A campervan travelling on a quiet road through the Australian landscape.

Australia is a distance. Drive one.

Six roads, measured end to end, from the coast highway to the Gibb. Pick the one that fits your fortnight, then let it pick the vehicle.

See the six routes What you would drive

3,025 km The Stuart Highway, Adelaide to Darwin. The longest drive here, up the middle of the country and through South Australia and the Northern Territory.

Find a vehicle for your trip

Choose your pickup and drop-off details.

Six roads, and one of them chooses your vehicle

Kilometres are the sealed route, measured through every town in order. Hours assume one driver, daylight, and no stops, which is not how anyone drives them.

1,228 kmThe Eyre Highway between Norseman and Ceduna, with no towns in it, only roadhouses

296 kmThe longest gap between two fuel stops on that highway

South WestChoose a direct road or a longer journey through the forest country

Route	km	h
East coast Campervan	2,764 km	36 h
Coral Coast Either	1,407 km	17 h
Nullarbor Campervan	2,613 km	30 h
Stuart Hwy Either	3,025 km	32 h
Kimberley 4WD only	1,129 km	13 h
South West Campervan	Varies	Varies

That table is the Kimberley’s sealed highway: 1,129 km, 13 hours, any vehicle. The Gibb River Road crosses the same country at around 647 km, mostly unsealed and takes high clearance, which is why the row says 4WD only. Same destination, different trip.

Six lines, and the country they cross

Coastline from Natural Earth. Route lines are drawn from OpenStreetMap road geometry along the highways, not redrawn by hand. The orange is the drive; the pale dots are the towns you can hire from.

All six, with hours

The Nullarbor is decided by one number

Not the distance. The distance between fuel.

A 4WD with a rooftop tent parked on red dirt below a flat-topped escarpment at sunset, with one person standing beside a campfire. — Not a caravan park: no power, no water, no phone.

The Eyre Highway runs 1,228 km between Norseman and Ceduna with no towns in it, only roadhouses. Thirteen of them sell fuel. The longest gap between two is 296 km, and the ones that catch people out are shorter than that and further from anywhere.

Norseman to Balladonia237 km
Border Village to Nullarbor Roadhouse185 km
Balladonia to Caiguna159 km

Check your vehicle’s real loaded range, current fuel availability and the hire agreement before departure. Allow a generous reserve.

Three ways to sleep, three different trips

None of them is worse. They just suit different roads, and the road has already been decided by the time you get here.

A van you stand up in

Bed, sink, fridge, and a roof you can stand under. It parks in a normal bay and it is also your car, which means you pack the bed away every morning to go to the shops. On corrugations it complains, and it is right to.

A 4WD with a roof tent

Clearance and low range, which is access and nothing else. It earns the money on the Gibb and spends the rest of the trip being taller, thirstier and harder to park than it needs to be.

A car and a cabin

The best of the three at the driving and the worst at the evenings. Every night is a booking, and on the Nullarbor that means paying for a bed in a place with nothing else to sell you.

Which road asks for which

A vehicle beneath a red escarpment at dusk. — Somewhere south of nowhere, and the only appointment is the next fuel stop.

Eleven cities hire out vehicles. Where you pick up matters more than what you hire.

Some are the wrong door: too far from the road you came for, or on the wrong side of a season. A few are worth the flight on their own.

The eleven, sorted

What to settle before you look at prices

None of these are secrets. All of them are the reason a trip goes wrong.