1
Welcome to Adelaide
Cultured yet cool, Adelaide attracts foodies, historians and art aficionados in equal measure. Explore at your leisure, before meeting a local gourmand to tour the city’s legendary Central Market. This place has been selling cheese, green ant gin and artisan bread for 140-plus years, before joining your Travel Director for a welcome dinner.
Flights to arrive prior to 12.30pm into Adelaide Airport
Included Meals: Dinner with Wine
Accommodation: Adelaide - 1 Night
2
Adelaide – Wilpena Pound
One of Australia’s oldest wine regions, the Clare Valley is all rounded hills, rippling vines and native forest. It’s the postcard-perfect setting for historic Knappstein Enterprise Winery, producing sweet-scented rieslings and mineral-rich reds. The route north lands you at Hawker, the gateway to the Flinders Ranges, but there are plenty of reasons to linger, including well-preserved heritage buildings and the Jeff Morgan Gallery. The best is yet to come, as you arrive at Wilpena Pound Resort in the shadows of a staggering natural amphitheatre. Know that your visit to the resort helps by contributing towards the sustainable economic future of the Adnyamathanha who in turn work with the resort to minimize the environmental footprint and participate in the conservation of the region.
Included Meals: Breakfast, Dinner with Wine
Accommodation: Wilpena Pound - 1 Night
3
Wilpena Pound – Port Augusta
The river red gums that envelop Hills Homestead will leave you lost for words. You get here on a leisurely walk along Wilpena Creek and continue to Wangarra Hill Lookout for views over the pound’s peaks and curves. The drama is echoed as you climb to Pichi Richi Pass and the historic town of Quorn, where with a Local Guide, you'll hear the importance of this town in the ANZAC's Gallipoli Campaign, before easing into Port Augusta.
Included Meals: Breakfast, Dinner with Wine
Accommodation: Port Augusta - 1 Night
4
Port Augusta – Coober Pedy
The main attraction in Woomera is a former rocket-testing site, today stocked with disused rockets and missiles. Speaking of space, you’ll think you’ve landed on the moon as you travel through sun-baked country to Coober Pedy, known as ‘the opal capital of the world’. Things get deep as you travel underground to visit the town’s head-scratching subterranean facilities.
Included Meals: Breakfast, Dinner with Wine
Accommodation: Coober Pedy - 1 Night
5
Coober Pedy – Uluru
Emerge from your cave and cross the border into the Northern Territory. Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park has World Heritage status for a reason; under the gaze of the world’s mightiest monolith, toast the end of the day with a glass of bubbles and a camera full of sunset photos. Help protect the highlights of Australia's wilderness through your bucket list visit to Uluru Kata Tjuta National Park.
Included Meals: Breakfast
Accommodation: Uluru - 2 nights
6
Uluru Sunrise – Kata Tjuta
Pre-dawn wake-up calls are worth it when you get to enjoy a Red Centre sunrise. On this experience you’ll encounter the iconic Uluru, or ‘The Rock,’ half a billion years old, standing 348 meters high and taller than the Eiffel Tower. Marvel at the majesty of Uluru as you circumnavigate its base or join a guided walk to Mutitjulu Waterhole. This landscape takes you back to the beginning of time, a sacred place among the Anangu people. More soul-salving landscapes await at Kata Tjuta, cool relief provided as you walk amid its domes to Walpa Gorge.
Included Meals: Breakfast
7
Uluru – Kings Canyon
Another sunrise excursion awaits, with this morning’s optional tour to Bruce Munro's Uluru Field of Light – a blanket of 50,000 glowing bulbs. Next chance to stretch your legs is at Kings Creek Station, the largest exporter of wild camels in Australia. All your senses will be activated at Kings Canyon, 440-million years in the making.
Included Meals: Breakfast, Dinner with Wine
Accommodation: Kings Canyon - 1 Night
8
Kings Canyon – Alice Springs
Aboriginal culture is strong in Alice, as you’ll fast find on a tour revealing the history of the Arrernte people at the Alice Springs Desert Park. The other thing that’s mighty is community spirit – it’s essential when there are so few people scattered over such a vast area of land. Enter the Royal Flying Doctor Service, its base a museum that goes behind the scenes of the life-saving health services delivered to people in remote realms. One of the benefits of being this far-flung is the lack of light pollution. And at Earth Sanctuary World Nature Centre, this equates to epic stargazing. Your Be My Guest BBQ dinner here with the Falzon family is enlightening and uplifting.
Included Meals: Breakfast
Accommodation: Alice Springs - 2 nights
9
Alice Springs Desert Park
After breakfast this morning, join a local Aboriginal guide to learn about the culture and traditions of the Arrernte People at Alice Springs Desert Park. Gain an insight into the endangered animals of the Red Centre, then visit the headquarters of the Royal Flying Doctor Service to see how this iconic facility provides emergency medical assistance in the outback.
This evening, join the Falzon family at Earth Sanctuary World Nature Centre for a home-cooked Be My Guest barbecue dinner. Afterward, hear from the Falzon brothers, Tom and Danny, about the sustainable lifestyle they have established.
Included Meals: Breakfast, Be My Guest Dinner
10
Alice Springs – Tennant Creek
1.3 million square kilometers – that’s the eye-watering distance the School of Air’s lessons are broadcast across daily. Learn how teachers interact with children who would otherwise have no access to education. It doesn’t
matter how studious you are, you might just believe in aliens when you pass Wycliffe Well, the self-proclaimed ‘UFO capital’ of Australia. It’s the devil (well, his marbles) that awaits at Karlu Karlu, where precariously balanced boulders appear superglued together.
Included Meals: Breakfast, Dinner with Wine
Accommodation: Tennant Creek - 1 Night
11
Tennant Creek – Katherine
Since the 1930s, the Daly Waters Historic Pub has been dishing up schnitzels, barramundi burgers and hearty steaks. The walls are lined with treasures that passers-by leave behind. ‘Land of the Never Never’ awaits at Mataranka. Visit a replica of the Elsey Homestead, used in 1982 Aussie drama We of the Never Never. Or wander palm-lined walkways to take a dip in the region’s thermal springs.
Included Meals: Breakfast, Dinner with Wine
Accommodation: Katherine - 1 Night
12
Katherine – Kakadu
The Jawoyn have called Nitmiluk (Katherine) Gorge home for millennia. You can feel their presence as you cruise the waterway, home to more than a few resident crocs. They’ll make another appearance in Kakadu, when you explore Yellow Water Billabong. You don’t need binoculars to spot the sea eagles, brolgas and kingfishers; they’re everywhere you look.
Included Meals: Breakfast, Dinner with Wine
Accommodation: Kakadu - 1 Night
13
Kakadu – Darwin
Decisions, decisions: optional morning flight over Kakadu and Arnhem Land, or a sleep in. We vote for the former before you venture toward Ubirr and its ancient Aboriginal rock art. The night is yours in steamy Darwin, where the characters are as large as the shadows cast at sunset.
Included Meals: Breakfast
Accommodation: Darwin - 2 nights
14
Litchfield National Park
Nature rules today, your explorations into Litchfield National Park revealing magnetic termite mounds standing two metres tall. And then there are the waterfalls: Florence, for its dreamy cascades, and Wangi, where you
can cool off in a crystal-clear waterhole (swimming is seasonal). See the NT capital in a new light when you venture out on a Darwin Harbour Cruise, your sparkling wine glass full to toast your last evening on this epic adventure.
Included Meals: Breakfast, Farewell Dinner
15
Farewell from Darwin
Bid a fond farewell to your fellow travellers when your holiday comes to an end this morning after breakfast.
Included Meals: Breakfast
Itinerary Variations
The provider strives to improve trip itineraries. If improvements can be made, or if circumstances beyond their control make changes necessary, the provider reserves the right to vary itineraries and to make substitutions.
What Elizabeth says about this tour: The landscape will be the prism through which every colour and hue is brought alive on this northbound trip from Adelaide to Darwin. Expanding quite literally your horizon in every direction as you travel through the Outback, with so many national parks included Kakadu, Kata Tjuta, Lichfield and prehistoric monuments at Wilpena Pound and Flinders Ranges - there are literally more highlights than you can count on both hands!
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