Melbourne to Darwin Self-Guided Motorcycle Tour

Crossing Australia from the Southern Ocean to the Timor Sea, at your own pace. Twenty-one days self-guided from Melbourne, twenty nights and 5,368 kilometres, finishing in Darwin.

The southern leg is the comfortable part of the trip. The Great Ocean Road and the Twelve Apostles come first, then the Grampians, the South Australian coast and Adelaide, then the Clare Valley vineyards and the red ridges of the Flinders Ranges. By the time the route reaches Coober Pedy the landscape has changed completely: an opal town where much of the population lives underground to escape the heat.

The Red Centre is the middle of the trip and the middle of the continent. Uluru and Kata Tjuta sit within a day of each other, with Kings Canyon nearby and Alice Springs the only town of any size for a thousand kilometres. North of there the Stuart Highway runs on past Karlu Karlu, the Devils Marbles, through Mataranka and Katherine and into the tropics at Darwin.

BikeRoundOz provides the bike of your choice, twenty nights in three and a half to four star hotels, a detailed itinerary document, digital maps and pre-tour route advice. A pillion stays free on the accommodation, which on a trip this long is a substantial saving. Fuel, meals, excursions and insurance are separate, and the season runs March to November. This is the self-guided version of their guided Darwin to Melbourne tour, ridden the other way, for riders who would rather have the route planned than the days organised.