Thank god I can tick that one off the bucket list. It wasn’t as high on the list as other tracks but stoked to complete it this early on the trip. The roads were in good shape and looked to be maintained regularly but it was gruelling and looking back now it is not a way to start a trip like ours.
The road tested our van, car and our patience. The car was a dream, I built it to handle harder conditions. With a few minor issues that happened to the van, we are now waiting on some warranty repairs. With no water, (broken tap caused a full 90lt tank to empty) the slow driving and stopping and starting to check over the car and van every so often the wife and kids had had enough, me on the other hand loved every minute of it.
The Great Central Road did not look anything like we imagined. When we picture the desert, we thought of red dirt, sand and very little vegetation. Well like my son kept reminding us along the way, it does not feel like the desert. 1000km of very little wildlife, some awesome old abandoned cars, a lot of busted up tyres (that my kids found the most interesting), lots of Rocks and the scenery of emptiness, I don’t think the wife and kids really appreciated it as much as they will when they look back at it. We did manage to find a few gems along the way and as by the photos you would have to agree. The rocky hills can be magic when photographed at sunset.
Some trip notes for those that want to tackle this road, because let’s be honest have you really been to Ayers Rock if you haven’t driven there and driven up The Great Central Road when coming in from WA? Or at the very least driven home along the track.
Great Central Road Trip Notes
- As soon as you hit the first bit of gravel pull over and drop your tyre pressure, obviously depending on what car you have and load you are taking will depend on what to drop it to. I dropped my car tyres to 25 – 30psi and the van about the same but looking back at it I could have probably dropped a little more. The van is always hard as you can’t sit in it and test how bumpy it is like a car.
- The first section from Laverton to Tjukayirla Roadhouse is around the 300km mark the roads were very surprising on how good they were.
- With free camps along the way we decided not to stay at the roadhouse caravan park as free camping is more our style.
- There are some Rockhole’s at this stop if you are into that sort of thing and across the road there is a track that leads you to a place called the zoo with animal shape rocks to explore, we managed to get our car and van into it and have enough room to turn around.
- There are also some caves 15km at the back of the roadhouse, but they said we wouldn’t get the van into.
- The next Roadhouse is Warburton about another 300km again roads are pretty good just very rocky so make sure you have a lot of under body protection on the van and car.
- Warburton had a lot of the locals in tents and lean-tos on the exit that just reminds you how lucky we are doing a trip in our setup.
- Warakurna seems to be a bigger community/town as it had a lot more going on.
- The Giles weather station is in this town and even though we forgot to do it, I have heard that it is a must if you have kids or are into weather stations. They also let off weather balloons.
- This is where the trip got a little more exciting, the hills rose out of the ground and we seen the first lot of camels, apparently, they are quite thick along this part with wild horses, but we only seen a total of about 10 camels.
- When you start to reach the border, things get better and better, one thing they lack is a Northern Territory sign to say you are in the NT, the WA side has one so the photos are not as good as you could make them.
- Once in the NT we were told that the roads would be the worse and they don’t maintain them, well apart from a small section I found the roads better as they were sand and not rocks that could cause any damage.
- As you get closer to Ayers rock you all of the sudden see large rocks sticking out of the ground and you think this must be the big girl but it isn’t it is the Olgas (Kata-Tjuta) that are some of the most beautiful sights to be seen.
- About another 30km or so the big one pops out and in all its glory there it is and what a sight it is, words can’t truly describe nor can pictures. What ever you imagined it to be either big, small or huge you must come out and see it.
It truly is great to get to these tracks and in my eyes, I think it would be a shame if they seal it all the way through. It could go two ways if they do, it could help the communities along the way with more visitors or it could do the total opposite and destroy the communities along the way, me I think we should leave it the way it is now.
In conclusion, this road was basic and easy compared to others, however I could imagine it would be a different story after some rain or if it hasn’t had the grader repair it after some time, but that goes without saying about any off-road track. Would I do it again? Yes. would I do it again with the wife and kids? Probably not, unless they are a bit older. Did I enjoy it? Yes.
If you have any questions on this trip or want any more info, please send us anything through social media or the website.
Cheers Lapping the Island.
Are you still going to Darwin? I like to see photos of waterholes in Litchfield park?
Hey Mandy, yes we are but first we are going to the water holes around Alice Springs they are just as beautiful around there as the top of the NT.
stay tuned for some great spots.
Great write up Quinn’s
Well done on your first leg
Onto the next one
Hey mate have you got a lackey someone that follows you and washes the jeep and van because every picture I see they are always clean
Haha no mate its the colour of the car, keeps all the dirt hidden.
Thanks for reading
Hi Guys, fantastic read …what van were or are you towing? Can you tell me the max kms between two fuel outlets? We have a very heavy van it’s already 3500kg without spare jerry cans of fuel. What about drinking water …where did you get that?
Hi Garry,
We have a Lotus Trooper, it too weighs 3500kg the max distance between fuel outlets is 330km so fuel shouldn’t be an issue for anyone, we have fuel capacity of 270 litres plus a “just in case” 20lt Jerry Can, so we never fuelled up apart from 50 litres at Warakurna as we hadn’t fully learnt how far the car and van could go yet. Our van has 2 90 litre tanks for general use water and a 60 litre tank purely for drinking so we were full on all tanks for this trip. doesnt help that on day 2 that a rock smashed off the tap and we lost all of our drinking water, but we had a 10 litre goon bag purchased at woolies of spring water that got us through. There is a water fill station at the information bay just before Leonora town entry that we saw people use to fill their tanks up.