Sydney to Kununurra the long way — Cobar, Silverton, Port Augusta, Coober Pedy, Alice Springs, then up the Buchanan Highway through Top Springs and Timber Creek. No straight lines, and the weather didn't help. This is episode one, the run north before the Oombi Track itself even starts.
I used Memory-Map For All as my main GPS navigation app for the whole trip — that's what's on screen in most of the in-car footage. The app is free. The recommended add-on is the HEMA 4WD Map Pack; the 10% discount on that link applies to all maps. Full breakdown in the navigation app review.
This series is sponsored by Kilos. I bought my first Kilos chair myself, well before any sponsorship, and these days they support me with their chairs and the Rover Camping Light X. Sponsored or not, the Kilos chair is now my preferred lightweight chair and has replaced the Helinox for me. The Rover Camping Light X — their multifunctional telescopic camp light — has been used every single day on this trip. I run three of them, and both my son Kaelan and I are using the chairs.
7:30am, on the way to do the Oombi Track. Probably two months away, possibly Cape York afterwards depending on how summer goes. I haven't been on a long trip like this for three years. Packed to the rafters, weather a bit average, a bit of rain but nothing too bad.
Cobar and a New Awning's First Real Run
Day one got us to Cobar. The forecast wasn't promising, so I tried a motel room, but nothing came up at a sensible price, so we camped at the Cobar Common.
New on the Cruiser is the OpenRoad freestanding awning. I'd tested it briefly at home, but this was its first real run in the bush. After more than five years with the Supapeg, which I still have and like, I wanted something freestanding that I could set up and pack away quickly, mainly for shade later in the trip. OpenRoad supplied it for testing and review, and I'll give my full opinion, pros and cons, at the end of the series. So far the quick setup and the built-in LED lights impress me. The covered area is smaller than the Supapeg though, and it doesn't fully cover the stretcher and the swag.
We had rain overnight, not enough to cause problems, but it was chilly. The awning doesn't have sidewalls yet — they haven't arrived, which is a bummer, because with two sidewalls it would be sorted. We waited half an hour to see if the rain would ease, and when it didn't, packed it in. Pretty ordinary weather, 100 kilometres from anywhere.
Silverton and Penrose Park
Weather cleared up a bit, so we headed out to Silverton and Penrose Park. We hadn't stayed there for three years. Penrose Park used to be the holiday district for Broken Hill in the early days, and I still like it — plenty of old structures, the best times obviously long over, but it's well maintained and you can have a fire and set up wherever, fairly spacious. Whenever I'm around Broken Hill I camp here, because I don't rate Broken Hill itself very highly. I've stayed in a few caravan parks there over the years, but I'd much rather be out here.
I made a big mistake packing for this trip — I changed my air-up and air-down setup to a flatter kit and left the whole hose setup in the garage. Stupid mistake. Had to make the best of it and get an ARB air hose in Broken Hill the next day.
It was too late to get into the Mad Max Museum in Silverton, but if you're passing through, it's definitely worth a visit. Had a giant vanilla ice cream at the Silverton Hotel for dinner instead — my favourite whenever I'm in South Australia or close to the border.
A Stretcher I'd Leave Home If I Could
Had a nice steak that night, cooked on the second barbecue since the first one stopped working, with cold veggies kept in the EcoFlow. We had a bit of shelter, which was good given a thunderstorm was forecast, but it didn't rain — instead I had a fairly noisy night.
I made another mistake before the trip and bought a new stretcher. Normally I use the Oztent Bunker Pro. This time I bought an OZtrail instead — I've had three or four OZtrail stretchers over the years, and between all my stretchers I'd have easily spent a thousand nights-plus sleeping in them. I basically only sleep in stretchers. I chose this one because it's a bit lighter and packs down smaller, and figured we probably wouldn't get much rain through the Kimberley, so the fly not being as good wouldn't matter as much.
But they changed the design. It used to have a zipper running all the way around; now it's on each side, and this thing is loud. Any wind and it goes into a frenzy. All stretchers make some noise in the wind, but the Bunker Pro I could pack down properly and I've had many nights in storms with it. This one, the noise is ridiculous — if I could, I'd leave it home. We only had 25km/h overnight and it rattled like there was no tomorrow, building up in some sort of rhythm before eventually letting up. I've secured one of the strings to stretch it out a bit and may need a guy rope on each side, even though that's not really what it's there for.
Broken Hill to Port Augusta
The second we finished packing up at Penrose Park, the rain started. Broken Hill had a river running through the streets — not something you want to drive a road car through. We got out of town fast, since the forecast for the afternoon was bad.
The drive to Port Augusta was uneventful apart from a few oversized loads coming the other way — when one of those is heading at you, you pull over and let it have the road. This one was the biggest I've come across.
We stopped for breakfast outside the Mannahill Hotel, which is more museum than pub these days. Mannahill was surveyed in the mid-1880s as a water and maintenance stop on the Peterborough-to-Cockburn railway line, with goldfields nearby that pulled a rush in 1886. The hotel went up in 1889 and could put up fifty people, mostly shearers and teamsters from the surrounding stations. Olary, further along, came up around the same time to serve the same railway and highway. Once transport to Broken Hill modernised, there was no reason for people to stay — at last count the population was four.
South Australia's drinking-water stations along the highway are handy — clean, pure drinking water, and we filled up all our bottles at one.
I had more issues with ExplorOz on my Android tablet, running alongside Google Maps. I switched away and back and it wouldn't load, needed a restart, and even with Wi-Fi, Starlink and satellite reception it still showed me at Broken Hill when I was well past it. It's the most frustrating app I've used, and I bought the Android tablet partly to get away from the issues I had with it on iOS — unfortunately it's just as bad on Android. Memory-Map For All, by comparison, worked perfectly the whole way.
We hit Horrocks Pass during golden hour, named after the explorer John Horrocks, who came through in 1846 looking for a route between the Flinders and the coast. Green hills all around with no trees on them, and with the sun on them they look outstanding. Got a few minutes of clear light and put the drone up.
Having Starlink meant we could organise a hotel in Port Augusta while still driving, so we had a good night's sleep without worrying about the weather.
Coober Pedy
Reasonably good night in Port Augusta, didn't rain, and the cloud cover cleared as we headed toward Coober Pedy.
The Insta360 Luna gave me grief along the way — it kept telling me "dirty metal," which wasn't the issue, then hung itself and I couldn't stop the recording or reset it. Switched it off and on a few times before it worked again. I really like the idea of this camera — the zoom and plenty of other things about it are great — but it's not yet reliable, and I'm hoping there's a firmware fix coming.
Along the Stuart Highway, without Starlink there's zero reception — just an emergency-call point along a long stretch with nothing else. Starlink worked well here even partially obstructed on the roof next to the swag. Overtaking B-triple road trains, three trailers and over 50 metres of truck, is one of those driving jobs that's pretty much unique to Australia, and even here, only in certain states.
I've driven through Coober Pedy many times but never really spent time in town, so this time we stopped. Opal was found here in 1915 by a teenager, Willie Hutchison, whose father was out prospecting for gold. Returned soldiers came back from the trenches of the First World War and did what they knew — they dug in. The name comes from local Aboriginal words usually translated as "white man's hole in the ground," about as literal a place name as it gets. These days the town produces a big chunk of the world's opal, and with summer temperatures in the high 40s, a good part of the population still lives underground in dugouts.
I climbed the lookout for a proper look around — from up there you see what makes the place different, dugouts, mineshafts and mullock heaps dotted everywhere, half the houses under your feet. Went over to the old starship prop still sitting in town, a crashed ship from Pitch Black, filmed here in 1999 — the desert around Coober Pedy stood in for an alien planet, which tells you something about the landscape. Finished with a walk through one of the underground opal shops, worth seeing even if you're not buying, just for a shop dug into the hillside.
Topped up food supplies and pushed on toward Alice Springs, camping a kilometre or so off the Stuart Highway in the scrub for the night. The OpenRoad awning was quick to put up again, with a small fire going and the light from it giving a nice warm glow. You'd never know the highway was there beside us, just the occasional car passing in the distance.
Alice Springs and a Forgotten Air-Up Kit
Cold enough overnight that I had to get the winter sleeping bag out. Two hours before Alice, Aaron from Essential 4x4 sent me a MORRflate air-up replacement kit — the module and hoses — from Adelaide via TNT, and it arrived within 24 hours. Jess, one of the resellers with a tyre shop in Alice, was at the show, so we headed to the showground to meet him and pick it up. Exactly what I'd forgotten packing, sorted between Aaron and Jess.
We decided not to stay in Alice Springs itself, and instead found a camp spot in the bush about 30 kilometres out for the night.
Continue in Sydney to Kununurra the Long Way North Part 2 — early morning camp evacuation, Devils Marbles, the old telegraph stations, a night at Banka Banka Station, then the Buchanan Highway via Top Springs with the road to Timber Creek marked closed. For remote travel more generally, the Simpson Desert Travel Guide is the book I keep pointing people to — 260 pages, PDF and EPUB.
