Red Wine, Red Dust, Red Sunset
by Rob & Dee.

We have just returned from an 11,500 km trip from Adelaide, across the Tanami Track, up to the Bungle Bungles and the Kimberleys, and then returning down the coast of Western Australia, and across the Nullarbor to Adelaide.

Eight of us travelled in a group of 3 vehicles, calling our adventure the “Red Wine, Red Dust, Red Sunset” trip and, true to name, we drank a lot of red wine (after we had set up camp, of course), saw a lot of red dust and enjoyed the beauty of many spectacular sunsets on the trip.

We bought our Daintree Adventure Camper Trailer specifically for this trip and it performed wonderfully.

The condition of the roads ranged from smooth highway bitumen to endless kilometres of corrugations, bull dust and sand patches. Driving the Tanami Track was quite challenging in some patches, but we found some wonderful camp spots – one at Mt Doreen ruins, and the other at Sturt Creek causeway.

The 50km or so drive into the Bungle Bungles was a lovely 4WD experience – quite a few shallow creek crossings, but well worth having the opportunity to experience the walks through to Cathedral Gorge and Echidna Chasm, as well as fly over the Bungle Bungles’ spectacular rock formations from the airstrip near the campground.

We crossed countless creeks ranging from a small splash, to the Pentecost River crossing across the Gibb River Road which was generally about 2 feet deep, apart from a couple of unexpectedly deep potholes which meant that one of the vehicles took a short dive, with water gushing over its bonnet for quite a few, but long, seconds. No water got into the camper trailer though!

The camper trailer followed us effortlessly wherever we went, and we even caught the first fish of our trip in the mesh of the stone guard when we crossed one of the many creek crossings on the Gibb River Road. It was only a small fish, but our travelling companions started calling our trailer ‘the trawler'.

We felt totally spoilt with the level of comfort available to us by taking the camper trailer. One of our travelling group was a chef who volunteered to cook all of the meals on our trip. Who could say no to that sort of an offer! Our chef had spent several years living and working in London but said that our kitchen bench space was larger than he had in the apartment he had in London – and he loved it! (We were very impressed that our chef was impressed!) And the meals were sensational!

Broome was every bit as good as we had expected – a wonderfully inviting long white sandy beach with sparkling blue ocean. And we were lucky enough to see the ‘staircase to the moon’ which occurs when the tides are low and the full moon rises above the mud flats to create the illusion of a staircase.

We then spent some wonderful warm days at Cape Range National Park near Exmouth. There are huge white sand dunes and Ningaloo Reef is located offshore, with crystal clear water, loads of fish, good swimming – and, importantly, no crocodiles!

Once we were south of the Tropic of Capricorn, and the nights became frosty, we found that a heated travel blanket was one of the best things we had packed. It was cheap, plugged easily into the camper trailer, and could be spread horizontally across the camper trailer bed, so that we were toasty warm all night.

So we’d like to thank all of the people at Adventure Camper Trailers who built our totally reliable and very practical off road camper trailer. Nothing else compares!

Rob & Dee
September 2006