Into the great wide open (p

Into the great wide open

Tomorrow is going to be the day when we're finally heading to the outback. Just to give you an impression of the distances - here's what we have travelled so far:

We've driven from Brisbane all the way north to Cairns, and now we're a bit further south at Mission Beach. While Google Maps says the distance is approx. 1800 kms, the KM reading of the car actually says we've driven more than 3300 kms so far. Anyway, our trip to Darwin in the next seven to ten days looks like that:

Darwin is the city on top where the red arrow points to, and if you think that this doesn't look like the fastest way to Darwin from where we currently are, you are right. The reasons are a) that we want to see the Uluru (formerly known as Ayer's rock) and b) the road conditions in general. The Uluru is where the leftbottom yellow arrow points to.

When you ask Google Maps to suggest the shortest path between Townsville and the Uluru, it proposes to drive along roads that are not even sealed over long distances. When you look those roads up on a map and google the road conditions, you usually get something between "not too bad" to "bloody nightmare", and it becomes clear very quickly that driving more than 40 kmh is a bad idea. It also becomes clear that one flat tyre is the absolute - and rather unlikely - minimum in terms of car problems. Unless you have a 4WD, a lot of spare tyre and a lot of time, it's not what you want. As much as we enjoy being in Australia, we don't want to spend more than 7 to 10 days in the outback, and we only have one spare tyre and rather not use it at all. Last but not least, the vast differences between two cities in the outback (i.e. villages with 5 inhabitants) are often enormous. This is definitely not territory where you want to go to underprepared. In any case, the 4500 kms on the "highway" (most often one laned gravel roads) to Darwin should give us enough adventure to start with.

What will also need a little getting used to is the climate out there. In Alice Springs and at the Uluru, it cools down to less than zero degrees Celsius at night - not sure yet how good we will sleep in the campervan (no heating). But with 33 degrees awaiting us in tropical Darwin, who are we to complain?

I would be surprised to find an internet connection out there, so we say goodbye for the moment, and we will come back to this blog once we arrive in Darwin in one and a half weeks.

Posted on June 9, 2007 7:39 AM | Permalink

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Just checking if life is good independent of where we are

Into the great wide open

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