Roadtrip: Darwin to Sydney

January 16, 2019

Roadtrip: Darwin to Sydney

Andy and I drove to Darwin in 2015 to start our new life in the Territory and here we are four years later- our tropical life has come to an end, so to make this adventure complete we decided to do the drive in reverse back to Sydney, this time joined by our dog, Joey the Kelpie.

The drive typically takes 4 or 5 days, depending on how fast you drive, but we made sure we had a few extra days to spend more time on the road. A few of our objectives were to find remote swimming holes, take as many dirt roads as we could, have a beer at all the outback hotels, sleep mostly in the swag and not hit an emu (a previous traumatic experience).

Our first overnight stop was Daly Waters, 620 km south of Darwin with a population of 9. Famous for the local pub which has featured in a few movies, and is credited as the original outback pub. Patrons are encouraged to leave their mark behind, so naturally the roof and walls are full of hanging bras and undies - they claim that they wash these items a few times a year, as the pub has no window panes to keep the dust out.

Our morning ritual was an instant coffee and a dog walk - Joey had a habit of sleeping whilst we drove - and then we took off another 900 kms further south to the Ooraminna Homestead near Alice Springs. Here we rented a little stone house that used to be a police station, the property itself was beautiful - soft red dirt and red cliffs that looked amazing at sunset. And wow, the stars! So vivid and bright. We were, however, tormented by a local goat that took to staring us down and seemed to creep closer each time we turned our backs. We survived, barely.

Driving further south, we veered off the Stuart Highway at Marla, and took the Oodnadatta Track. The track is 4WD only and incredibly rough. It was once a traditional Aboriginal trading route due
to the natural springs that run along it, so there were a lot of river crossings, it was also the original
route for the Ghan train line. Towards the end of the track we got to Lake Eyre, which hasn't been
full since 2011, and is usually completely dry. Despite the lack of water, the locals have started the
Lake Eyre Yachting Club, which I initially thought was a joke. Until we saw the boathouse in Marree.
Members only get the chance to go on the lake every 4 or 5 years when there is water, their slogan is "ya gotta be jokin' - no we're not!"

Marree has a population of 150 and surprisingly where Australia's first mosque was built in 1882, by the Afghans camel drivers who were also building the Ghan (formally the Afghan Express). This is where we finished on the Oodnadatta Track and from here you can take the Birdsville Track north into Queensland, via Betoota. Did you know this was a real town? The Betoota Advocate was based on this ghost town that has had a population of zero since it’s last residence, the hotel owner, died in 2004. However, in July 2018, Robert “Robbo” Haken bought and re-opened the Betoota Hotel - so the population has just risen to one! For the first month of being open he did not have a liquor license, so it was BYO beer only. There is nothing else in Betoota, not even houses - closest town is Birdsville, 170kms west.

Moving further south we could suddenly see the Flinders Ranges, quite a sight after the desert being so flat for so long. We wound through the beautiful roads until we found The North Blindman Hotel, regulation beer stop. From there we navigated south (again) along the dusty roads between the cattle stations - which weren't really roads, just perimeter of the properties which are maintained by the stations themselves, and very bumpy. Some of these stations are as large as small countries - Anna Station is the world's largest cattle station at 23,677 square kilometres, slightly larger than Israel, and is the largest property in the WORLD.

We returned to the sealed road at Yunta, SA and headed east towards NSW, crossing the border and our first stop in our home state was the Silverton Hotel. We had a beer with the hotel owners and their kelpies out the front, in turn joined by the town donkeys. The donkeys ate their afternoon carrots and then fell asleep while standing up, hovering unsteadily over our table with their eyes closed. It was an experience.

We drove through the Murray River region, briefly through Victoria where everything was noticeably lush and green in comparison to the dry landscape of Central Australia. The temperature was a pleasant change, we got to wear pants! Its incredible how much the terrain changed drastically from state to state. For our last night we stayed amongst the vineyards on a friends property in Griffith.

This trip gave us such a great appreciation for how vast and huge this land is. There were a few days in the middle where we saw no people, just animals. We loved seeing the wild brumbies and dingos, but we also saw plenty of camels, buffalos, eagles, goats, cows and kangaroos.

We were mostly offline for the week, briefly got reception on Andy’s network to share some pics, but other than that I did not see my phone the whole trip. This was refreshing, but also is a little daunting as the threat of potential breakdowns or accidents is real. We were very well prepared with food and water, and we had a relatively safe journey - with only one dodgy night where Andy had to sleep with a knife under his pillow in the swag.

Vital stats for our trip:

7 days driving

5,020 km driven - nearly 50% on dirt roads

5 remote swimming holes visited

7 outback hotels

We crossed through 4 states

Average temperature of the trip was 39 degrees

0 emus killed

0 instances of heatstroke (another traumatic experience from last time)

Joey slept 90% of the time

10/10 - would recommend.