Adelaide to Uluru and Alice Springs - Apollo

Nine nights and 2,140 kilometres from Adelaide to Alice Springs in a campervan, up the Stuart Highway in short daily stages.

Port Wakefield and Port Augusta come first at the head of the gulf, then Glendambo, the first of the roadhouse stops, which exists for the highway and very little else.

Coober Pedy follows, producing most of the world’s opal, where much of the population lives underground in dugouts to escape the heat, with a church, a hotel and a bookshop among the rooms cut into the rock. Cadney, Kulgera and Erldunda carry the route across the Northern Territory border, then Uluru at Yulara, a sandstone monolith standing 348 metres above the plain and continuing a long way beneath it, sacred to the Anangu. Stuart’s Well comes last before Alice Springs.

The camper and the day-by-day plan come from Apollo, 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. Ten days for 2,140 kilometres is an easier pace than most itineraries on this road, with the roadhouse stops breaking up what would otherwise be very long days. Winter is the season for the centre, since summer temperatures there are punishing and the walks close in the heat. The Uluru climb is closed and the ten-kilometre base walk is the better way round it. Fuel should be taken at every roadhouse. This is a one-way hire, so a relocation fee is worth checking at booking.