We had a fantastic experience on our 2017 Up the Centre Adventure!!
Driving from Port Augusta to Darwin has long been on our “bucket list” and we can now tick that off! Although we didn’t exactly travel the same route as explorer John McDouall Stuart, we certainly felt his presence all the way up the Stuart Highway. Coober Pedy was another place on our “bucket list” and can also now be ticked off.
This part of our adventure also involved revisiting many places that we had been to before, including Alice Springs, Uluru, Kings Canyon, Banka Banka Station and so on, many of which we hadn’t been to in over 20 years. Also, many of these places we had only seen as part of a tour group, but this time we were under our own steam, and had the added flexibility to do things and go places when we wanted, rather than according to a fixed schedule.
We were also able to revisit places we had enjoyed on our previous RV Adventures. Places like Daly Waters Pub, Longreach and Winton, Shady Lane at Katherine, Stubby Bend free-camp at Tambo, Kidman Camp at Bourke, The Dish at Parkes, Cobar, Cowra, and others.
In between these places we also made an effort to visit places that we may have driven through or seen on a map but not had a chance to visit. We also went ‘off the beaten track’ often rather than stick with the main highways, and got to see places like Andamooka, Glen Helen, Ross River, Gemtree, Bitter Springs at Mataranka, and so on.
Our 2017 Adventure also introduced us to “Coddiwompling”. In case our readers have forgotten, the definition of Coddiwomple is “to travel purposefully toward an as yet unknown destination”.
Coddiwompling meant that we travelled less distance each day and had more time to properly explore the places we visited. There were only 6 days out of 103 that we drove more than 300 kilometres, and many days we only drove around 100 kilometres. We have found the shorter days to be a much more pleasant way to travel and to really get to know this great country of ours.
As is to be expected, we experienced the full gamut of weather conditions on our 2017 Adventure. After-all, a large part of the motivation behind travelling when we do is to escape Melbourne’s winter. We needed both summer clothes and winter clothes and bedding, and wet weather gear as we travelled around. In some places where we expected good weather, we got bad, and in other places where we expected bad weather, we got good weather. Life is full of surprises but that’s all part of the joy of travelling.
Here are some statistics from our 2017 Up the Centre Adventure:
- Total distance travelled over 103 days was 10,732 kilometres
- Average distance travelled per day was 104 kilometres
- Longest distance travelled per day was 626 kilometres (day 103)
- Total diesel used was 1,269 litres at a total cost of $1,833
- Average cost of diesel was 147.28 cents per litre
- Highest cost of diesel was 176.00 cents per litre
- Average fuel consumption for the entire trip was about 12 .65 litres/100 km (including diesel used for heating)
- Total cost of accommodation, fuel and hire cars was $5,372, or around $52 per day
Included below is our carefully handcrafted map of our 2017 Up the Centre Adventure.
Shorty’s 2017 Up the Centre RV Adventure
We still have a lot of places to visit with Bertha so please stay tuned for Shorty’s Next Coddiwompling RV Adventure.
Shorty's RV Adventures 