This is what I'd been waiting for since buying our four-wheel drive Pajero some 6 weeks ago - a journey along a 245km stretch of dirt road from Hughenden to a small road house at The Lynd junction, stopping off at Porcupine Gorge National Park along the way. It's by no means a challenge to seasoned four-wheel drivers, but this was special because it was our first time.

The drive started along the Kennedy Development Road which was fine. Some sections had a splattering of tarmac along the middle so you could drive along the centre part until something came in the opposite direction. The main vehicles on this mainly empty road were Road Trains. These are very large lorries pulling three or four wagons. You would expect from their monstrous size that they would be slow moving, but these beasts come hurtling towards you at a hell of a speed and your job is just to move out the way. In fact there are signs along the road side telling you to pull over if a Road Train is approaching.

We arrived at the Porcupine Gorge around lunchtime. It was created by hard basalt formed by volcanic activity covering over sandstone. A river cut through the basalt and quickly through the softer sandstone to make the wide gorge you can see today. It literally looks like someone has pulled two sections of land apart because the area around is flat and the same each side.

As we got our packed lunch out I spotted two emus mooching through patches of grass. I quickly grabbed the camera and got a snap. It's the first time I've seen them in the wild.

At the gorge there is a camp site where we planned to stay a night. We knew it had a pit toilet rather than a flush one, but thought we'd give it a go even though we'd never managed to bring ourselves to stay at camps in New Zealand with pit toilets as they stank so much. We were clinging onto hope that these Australian bush toilets would be better. Richard was brave and went over to the tiny tin shack for an inspection. As he came back out waving his hand below his nose I guessed the result. However, it wasn't so much the smell that was the problem this time, it was the fact parts of his anatomy would have brushed the huge mound of used toilet paper and human waste matter below!

We looked at the map and worked out that if we didn't do the one and a half hour return walk down into the gorge we could make it to the road house camp site at The Lynd junction before dark.

Now we got onto the more serious part of the dirt road. We had the cloud of red dust in our trail, dodging pot holes and looking out for road trains ahead. As we were being thrown from side to side and up and down I could see Richard wasn't enjoying driving in the conditions so I happily took over the controls. I had a big smile from side to side, totally in my element, imagining I was driving in the Dakar Rally.

The best bits came when we saw a sign saying water on road ahead. There in the immediate distance was a creek with water running through (all the previous creek crossings had been dry). Luckily the crossing was bridged, although that didn't mean that the bridge was over the water, just that it has a concrete base to drive on. I stopped the car to work out what to do. All I know about driving through water is not to stop. After consulting with Richard I engaged in to gear and drove straight away with the water spraying quite satisfyingly up the side of the car.

Only a short distance on we came across another water filled creek crossing so I got to do it all over again.

The only thing missing from our fun packed drive was to see a live Kangaroo - something that's evaded us so far. We've seen plenty dead along the road side but we really want to see one bouncing along. That however will have to wait a little longer as we finally got to The Lynd road house just before dusk with no Kangaroos spotted. We pitched our tent in the cosy camp at the back and relaxed over a well deserved beer feeling quite triumphant.

Katy