Back Roads host Heather Ewart shares her road trip tips ahead of the holiday season

I’ve at all times beloved a superb highway journey — perhaps as a result of that was my dad and mom’ thought of a household vacation and previous habits die exhausting.

What a solution to see this huge nation, in case you’re ready to cop the occasional flat tyre, lack of cell phone reception, mud, flies and even snow blizzards.

And let’s not neglect the various fantastic and quirky characters you meet alongside the way in which.

With summer season holidays simply across the nook, I am going to share with you a few of my favorite highway journeys.

This week I am going to take you cruising into the South Australian outback, hand around in the Victorian excessive nation, earlier than sharing my tips on crossing the Nullarbor.

On the Oodnadatta Monitor

Take William Creek on the Oodnadatta Monitor in South Australia.

Certain, a tiny city painted utterly white will not be everybody’s cup of tea, however Trevor Wright really owns this city, so he can do regardless of the hell he desires. He reckons it was like enjoying monopoly, shopping for up this place.

Inhabitants 11 ultimately rely, William Creek has a superb pub bedecked with enterprise playing cards from around the globe pinned to the partitions of the entrance bar — the place a smiling Trevor greets prospects.

I arrived there on sunset in a brilliant purple ute owned by stockman Bobby Hunter I might met at Maree a number of hours again down the highway.

We might loved the annual Camel Cup collectively, adopted by a vibrant reunion of Afghan cameleer descendants and Bobby supplied to be my information as I continued alongside the observe.

The pure surprise of Lake Eyre-Kati Thanda Nationwide Park was the clear spotlight of our journey, as it could be for any traveller.

The most important salt lake in Australia actually involves life after desert rains, and in case you can handle it, a scenic flight from William Creek places the sheer dimension and great thing about this phenomenon into perspective.

The endpoint of my journey was the Pink Highway Home at Oodnadatta, painted brilliant pink in fact (they appear to have a factor about colors out right here) the place I used to be simply in time for the camp draft and bronco branding contest. To not point out beers and fun or two with opponents and spectators across the fireplace pits arrange at shut of day.

If attainable, it is very best to time your travels with native occasions like this — few and much between since COVID, however they will come again. And purpose for a wide range of landscapes, and the very best seasons. 

Driving Barry’s Manner

For the document, I’ve by no means been a skier, however there’s one thing actually magical about Dinner Plain within the Victorian excessive nation on the Nice Alpine Manner and waking to freshly fallen snow.

It is a distinctive city value testing in winter or summer season.

Formally opened in 1986 and surrounded by majestic snow gums, the structure of each constructing in Dinner Plain is strictly restricted to timber, native stone and corrugated iron, and the result’s fabulous.

The design is impressed by the pioneering cattlemen’s huts, and you may simply think about these days in case you take the time to move from Dinner Plain in direction of the snowfields of Jindabyne in NSW by choosing the much less well-worn path of Barry’s Manner.

Components of this winding highway are unsealed however it’s so value a dust pothole or two for the breathtaking views throughout the Snowy River valleys.

There are many lookouts, and I like to recommend the lot.

Do not miss Suggan Buggan timber schoolhouse, lovingly maintained by the descendants of those that rode their horses to high school right here again within the 1870s.

As a number of of the diehard farmers left round these remoted elements say, driving Barry’s Manner is like flying with the eagles. They proudly boast it is simply pretty much as good, if not higher than Victoria’s far more well-known Nice Ocean Highway.

I reckon they simply is perhaps proper.

Crossing the Nullarbor

Talking of well-known roads, crossing the Nullarbor Plain from south to west must be on each curious traveller’s bucket listing.

The bottom line is to not rush the journey to Perth, as I did first time spherical again within the Eighties.

A two-week Again Roads journey beginning close to South Australia’s Ceduna in 2019 confirmed me how a lot I had missed.

You’ve got simply received to enterprise off the Eyre Freeway a bit.

From whale watching at Fowler’s Bay and the Nice Australian Bight to testing the ruins of previous city buildings at Eucla proper on sundown, there are such a lot of wonderful surprises.

My private favorite was the Eyre Fowl Observatory about half an hour’s drive from the Cocklebiddy roadhouse on the WA aspect, the place you possibly can really step again in time and keep off-grid on this restored telegraph station and birdwatch if that’s the case inclined or stroll the wild seashores.

Extra delights if you hit the glowing, pristine shoreline close to Esperance, however that is a narrative for one more day.

Heather returns to the display screen with a brand new collection of Again Roads beginning January 3, 2022 on ABC TV at 7.30pm, till then, head over to ABC iview to observe the present’s earlier seven collection.