Red Centre Way

Outback in 46°C in the middle of January? Yes, please.

Step one: pick up a camper van. You would hope that, given the temperatures and remote terrain, we'd get a special briefing to make sure we kept the vehicle and ourselves safe. Apparently that is not the way in Alice Springs. Google Maps took us to a small scrap metal yard (on foot, sweating in blazing heat, carrying all our heavy backpacks), where there were no signs and no staff. No one had given us a license plate for the camper, or emailed through any info. Dan called the hotline, and they told us to look for a silver 4x4 with the keys already in the back seat, and to just go. No condition check, no guidance, no manual, no paperwork, no fuel in the tank. What could go wrong? We packed our bags in and accepted our fate. The camper was dubbed 'Socrates,' because it's old and it raises a lot of questions.

Our first stop (after some thorough safety checks, and a lot of concern about the many flashing orange lights on the dashboard) was at Ellery Creek in the MacDonnell Range. Dan knows that the surest way to get Chelsea hiking is to include dips in large bodies of water. Early morning hikes followed by a lot of time in the Big Hole, staring at the red cliffs. We stayed here two nights, the hottest of the whole trip — sleeping under wet sarongs in our rooftop tent and making constant use of the ever fashionable fly-hats.

Turning out of Ellery Creek, we were thrilled to discover that the road to our next stop, nearly 300km away, was unsealed gravel track. Joy! Our internal organs hadn't been violently jostled enough yet, so this couldn't have come at a better time. This is the quietest time of year on the Red Centre Way, so there are basically zero people on the road... which made it extremely lucky when 150km in, we burst a tyre 🫠

Thankfully, this happened very near a tour bus, so with the help of an 8-year-old German child, we managed to change to the spare. This was only 33⁰C, so pretty balmy for a bit of midday exercise in the sun. As you can imagine, there are very few tyre shops in the outback, so we've been driving around with no spare and an intense feeling of paranoia ever since.

Kings Canyon — our next destination — is gorgeous. We were lucky enough to see the Garden of Eden filling with water due to a few drops of rain the day prior. It’s a sacred site so no swimming, which Chelsea managed to reluctantly accept.

The road is tarmacked again from here on, which makes the driving much less stressful. More updates soon! 🏜️🛻⛺Les mer