Family Camper Holiday in SA - Britz

Nine nights and 1,826 kilometres in a loop from Adelaide in a campervan, round the Eyre Peninsula and up into the Flinders Ranges.

Whyalla comes first at the head of Spencer Gulf, where giant Australian cuttlefish gather in the shallows to breed each winter in numbers found nowhere else. Lincoln National Park and Port Lincoln follow, with sea lion colonies offshore, a tuna industry that supplies most of the country, and the option of swimming with both.

Elliston comes next on the exposed west coast of the peninsula, with a clifftop drive and surf beaches, then Port Augusta and the Flinders Ranges. Wilpena Pound is the destination, a natural basin of folded rock some eleven kilometres across with a single narrow entrance, and Sacred Canyon nearby holds Adnyamathanha rock engravings, a good many of them thousands of years old.

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 is a comfortable pace for this loop, which is what makes it the family version, and the mix of beaches, wildlife and gorges holds a wide age range. Eyre Peninsula seafood is the cheapest and best in the country if bought at the co-ops. Winter brings the cuttlefish and autumn the best Flinders weather, so the timing depends on which half matters more. The Flinders section is the one that surprises people: ancient folded ranges, river red gums in dry creek beds, and some of the clearest night skies in the southern hemisphere.