Oodnadatta Tk and nearby

[Cuppa]

Not afraid of long days. Have done the drive to Brisbane and Coffs Harbour a few times in one hit. Would rather do that, then I can veg about in the middle for a week or two.
Would be interesting to see how the young fella handles it, would be about 18 months old by then.

My view - you are biting off too much, especially if travelling with an 18 month old. I would suggest setting off & just evaluating things as you go. I recall travelling with an 18 month old not long after we arrived in Oz. Don’t underestimate the demands of keeping him happy in an unfamiliar environment (for you & him). I will never forget the trauma of trying to change a full nappy by a roadside, in the heat with ten million flies trying to make the job twenty million times harder than it needed to be! It doesn’t matter where you get to, only that you went.

If you are unfamiliar with travelling on tracks like the Oodnadatta you should plan to keep your speed down rather than pulling high daily mileage. It’s deceiving, it is just a long & remote dirt road but the need for constant scanning of the road ahead for soft sand, wash outs, rocks etc is tiring, & far more so at speed. A long day out there is not comparable to driving the relatively relaxed consistency of Brissie to Coffs. Expect the road to change all the time. You may get lucky & find sections recently graded but even then it pays to take it steady. It only takes one unexpected rock or wash out to ruin your day or worse. Others will recall how after much planning a chap who used to come on the forum (Billybleed) underestimated it & rolled his Patrol somewhere up that road, luckily without injury. The road itself is not the challenge, the real challenge is not becoming complacent & pushing too hard, very easy to do that on ‘long days’ when ‘destination focussed’. Note too that VK2FMIA & oddkid82 were both prepared to modify their trips rather than sticking with what they set out to do. It’s a wise attitude to take. If it took you all your holiday just to get to Oodnadatta & back because of conditions (it wont , I’m exagerating to make a point) you would have had a great adventure with stories to tell. Don’t convince yourself that you must ‘get there’. Enjoy the trip & if you don’t ‘get there’, it’ll still be around for another time, just as you will be.