Adelaide, not much to say about this place other than it was wet and we had a particularly mouth-watering Thai curry that was fresh, vibrant and full of sharp flavours. We then went on to pay a visit to Australia’s premium wine valley, The Barossa. It is described as being a charming place filled with wineries, butcher shops, bakeries and vineyards. If this description of a place was not enough to entice me, then nothing would. In reality, the bakeries were plain, the butcher shops industrial and the wineries harsh on the pallet. But we did rent a couple of bikes to glide blissfully from vineyard to vineyard.

Conscious that we had been living a life of relative ease and tranquillity, my wife and I decided to head off the beaten track, drive away from the common tourist route and make damn good use of our four wheel drive and undergo a journey of a thousand kilometres off any form of sealed road.

First stop: The magnificent Flanders Ranges. A giant asteroid crater, possibly the size of Canterbury, accessible only by 4x4. We marvelled at rock formations 400 million years old and were dazzled by deep reds and bright yellows while driving along dried up gorges. I made a roaring fire that left blistering embers for Ju to fry some particularly moist and flavoursome eggy bread over.

Second Stop: The Oodnadatta Trail. A dirt track several hundred kilometres long that crosses sun scorched earth, snakes around rainless deserts, descends into rivers in drought and avoids any form of animal life. The heat was intense, the air was dry and out here dust is king. We camped out in Coward’s Spring, which is a natural oasis in the middle of this desiccated land. The natural spring was cool enough to be refreshing and yet warm enough to untie the knots of the bumpy road. To make a fire, we chopped up some old railway sleepers (from the famous disused Ghan railway track, linking Darwin, up north, to Adelaide, down south) and they burned magnificently.

While I was busy chopping up the wood, a filthy backpacker approached me. I could smell his insulting stench before I could see him. I had the misfortune of being downwind. His hair was long and greasy, platted by dirt and dust. His skin had either been darkened by the sun or browned by weeks of soap dodging. His top was torn and stained with dark patches of grease and food stains. His trousers hung loosely and he scratched away at his belly like a rabid, diseased dog as he spoke to me. His companions were not far away and I was keen to finish the task at hand before they too came to offend my senses. I quickened the pace, smashing giant sleepers, showering the fellow with splinters, but he was not put off by this. I could hear sounds coming from his lips, I tried not to listen but what I did hear left me in utter disgust. I gently placed my axe on the dusty floor, I straightened up, look him right into the eye and in a firm and uncompromising tone, asked him to repeat himself. In his thick and crass French accent, he repeated exactly what I thought he said, “perhaps you come wiz me and we av some beer and some green’”. Clearly, he had totally misjudged my character. I don’t know what made him think why a clean shaven Englishman, in a pressed white shirt, who was clearly more sophisticated and had significantly greater knowledge of Virgil and Homer, would possibly be interested in ‘green’ is beyond me. I politely declined his offer, gathered my wood and left without hesitation.

Third Stop: Lake Eyre. Australia’s lowest point at a rather unimpressive 16 metres below sea level and home to a huge salt lake that has only been filled up three times in a hundred years. We were in the driest part of the driest state of the driest country on the driest continent on earth. The drive there was long and tedious but otherwise straightforward. We enjoyed a marvellous sunset, had our breath taken away by vivid and intense star constellations and woke early to enjoy the cool air before the sun rose to once more further punish the dust underfoot.

Fourth Stop and back on the road: Coober Peddy. A large opal mining community where the locals live underground because the heat is so intense. It seemed to me that the aboriginals are left to bake and boil in the blistering, dry and unforgiving heat above. Here, it appears as though the aboriginals live like dogs. While they no longer have their children removed to live with whites and be taken to church, while it is now illegal to kill them for sport and the new government is making massive efforts to right wrongs, they still feel the acute pain of having white supremacists rape their culture and obliterate any chance they have to break out of their fenced enclosures. The only aboriginals we spoke to were begging for money. Incidentally, the aboriginal communities make up only 3% of the entire population. I for one, never realised how numerically insignificant and how perilously close they are to being made extinct in their own lands. They live in special, fenced communities where large signs advise the aboriginals that ‘Alcohol and Pornography’ are not permitted. Despite what I read in the newspapers, what I hear the politicians say and what I am told by white Australians, what I see at the moment is a subclass of humans that live in abject poverty. The Australian Tourist Office is quick to play on Aborignal culture but is seems as though they paint an ideal rather than the reality that confronts them.