Darwin to Brisbane - Britz

Nine nights and 5,486 kilometres from Darwin to Brisbane in a campervan, diagonally across northern Australia.

Daly Waters comes first down the Stuart Highway, where the pub has been collecting travellers’ business cards and underwear since the 1930s, then the route turns east for Borroloola and Burketown on the Gulf of Carpentaria, which is about as empty as inhabited Australia gets and where the Morning Glory cloud rolls in off the gulf in early spring.

Mount Surprise follows in Queensland, with gem fields and the Undara lava tubes nearby, then Cairns on the coast, where the reef and the Atherton Tablelands are both within reach. The route then turns inland and south through Julia Creek, Mount Isa, a mining city of twenty thousand people in the middle of nowhere, and Winton, where Waltzing Matilda was first performed and where some of the best dinosaur trackways in the world are preserved, before Morven and the run to Brisbane.

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. Ten days for 5,486 kilometres is around 550 a day, which is a serious commitment of driving and leaves very little time for anything else. Anyone wanting to see the gulf country rather than cross it should allow at least half again, and the whole route is dry season territory. What it does deliver is a side of the country almost no visitor sees: the gulf savannah, the mining towns and the channel country, none of which appear on a conventional east coast itinerary.