Adelaide to Alice Springs via Coober Pedy - maui

Seven nights and 1,587 kilometres from Adelaide to Alice Springs in a campervan, up the Stuart Highway into the Red Centre.

The Clare Valley comes first, two hours north of the city and the riesling country of Australia, where the cellar doors sit along the Riesling Trail, an old railway formation that is now a cycle path running thirty-five kilometres between the villages.

Port Augusta follows at the head of Spencer Gulf, where the farmland gives out, then Woomera, a rocket range township built in the late 1940s and closed to outsiders for decades, with a collection of missiles and aircraft on open display. Coober Pedy comes next, producing most of the world’s opal, where a good part of the population lives underground in dugouts to escape the heat. Marla, Kulgera and Erldunda carry the route across the Northern Territory border, then Alice Springs in the MacDonnell Ranges.

The camper and the day-by-day plan come from maui, 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. Eight days for 1,587 kilometres is a fair pace with long highway legs. Winter is the season for the centre, since summer temperatures there are punishing. Fuel stops are far apart north of Port Augusta, so topping up at every roadhouse is the habit to get into, and driving at dawn, dusk or after dark is where the animal strikes happen. This is a one-way hire, so a relocation fee is worth checking at booking. The West MacDonnell gorges west of Alice are worth a day at the end.