Woman’s crazy 900km, 9-hour trip to Woolworths and Kmart

Living on a remote homestead in the middle of the Northern Territory, Ell Regan needs to brave a 9-hour, 900km trip to for a simple supermarket dash.

A woman in the Northern Territory has shared the nine to 10-hour, interstate journey she has to take in order to do a large grocery shop.

Living at the Barkly Homestead, the former NSW resident moved to the remote location with her husband, Les Regan and one-year-old baby in March 2022. The property is halfway between Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory and Camooweal in Queensland and nearly 12 hours, or 1151km away from Darwin.

In a TikTok video, the aspiring musician gave an insight into her life in the Australian outback.

“Just on our way home from Woolies, five hour trip. We’re about to cross the border back to the NT,” she said.

“10-hour round trip to get a Click & Collect from Woolies and pop into Kmart.”

Jokingly, she captioned the video with: “Really needed some Tim Tams #Australia”.

Ms Regan said she had to cross the border between the NT and QLD to do her groceries. Picture: TikTok.

The interstate Woolworths in Mount Isa is closer than the one in Alice Springs. Picture: TikTok.

In a later video, she clarified that while the Alice Springs Woolworths is located in the Territory, the interstate option is actually closer for her to drive to.

Speaking to Yahoo Australia, Ms Regan said she visits the Mount Isa Woolworths every two weeks and supplements her groceries when workers from the Barkly Homestead visit the IGA based in Tennant Creek. While closer than the Mount Isa Woolworths, the smaller supermarket is still 211kms, or a two hour and 12 minute drive away.

Despite this, trips to the larger grocery store were necessary as items were sometimes sold out at the nearer IGA.

“But a lot of the time things aren’t available so you have to go shopping at Woolies or Coles anyway,” she told Yahoo.

In the comments of her Woolworths video, her viewers joked they would never take their local supermarkets for granted ever again.

“I will never take for granted the 2 Woolworths, 1 Coles and 1 Harris farm that are within 500m of my apartment ever again,” one commenter joked.

Responding to one comment who asked about traffic, Ms Regan agreed that driving was faster in the Territory.

“Dead straight drive & no traffic, it goes pretty fast haha,” she wrote.

Ms Regan also created a follow-up video explaining how she did her groceries during the border lockdowns. Although she was still in NSW, she said she could have gone to the Alice Springs Woolworths or the Mount Isa IGA.

“I actually didn’t live here for the lockdowns, I was locked down sort of just out of Sydney and had a baby,” she said.

“It didn’t really affect me but if I was here I would have just tried to go to Alice Springs but we do also get food delivered here to the homestead because we supply food and fuel for travellers but also a lot of local communities.

“They would have relied on us and station stores during that time.”