11-Day Sydney to Uluru Road Trip Itinerary (and return)

Sydney to Uluru Road Trip Itinerary - Feature Image

Uluru, or Ayers Rock, is one of the most iconic destinations in Australia, and while you can fly directly to Yulara airport, there is nothing like a great Australian road trip. This road trip itinerary departs from Sydney heading to Uluru through Broken Hill, visiting some of Australia’s most unique towns. It then comes back … Read more

Darwin to Perth Day 2 – Katherine to Kununurra via Nitmiluk

Matt at the Western Australia-Northern Territory border crossing quarantine station
Driving between Katherine NT and Kununurra WA
Driving between Katherine NT and Kununurra WA

Day 2, driving from Katherine, NT to Kununurra, WA is long but pretty amazing. I thought I’d start with a quick summary of the adventure:

  1. An early start to go on the sunrise cruise at Nitmiluk (Katherine Gorge).
  2. Headed West towards the WA border.
  3. Stopped at Victoria Crossing roadhouse for fuel.
  4. Drove through Timber Creek.
  5. Crossed the WA/NT border and had our van checked at the quarantine station
  6. Turned off to Lake Argyle and checked out the lookout and shop there.
  7. Got to Kununurra, got a few more groceries, checked into the Hidden Valley caravan park and then went to Miramar National Park to see the striped hive formations there.
  8. Back to the caravan park for dinner and bed.

We covered about 620km’s, so it was a pretty long day, and there isn’t much of anything along the road. The sunrise cruise at Nitmiluk though was fantastic and well worth doing.

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Darwin to Perth Day 1 – Darwin to Katherine via Adelaide River, Pine Creek & Edith Falls

Enjoying the serenity at Edith Falls

On day 1 of our Darwin to Perth road trip, we picked up our campervan, stopped in at Adelaide River, Pine Creek, Edith Falls and finally arrived at Katherine. It was a long, hot day, but we saw some amazing sights!

Darwin to Perth Road Trip Day 0 + Darwin Mercure Airport Hotel Superior Queen Room Review

Departing Sydney for Darwin on Our Jetstar Flight.

To begin our Darwin to Perth road trip (and squeeze as much in between work as possible), we got a late night Jetstar flight from Sydney to Darwin. It departed at 9:00 pm and arrived at 1:05 am in the morning. Hence, since it was so late by the time we left and we were able to do a full day at work as normal before our flight, I figure it hardly counts as a day, and so I call it day 0. Being a Jetstar flight it was not super comfortable, but we were able to get a little bit of sleep on the plane at least. Even so, it was pretty tiring, so we were looking forward to getting into a proper bed and sleeping for a few hours.

I have to admit the Darwin airport is bigger than I expected, but given how late we got there, we were eager to get to bed and didn’t spend any more time there than absolutely necessary. We were quickly outside where we were hit by 27°C temperatures and very high humidity. We expected it, but it was still a shock to the system after our highs at home of 22°C and lows of 5°C from the few weeks before the trip.

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14-Day Darwin to Perth Roadtrip Itinerary

So, we flew to Darwin, hired a camper van and road tripped to Perth following as close as we could to the coastline within the limitations of the van that required we only use sealed roads with some small exceptions. There are a lot of unsealed roads in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, so there are a lot of places we had to miss, but at the same time, 2 weeks or 14 days is not a huge amount of time to do the road trip in either. We didn’t really have the time to have done any more than we did. Our original itinerary actually did have more in it but we had to revise some parts of it due to time constraints and availability of the Horizontal Falls Tours as well as doing extra things we saw along the way. In fact, if you do your research, a lot of people would recommend taking a lot more time to do this trip than we did. However, if you really want to do it, are used to driving long distances, and are willing to pack as much in as possible, then it is possible to see and do an awful lot. In short, there is a LOT to do, so consider this just a portion of what you could do and see if you really want to push it and pack everything in you can.

One thing to note, the approximate driving times here are just driving and are not including stops or detours to places along the way. Those add more time, sometimes lots of it!

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Watch it instead: You can watch the itinerary on my Youtube channel or below!

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10 Tips for Saving Money on Fuel while Road Tripping Around Australia

130km/h Sign in the Northern Territory

We have done quite a lot of road-tripping in a number of countries, but Australia is our home turf and there is a lot of ground to cover here. As a result, we have done a lot of road-tripping in Australia (like our road trip between Darwin and Perth and Sydney to Uluru return) and that experience has taught us a few things that add up to make a big difference in the cost of a road trip. It doesn’t matter whether you are driving a car and staying at motels/hotels/cabins/etc, towing a caravan or cruising in a camper van, these things will help save you money.

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