Adventurous Adelaide to Uluru and Alice Springs Road Trip - Britz

Eight nights from Adelaide to Alice Springs in a campervan, up the Explorers Way on the Stuart Highway.

Port Augusta comes first at the head of Spencer Gulf, where the farmland gives out and the arid zone starts, then Glendambo, which exists for fuel and has a sign counting the local sheep, flies and people in that order.

Coober Pedy follows, where much of the town lives in dugouts cut into the hillsides to escape summer heat above forty-five degrees, and where the opal fields have supplied most of the world’s supply for decades, with underground churches and a museum to walk through. Marla and Ghan carry the route across the Northern Territory border, then Uluru, where the rock stands 348 metres above the plain and the colour shifts through the day, and Alice Springs closes the drive.

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. Nine days for this distance means long highway days, with road trains to overtake carefully in a long vehicle. Winter is the only comfortable season for the middle section. This is a one-way hire, so a relocation fee is worth checking at booking, and Coober Pedy repays a full day rather than an overnight stop. The highway is sealed the whole way and the camper needs nothing special, which keeps a trip of this length affordable for a family.