With cloud cover overnight, we had a relatively mild night: a mere 8° C. But morning brought glorious blue skies a change from the last couple of cloudy days.

We are anxious to get to our destination in good time, so we didn't want to spend another day in Coober Pedy if possible. Instead of taking a frightfully expensive tour, we managed to see most of the interesting stuff ourselves with almost no cost! An underground museum was free and had some nice opalised fossils and some history of the place. The Serbian underground church, out of town along dirt roads and amongst troglodyte homes cut into hillsides was extraordinary in its construction. We paid our Permit fee at the Council to see The Breakaways and drove ourselves there. We took the Oodnadatta track out of town to the dingo fence, a 5,300 km fence keeping the dingo on the north side and the sheep on the south. It's twice as long as the Great Wall of China, though it has to said that it's possibly not quite as impressive a structure.

The Moon Plains are odd ridges of black soil with calcite chunks scattered through them. At first it looks like broken glass is littering the ground but the clear crystalline pieces are fantastic.

And then The Breakaways, so called because as the land eroded, these peaks and mesas broke away from the main mountain chain. They are remarkable - coloured rocks from pure white to yellow to red earths. Some tops to the mesas remain but most of the landforms are eroded to beautiful shapes. A worthwhile detour which took us in a loop and back onto the highway north.

Now the land is truly empty of humankind. Signs point along dirt tracks to homesteads, some are 50 or 60 kms off the road. What remoteness for the people who live there. Apart from a couple of roadhouses (one of them staffed strangely by Sri Lankans), the only other signs of life are the burnt out cars on the side of the road. One wag had leaned a large hand-painted sign against one wreck: For Sale Best Offer.

At times there weren't even any cars or trucks on the road with us. Forty-five minutes to an hour could pass before a road train or another car would pass in the opposite direction, and barely any came from behind to overtake. And so into the Northern Territory where the ground seemed just that bit redder and the sky that bit bluer. A road sign announced that in the Territory, the general speed limit was 110 unless indicated otherwise. No more than 20 m further on, the road speed sign was 130.

The journey today took us well over the 2000 km mark since leaving home on Sunday. The campsite for the night is at the turnoff to Uluru, Erldunda, and we were rewarded with a stunning NT sunset as we pulled in.