Aussie Overlander - Britz

Six nights and 2,110 kilometres from Adelaide to Alice Springs in a campervan, straight up the Stuart Highway.

Port Augusta comes first at the head of Spencer Gulf, where the wheat country gives out and the arid zone begins, then Woomera, which has been a rocket range since 1947 and remains a prohibited area the size of a small country, with a museum of what has been fired across it.

Coober Pedy follows, where much of the population lives underground in dugouts to escape summer temperatures above forty-five degrees, and where the opal fields have supplied most of the world’s supply for decades. The Breakaways nearby are flat-topped mesas of ochre and white that were a seabed eighty million years ago. Marla, Kulgera and Erldunda carry the route north across the Northern Territory border, then Uluru and Kata Tjuta before the final run into Alice Springs.

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. Seven days for 2,110 kilometres means long driving days on a two-lane highway with road trains on it, which take a careful overtake in a camper. This is a one-way hire, so a relocation fee is worth checking at booking, and winter is the only comfortable season for the middle section of it. Coober Pedy is worth a full day rather than a night, since the underground churches, the opal shops and a mine tour are all walkable from the campsite.