bay and Monkey Mia open it, where wild dolphins have been coming into the shallows for decades and the bay is UNESCO listed for its seagrass meadows, its dugongs and the stromatolites at Hamelin Pool, which are among the oldest living structures on earth.

Sandstone and Norseman follow inland, then Eucla and the Nullarbor, a treeless limestone plain where the road runs along the Bunda Cliffs above the Southern Ocean. Andamooka comes next in South Australia, an opal town of corrugated iron and dugouts, then Kulgera, Uluru and Kata Tjuta in the centre, before the long run east to Byron Bay, the most easterly point of the mainland, and Sydney.

Britz supply the camper and the day-by-day plan, and the hire is priced live per vehicle rather than per person; campsites, fuel, ferries, park fees and activities are all extra, with a nil-excess insurance pack available at booking. Fourteen days is a brisk schedule for a crossing of this size, so the driving days are long and the stops are short. A one-way hire across the country usually carries a relocation fee, and the gaps between fuel stops on the Nullarbor and through the centre are the practical constraint rather than the mileage itself. For a traveller who wants to say they have driven across Australia, this does it in a fortnight; for anyone who wants to enjoy it, the same route taken over three weeks is a different trip altogether.