Explorers Way Road Trip - Britz

Four nights from Adelaide into the Flinders Ranges in a campervan, up through the Clare Valley and the old copper country.

Clare and Watervale come first, the oldest riesling country in Australia, with Martindale Hall nearby, an 1880s mansion that stood in for the school in Picnic at Hanging Rock. Burra follows, a copper town from the 1840s where the mine, the smelter and the dugouts the miners lived in beside the creek are all preserved.

Red Banks and Mount Remarkable National Park come next, with Alligator Gorge, a narrow red quartzite gorge that can be walked through, and Mambray Creek. Wilpena Pound follows in Ikara-Flinders Ranges National Park, a natural basin of folded rock some eleven kilometres across, and Arkaroola closes the route, a private wilderness sanctuary in granite country with its own observatories, since the night skies there are among the clearest anywhere.

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. Five days is tight for this much ground, and Arkaroola in particular is a long way up unsealed road from Wilpena. Autumn and spring are the seasons, since the Flinders in summer is hot and the walks close in the middle of the day. The sanctuary’s astronomy nights need booking with them directly. Anyone with a week rather than five days would do better on the longer Flinders loop, which reaches the same places with time to walk at each of them.