When you think of a long drive in Australia, your mind tends to think of the Nullabor and that famous long straight road taking you from SA across to WA. As we started planning our route from Mataranka, it was clear that over the next stage of the journey we would cover a lot of distance and a lot of open space.

We set our sights on Karumba on the Gulf of Carpentaria as the next ‘main’ destination and with a fishing charter booked in for the boys on the 8th Sept, we had 5 days to get there. The only slight challenge being that Karumba is around 1750km from Mataranka. Thinking back to our drive across the Nullabor, where we covered 1400km between Ceduna in SA and Esperance in WA, we knew this would take some long days in the car and a series of one night stops but totally achievable.

Initially we planned to break the journey up over five days and four single night stops. Day one the kids were amazing in the car and we pushed on from Mataranka and made it down to Banka Banka station, approximately 50km north of Tennant Creek. The Station has opened up its ‘garden’ to create a small camp ground and it’s clearly a popular spot to pause on the Stuart Highway. A short walk up the hill behind the Station and you can really see the scale of the landscape around.

With a sunset game of cricket happening on the Station next to the ‘bar’, it doesn’t take travelling families long to find someone to chat to.

Day two and we set our sights on the Queensland border, 520km away. The scrub and bush land of the Stuart Highway turned into open grassland as we started to cross the Barkley Tablelands. With the exception of a few wild horses and some cows, we really didn’t see anything for several hours.

After a solid day of driving, we reached the QLD border!

We found ourselves a spot at the free camp just outside of Camooweal.

Day three we are all starting to feel the fatigue of days of driving but the kids are still smiling so we pushed onwards. After days of driving through flat open grassland, the area around Mt Isa was a real change with hills and different vegetation. We even spotted an emu with some chicks which made a change from the millions of cows we usually see! Mt Isa is clearly a large mining town and had that similar feel to some of the Pilbara mining areas. Quick pause in the town for supplies then onwards for the afternoon drive.

Initially we had set our sights on getting to Cloncurry but with everyone happily settled in the car, and Kiera fast asleep, we figured we may as well keep driving and pushed on to the Burke and Wills roadhouse – a classic outback QLD roadhouse.

After a big three days in the car, we were left with only 280km for our final drive north from Burke and Wills to get to our end destination of Karumba. After travelling 1400km in three days, 280km seemed like a pretty leisurely drive!

Shortly after lunch we arrived at Karumba Point…safe and well, and remarkably all still smiling! Time to unhitch the car and set down some tiny roots for a few days. Not a bad view to unpack to…