"The Melbourne Cup is the day before we sail for Papua New Guinea"  I observed out loud perusing the map and calendar balanced together on my lap, as we bumped along the Plenty Highway. "Highway" is a rather ambitious name.The unsealed road begins at a turnoff from the Stuart Highway 68 kilometres north of Alice Springs, and finishes at Tobermorey Homestead 498 kilometres later on the Northern Territory/Queensland border. It then continues for another 249 km...

From Coral Bay we headed further south with the aim of making it to Steep Point. Steep Point is Australia's most westerly point and the culmination of our odyssey.The fingers of the Shark Bay Peninsular area also house the towns of Useless Loop (a closed Mining town) Denham and the tourist resort of Monkey Mia famous for its dolphins. Across from the peninsular is Dirk Hartog island.But our initial stop is at the first bay to observe the worlds oldest living ...

From Boulia we continued travelling through the middle of Oz, basically the route taken by the ill fated Burke & Wills to Burketown on the Gulf (Carpenteria). On the way we called into the Lawn Hill national park which is very isolated, but spectacular (the Lawn Hill Gorge is a good place for seeing Johnston freshwater crocs). From Burketown we took the Savannah Highway across the top of Australia to Katherine. We had to be fairly conscious of timing, as the we...

After Woomera we travelled across to Roxeby Downs, quite a busy community, based on uranium mining. After Roxeby Downs we set up camp off the Oodnadatta track so we would be fresh to tackle the Birdsville track. The next morning we set off and were pleasantly surprised to find the track in reasonable condition. We stopped several times to enjoy the natural artesian springs and in one place a spa of sorts. We arrived safely at Birdsville in good spirit to enjoy a ...

We had heard about the hot artesian spa included in the swimming pool complex in Bedourie 166 km north of Birdsville and decided as this was on the way we would head there. We arrived about 5'sh only to discover the pool was closed, so drooped into the pub to get the opening times, to be told the pool was actually closed for renovations. Under normal circumstances the keys are available from the Diamantina Shire Council office and use of the 25m pool and 22 p...