Adelaide to Uluru via Coober Pedy and Kings Canyon - maui

Eight nights and 1,600 kilometres from Adelaide to Uluru in a campervan, on sealed road the whole way into the Red Centre.

The Barossa and Clare valleys come first, an hour or two north of the city, the oldest shiraz and riesling country in Australia respectively, with vines planted in the 1840s that survived phylloxera when Europe’s did not.

Mount Remarkable follows in the southern Flinders, where gorges cut into the range and the farmland begins to give out, then Port Augusta at the head of the gulf, and Woomera, a rocket range township built in the late 1940s that was closed to outsiders for decades. Coober Pedy comes next, producing most of the world’s opal, with much of the population living underground in dugouts, then the Erldunda roadhouse at the Northern Territory turn-off, and Kings Canyon, where the rim walk runs six kilometres round sandstone walls a hundred metres high, before Uluru.

The camper and the day-by-day plan come from maui, 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. Nine days for 1,600 kilometres is a fair pace with two long days in it. Winter is the season for the centre, since summer temperatures there are punishing and the walks close in the heat of the day. The Kings Canyon rim walk starts with a steep climb and is best done at first light. This is a one-way hire, so a relocation fee is worth checking at booking, and flights out of the Ayers Rock airport are the usual way home.