Alice to Tenant Creek

After such a poor night's sleep in Alice Springs last night it's a relatively short drive up to our next stop at Tenant Creek, and mercifully uneventful as well.

About 90km south of Tenant Creek we pass through the area known as the Devil's Marbles.

It's too hot for the camper van again so we decide upon an air-conditioned cabin in the Tenant Creek campsite. After settling a bit we pop over to the camps bar for a quiet drink where we meet Ron and Sandra.

Ron and Sandra fall into the grey nomad category, retired, kids grown up and then they bought a caravan and have been travelling round Australia for the past 3 years. Which kind of makes our trip seem a bit puny. We share a couple of cold ones and chew the fat for an hour or so, content with the knowledge that it's not all nutters up here.

Port Augusta to Coober Pedy

The Grey Nomads are well prepared

Our lush green campsite in Port Augusta

This is where the real driving begins. The distances increase, the opportunities for supplies and petrol decrease. And the consequences of any mishaps become potentially life threatening. The 535km from Port Augusta to Coober Pedy starts another 2000km of similar conditions to Darwin.

I've driven long distances before and across desert landscapes as well but nothing has quite prepared me for this. The outback is exactly what you expect, it's huge and flat, which is why when you do see something that deviates from this it's quite a surprise. Emus pecking at the scrub at the side of the road, massive salt lakes, like Lake Eyre (the world's largest), even some of the smaller ones are larger than a lot of countries, (I won't use Wales for comparisons, everybody does that and most people really have no idea how big or small Wales is).

It's been said before and will be again...'There's a whole lot of nothing out here'.


And we're heading for Coober Pedy which is right in the middle of this nothing....Not only that, but it's one of the hottest places on the planet, and 80 percent of the people live underground. And we're about to join them for a couple of days.

This is our underground hotel room in our undeground hotel.