It’s finally going to happen

After three years of being thwarted, most recently by COVID-19, we have finally locked in some dates. We will be leaving home on 28th June 2021 and expect to be away for somewhere between three and six months.

The first few weeks of the trip will be spent getting to Deep Creek Conservation Park in South Australia where we will be Campground Hosts for the first week of the SA school holidays. From there we will be off to  Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Park for more Campground Hosting for the second week of the SA school holidays and from there we will head up to Darwin, across the top possibly via the Gibb River road and down to Perth and Albany and back home across the Nullabor and via Adelaide.

Recently we have instituted a new rule We will travel no more that 400 km / day which means a few stops along the way so we’ll have time to see the good stuff.

We will take our full complement of cameras so there should be lots of photos published. We’ll also put stuff up on facebook as well ( m99markf ) .

So without further ado here are some maps. I’ve broken the trip up into sections to make life a bit easier for me while I’m putting this together.

Seeing as neither of us have been to Darwin or Kakadu we’ll be spending a bit of time around here. Possibly a couple days in Darwin and then we’ll head off into Kakadu for a few days. After Kakadu we’ll head off back to Darwin for a day so we can do some shopping and get fuel for the next bit of the trip which will take us to Broome. We don’t know which route we’ll be taking yet – Gibb River Road or the bitumen.

Anyway here’s maps for both.

While we are in the North West of WA it’d be a shame to miss such an iconic place as Marble Bar so the route from Derby home will go via Eighty Mile Beach and Marble Bar and on to Perth. From Perth we’ll either go via Albany and Esperence to home or go from Perth to home. The route via Albany will take in places like Newman and Meekatharra. Which route we take depends on a number of factors so we’ll make up our mind as we arrive in Perth.

Once we get to Perth we can either get back to Moe directly or via Albany and Esperence. We’ll make up our minds when we get to Perth.

While putting the inevitable spreadsheet together we came up with four options for the trip after Darwin. Home via Halls Creek and Fitzroy crossing down to Albany. Home via Halls Creek and Fitzroy Crossing and directly home via Perth therefore leaving Albany out. The other two options are via the Gibb River Road which is dependent on the condition of the Gibb River Road.

So that’s our trip planned and to prove it here is the spreadsheet. There are three formats. .ods for Libre Office / Open Office, .xls for Microsoft Excel and a PDF version. Of course it goes without saying, if can see a use for the spreadsheet please feel free to download, modify and use it for your own purposes.