call me crazy....but east to west trip!

hey all, i'm thinking of planning a true east to west trip across australia.

officially starting at the most eastern spot of Australia at the Byron Bay lighthouse, and finishing at the most western spot at Steep Point near Denham in WA.

at this point in time, it's just a wild musing, but i'm looking for people who may be keen to give it a crack, or have done something similar.

will probably look at making it as direct as possible - simpson desert crossing, across the heart of WA, etc. all the tough stuff.

that would be a massive trip, but something i would most defiantly be interested in doing.
with some good planing and research it would be an awesome trip and a great experience.
when were you thinking of doing the trip?

That is a awesome trip.... Definitely keeping an eye on this thread!

That would be a blast but I don't think I'm up to a Simo crossing but that could change - I'll keep an eye on this thread too!

I'm currently away from home at the moment, but when I get back this afternoon, I'll sit down with the maps and work out a rough route.

Simpson desert? is that the trip Sw out of birdsville, etc to the hot springs place?

Otherwise, there is the Plenty Highway, but that is more NE to SW when you join it with some WAdevelopment road(mind like a sieve atm, was looking at it last week).

If you took this route, we'd be able to join you. It's a long journey, but it would be so much fun. Not this year though, and not during next year. We might manage it for Christmas 2012 but I fear we'd be pushing hard to do that.

An alternative that sorta skirts the Simpson Desert (Google Maps doesn't recognise any roads through there, yet I can see some from the satellite images) and goes past Yulara/Uluru/Kata Tjuta and hits the Gibson Desert is here. I don't think we'd be able to do this one, at least not for some time. Notice also that by going through the centre, you're adding 800km to the journey. Two tanks and a whole day's travel on sealed roads, towing a van ... hmm! On dirt, that could take 2, possible 3 days in good conditions, but if it gets messy ... hope you've got several weeks up your sleeve.

If anything, hopefully those links will help plan the route.

Well the route I've got in my head at the moment is Byron bay up to mitchell then out to birdsville, across the Simpson to dalhousie hot springs, or maybe up the hay river track to join the plenty highway, out through yulara and across WA. take-in parts of the gunbarrel highway and possibly some of the canning stock route

I'll flesh it out some more tonight

Id love to, but I struggle to get more then 3 days off usually.

At this stage, I'm aiming for winter 2013. Gives plenty of time for vehicle prep, holiday accrual, and money saving!

There could be two groups, one crossing the Nullabor and the other cutting through the deserts. Some of us have large road-preferred rigs and don't want to invest in additional gear, but the journey is still something to achieve.

If you have no objections to that, I might draw up some likely rest area stops that would be suitable for a convoy of Navaras with road vans to use on the Nullabor route.

Sounds like a plan, i did a rough calc in my head today, and I would guess that it could take us 2-3weeks to reach steep point, but that is allowing ALOT of extra time.

joshman said:

Well the route I've got in my head at the moment is Byron bay up to mitchell then out to birdsville, across the Simpson to dalhousie hot springs, or maybe up the hay river track to join the plenty highway, out through yulara and across WA. take-in parts of the gunbarrel highway and possibly some of the canning stock route

I'll flesh it out some more tonight

Click to expand...

Inculde the cost going to the dentist to reset your fillings if your going to take the Gunbarrel/Talawana.

If my wife and I were doing it alone, we'd easily cover 1,000km a day and do the entire trip inside a week. It's not because we go along like bats out of hell, it's simply the hours driven - and despite stopping for photos, souvenirs, fuel, lunch and a tour through the Bega Cheese factory, we did Kiama to Providence Ponds in a day (as an example). That also included a stop at Newmerrella (near Orbost) to have dinner and remove a solar panel that had come loose.

I think that a convoy changes things, slows them down. On your own, you stop for fuel and 10 minutes later you're off and running again. In a convoy of 6 vehicles, that fuel stop takes an hour. Stopping for food, rest breaks, photos etc becomes an exercise in planning parking and routes back out to the road.

I'll start working it out and see where it takes us.

Old.Tony said:

If my wife and I were doing it alone, we'd easily cover 1,000km a day and do the entire trip inside a week. It's not because we go along like bats out of hell, it's simply the hours driven - and despite stopping for photos, souvenirs, fuel, lunch and a tour through the Bega Cheese factory, we did Kiama to Providence Ponds in a day (as an example). That also included a stop at Newmerrella (near Orbost) to have dinner and remove a solar panel that had come loose.
I think that a convoy changes things, slows them down. On your own, you stop for fuel and 10 minutes later you're off and running again. In a convoy of 6 vehicles, that fuel stop takes an hour. Stopping for food, rest breaks, photos etc becomes an exercise in planning parking and routes back out to the road.

I'll start working it out and see where it takes us.

Click to expand...

The big unknown factor about my plan is the simo and the trip across the centre of WA. And honestly, I kinda like an easy travel, I'm all for starting early, but I also like to stop before dark and set uo camp. But yes, convoys take alot of time.

That's the advantage of a full sized caravan - no setup time, just get it level as you park and you're there. The drawback is you can't take it some places.

I'm aiming to find rest areas for overnight stops at between the 500-600km mark, but may adjust that depending on what's available around the place. That will make the trip (averaging 550km a day) 9 days and a bit, with about 7 to 8 hours of driving each day. I'll be able to be more accurate after I've finished the route, but even with mountains and pouring rain, that sort of pace is easily achievable.

after crossing the Simpson we did the Hay river track (it was the best part of our trip) - not a chance that you could take a caravan up it - probably struggle to take a trailer. I like the idea of the trip but personally I would make it an adventure and make it a challenge instead of just going down highways i.e. the plenty - which i know is dirt - but bugger all challenge in it - go across the Simpson - then join up with the canning stock route - try and make the trip with the absolute minumum of bitumen - if you had a choice of dirt or bitumen, take the dirt every time. if it were something like that - a decent 4WD trip I'd be interested.

joshman said:

up the hay river track to join the plenty highway, out through yulara and across WA. take-in parts of the gunbarrel highway and possibly some of the canning stock route

I'll flesh it out some more tonight

Click to expand...

I have a work colleague that did this in a D21 with just him and his wife (and a sat phone) in July this year. They only got bogged once and luckily only a 15 km walk back to the nearest homestead to get a telehandler to pull 'em out.

Other than that no issues whatsover.

I got bored with sleeping at 2am and at 3am I decided I'd start laying out the journey properly. It's 5:30am and I'm done. This map is for the ROAD TRIP and takes 9 days to get from Byron Bay lighthouse to Denman in WA. Starting date is yet to be decided. Hopefully we can time things well enough to meet the desert-travellers at Denman so we can all party together.

There are several caravan parks in Denham. Powered sites at "Shark Bay" Caravan Park are $30 for two people per day, "Blue Dolphin" is $33 for 2 people per day. I'm not sure how long we'll need to stay there, but I do think that we need to decide on trip leaders for the roadies and the desert team and those trip leaders should have some means of communicating with each other.

I have looked into satellite phones and they suck badly in terms of cost. I think SMS will be the way to go. The road team should have cellular contact most of the trip, so it'd really be up to the desert team to make the call for position and arrival time updates when they get a signal.

So, for the ROAD TRIP ...

Here's the map with the waypoints laid out. Each point is (from what I can see in Google Maps, Google Street View and from Camps Australia) a rest area large enough to take several rigs with ease.

WATER IS AN ISSUE - there is limited good quality water west of Tamworth, which is pretty much the entire journey. I'll probably remove my two 59L tanks and install a pair of 82L tanks before this trip.

FRUIT FLY EXCLUSION ZONES - these aren't optional, they're mandatory and at Oodla Wirra (unavoidable) they will pull you over and search your vehicle. They didn't climb on board our rig when we went through there, but they might. You can carry fresh lettuce and that's about it. Thankfully we can resupply anywhere beyond here, and there's a Woolworths in Port Augusta. No, there are no Aldi stores west of Mudgee.

PORTABLE TOILETS - I have noted dump points throughout the trip. Each one listed is free, all but the one in Cobar I have seen evidence of. The roadside toilets in rest areas are COMPOSTING toilets so if you want to be able to use those, use the GREEN toilet chemical and NOT the blue one.

NOTES: The letter at the start of the line corresponds with the letter on the Google Maps page for this trip. The "CA" reference is a reference in Camps Australia 4. It might be different in later versions.

A) Start Byron Bay.

569km
B) Stop 1 CA NSW 305 "Red Bank Rest Area" 7km east of Gunnedah.

577km
C) Stop 2 CA NSW 921 "Meadow Glen Rest Area" 63km west of Cobar.
- Dump point at Information Bay on way into town "Great Cobar Heritage Centre". Need confirmation that it exists.
- Fuel on RIGHT HAND SIDE of road - BP, Shell, Caltex in that order heading west.
- MUST refuel here to avoid stop in Wilcannia

* Can spend a little time in Broken Hill *
Broken Hill has fuel at several locations but not on the road we're travelling on, we need to turn off the highway into town. Don't rely on fuel for some distance beyond Broken Hill.

467km
D) Stop 3 CA SA 271/272 on right side of road, multi-path rest area. Not far into SA.

558km
E) Stop 4 CA SA 630 "Goyders Line Memorial Rest Area" on north side of road 11km west of Koongawa
- Dump point at BP in Ceduna west end of town. BP is a truck stop, worth refuelling at too. Dump point is at far end.

611km
F) Stop 5 CA SA 668 "Scenic Lookout 111K Peg" on south side of road, camp near cliff face

606km
G) Stop 6 CA SA 23 "Harms Lake" on north side of road

662km
H) Stop 7 CA SA 325 "Burracoppin Centenary Park" on south side of road "opposite tavern"
- Dump point in Norseman on Robert St at Visitor Information Centre (Welcome Park).

642km
I) Stop 8 CA SA 408 "Oakabella Rest Area" 35km north of Geraldton left (west) side of road

375km - Day 9
J) DESTINATION REACHED

dirtjockey said:

after crossing the Simpson we did the Hay river track (it was the best part of our trip) - not a chance that you could take a caravan up it - probably struggle to take a trailer. I like the idea of the trip but personally I would make it an adventure and make it a challenge instead of just going down highways i.e. the plenty - which i know is dirt - but bugger all challenge in it - go across the Simpson - then join up with the canning stock route - try and make the trip with the absolute minumum of bitumen - if you had a choice of dirt or bitumen, take the dirt every time. if it were something like that - a decent 4WD trip I'd be interested.

Click to expand...

this is my goal, as little bitumen as possible. i do plan to take a day or two to rest up at dalhousie at the other side of the simo, or in alice.

we could go birdsville>poeppell corner>hay river road>binns track>Mt Dare/alice

i do need to sit and work out a route for this, the afternoons are just getting busy as!