The Savannah Way - Britz

Thirteen nights and 3,726 kilometres from Cairns to Broome in a 4WD camper, across the top of the continent on the Savannah Way.

Undara comes first, where lava tubes left by an ancient eruption run for kilometres underground and are among the longest in the world, then Forsayth and Cobbold Gorge, a sandstone slot barely wide enough for a boat, on a working cattle station.

Normanton follows on the Gulf of Carpentaria, with the Gulflander railway and a replica of the largest crocodile ever recorded, then Hells Gate and Borroloola, and this is the stretch the operator flags as unsealed and genuinely 4WD country. Katherine comes next, then Timber Creek in Gregory National Park, Kununurra, and Turkey Creek for Purnululu and the Bungle Bungles, with Fitzroy Crossing before Broome.

Britz supply the camper and the day-by-day plan, and the hire is priced live per vehicle rather than per person; campsites, fuel, ferries, park fees and activities are all extra, with a nil-excess insurance pack available at booking. The Normanton to Borroloola section is the one that decides whether this trip works: corrugated, remote and impassable in the wet. Fourteen days for 3,726 kilometres is a brisk pace for that kind of surface. This is a one-way hire, so a relocation fee is worth checking, and the season runs roughly May to October. What the route delivers is the least travelled crossing of northern Australia: the gulf savannah, cattle country and Aboriginal communities that the coastal and highway itineraries never touch.