What seemed like fifteen years after leaving Darwin, Uluru (Ayers Rock) was reached. I should have saved diesel and not travelled beyond Kings Canyon: a much better spectacle.

Yet just like Uluru, camping is restricted to the designated resort site, where you dish out the sort of money which makes you think you're taking out a permanent lease on the land, not just hiring a mini-plot for a night.

This doesn't change the people that you meet in these places though - the Australian population knows how to enjoy its country. This is the first country since leaving Europe where the "wife" has been understood by the majority of the country's population.

The wall of the Kings Canyon looks like it has been cut with a cheese wire. Spectacular.

But where are the millions of tourists? Fortunately at Ayers Rock.

The Mereenie Loop, from Kings Canyon to Alice Springs.

Shock absorbers beware. This road is going to take no prisoners in the rattle department.

And what the corrugations don't take out, the red dust will.

Alice Springs led to Mount Isa. Mount Isa led to Normanton. And then Normanton led to Croydon. The place where I was told off by the local police-lass. Croydon could optimistically be classed as a ghost town. Population, 10, but only at Christmas when everybody's returned home. With roads the width of Heathrow's runways, I was parked on a deserted side road facing the wrong direction. A crime for which public lynching remains the punishment, accordingly.