A well-planned road trip through Australia's vast interior can provide a more challenging alternative to a conventional holiday
Most Australians escape hazy cities to embark on a holiday by driving in a conga line for about 300km to a nice beach to lap up the sun and sand.
My wife and I tackled the Outback, doing a 10,000km loop from Sydney to Darwin and back in four weeks. Packing the Land Rover Discovery and camper trailer was an event in itself. We needed clothes for two weeks of cool days and sub-zero nights and a week of 30 degrees Celsius heat, plus food and water, emergency fuel supplies, off-road recovery equipment, tools and other bits and pieces we thought we might need - and lots we did not really need - for a drive into remote Outback Australia.
After several hours, we arrived at a simple truth of Outback travel - keep it simple. Instead of packing extra clothes, we packed washing powder.
Driving a four-wheel drive with a trailer attached is no big deal. Even though at first it feels like threading an articulated lorry down a narrow lane, it is not big, slow or cumbersome - most of the time. With a ton of heavy-duty camper-trailer nestled behind, our Discovery turbo-diesel required lots of encouragement and patience to overtake as we headed out of Sydney and climbed over the Great Dividing Range.
We did most of our driving during day-time. Because Australian wildlife, especially the kangaroo, has absolutely zero road sense, the safest time to drive in the bush is between dawn and dusk. With a bull bar fitted, there is less chance of vehicle damage.
