Backpackers reveal the truth about the Kimberley

ENGLISHMAN Gareth Williams just drove 26,000km around Australia. He doesn’t have a licence, but it wasn’t technically illegal.

The Kimberley’s Wolfe Creek Crater is not to be confused with the scene of the backpacker murders.

ENGLISHMAN Gareth Williams just drove 26,000km around Australia.

He doesn’t have a licence, but it wasn’t technically illegal.

The 30-year-old web developer has a learner’s permit, and he drove a white Toyota Hiace under the watchful eyes of his Australian girlfriend, Shelley Hamer.

“A few times it was a bit too hairy for me, I just held onto my seatbelt and pretty much cried. We wanted to do a whole lot of unsealed roads, that’s where it got a bit scary I think,” she said.

“I was driving full ‘Dukes of Hazzard’,” admitted Gareth.

“We were driving on gravel tracks at about 80 and thinking everything was fine, and all of the sudden the road would just fall away. There were these huge corrugations. All four wheels of this Toyota Hiace would be off the ground, and the mattress would fly forward and half the stuff would slide around the van.”

The Bungle Bungles in the Kimberley, where temperatures rise well above 40C.

The pair have just completed a loop around Australia, encompassing landmarks such as Lake Eyre, Uluru, Ningaloo Reef, the Kimberley, and the Daintree Rainforest.

The Wolfe Creek Crater (not to be confused with the location of the Wolf Creek backpacker murders) left a particularly lasting impression.

It’s the second-largest meteorite crater in the world, measuring 850-metres across. It’s located in the northeast of Western Australia, and getting there takes five-hours of bumping down the rough road from Halls Creek in extreme heat.

“We asked the locals a lot if we’d be able to make the side trips in a two-wheel drive. A lot of the time it was 20cm to 30cm corrugations, bumping around at 10km an hour, or 5km an hour,” Gareth told news.com.au.

Palm Springs is an Oasis near Halls Creek, one of the region’s hidden secrets.

“It was 40-plus and we had no airconditioning in the van,” recalled Shelley.

“It was windows down or nothing, really. Even drinking heaps and heaps of water, and soft drink because the water tasted horrible, Gaz started to get really sick with nausea and a pounding headache.

“One day all we did was drive the highway because it was too hot to go off road. We were aiming for a free camp, but we had reception, and we Googled around and found a camp with a pool. But once we got there, he was too sick, he just kinda flopped out of the van. I think I got a touch of it the next day.

“Backpackers need to know what to expect in places like the Kimberley. The only information they’re getting is from fluffy tourism websites that point to pretty things with no real information. We wrote a blog post about it, and we actually got trolled a bit for ‘glamorising’ the whole thing.”

“If you think about it, we have a shovel under the front seat in case we needed the toilet, so it’s not glamorous at all, really,” laughed Gareth.

Australian Shelley met Englishman Gareth on holiday in Thailand.

The pair met in Thailand, while Gareth was backpacking around Southeast Asia and Shelley was on holiday for a week with a friend. He decided to come and meet her in Melbourne, and together they saw the Great Ocean Road and a little bit of Tasmania.

In the end, they decided the only way to see Australia properly was to buy a van.

“We wrote a budget that turned out to be absolutely worthless,” said Gareth.

“We saved $7000 each, to $14,000 all up, and it came out three or four thousands dollars more for each of us.”

“A lot of that was just petrol,” explained Shelley

“It was more than two dollars a litre near Uluru, and that’s just mind-blowing. The lowest we saw was under 90 cents in Perth,” said Gareth.

The trip was a combination of both adventures and misadventures.

Exploring Kata Tjuta, commonly known as “The Olgas”.

Inside one of the gorges at Karijini National Park.

Karijini National Park was a definite highlight.

“I think it’s a bit of a secret compared to other places people know, like Kakadu. Compared to that, a lot of people don’t know about Karijini,” said Shelley.

“What was going through my head is that it’s not like Europe. You get this national park, and you’re actually just walking through the gorges. It’s huge and untouched and beautiful, and usually I’d expect to have to go on some kind of tour to get into a place like that,” said Gareth.

At the other end of the spectrum, accidentally locking themselves out of the van at a creepy abandoned railway station somewhere near Lake Eyre was a real low.

“It was the middle of nowhere, with no reception, and all these squawking bats were flying around,” said Gareth.

“I ended up having to throw a rock against the window.”

“That was in the first week, too,” said Shelley.

“We were driving around for three or four days with no window, and we were pulling glass out of the van for the entirety of the rest of the trip.”

The road trip took longer than 100 days, and covered more than 26,000 kilometres.

Despite the early hitch, the trusty van made it all the way around the Sydney before a few loose wires caused a problem with the fuel pump.

The pair said if the were to do it again, they’d considering getting a four-wheel drive with a tent on the roof, because although it would increase fuel consumption, it would improve their ability to explore the outback’s more remote regions

They also have advice for other travellers interested in exploring the outback.

“Stay safe. We let people know roughly where we were at all times, and because we had Telstra phones we had sporadic reception. Without that, people wouldn’t have known where we were for weeks at a time, because you cover thousands of kilometres,” Gareth told news.com.au.

“It’s a case of being prepared. If you’re getting down to half a tank of fuel, you’ve just got to fill up, because we were doing 8.5km to a litre, and it was usually nearly an entire tank to the next fuel stop.”

Gareth said he panicked when he saw a dingo while camping near Uluru.

“The only other tip I would have is using social media for advice. Before we started, I had a whole lot of Instagram accounts of people who’d been to the Outback, and I could ask people how they got there,” said Shelley.

“There’s also a lot of travel blogs out there. I don't' think you can get the information you need from typical tourist websites.”

Next, the couple is planning to do a similar trip in New Zealand before exploring as much of the Pacific as possible.

“We’ve got flights to the Cook Islands already sorted, and then we’re hoping to get back to Vanuatu via Fiji or New Caledonia,” said Gareth.

“We really want to explore all of Oceania.”

Follow the adventure on Gareth and Shelley’s blog, The Grand Tourists.