Here is a summary of our proposed itinerary:

Leave Canberra on the 18th June. Travel up through the inland region of NSW to Dubbo and then along the Mitchell Highway up to inland Queensland. We plan to see outback towns such as Cunnamulla, Charleville, Blackall, Barcaldine, Longreach and Emerald. These towns all have some interesting pioneer history and tell the story of the formation of the sheep and cattle industries in Australia. We also hope to spend a day or 2 at Canarvon Gorge National Park. From Emerald, we head to Clermont, and then out to the coast at Mackay.

On 30th June, we have booked to do a 5 day bare-boat charter on a yacht on the Whitsundays. Michael and Andrea did this over 20 years ago with a group of friends. We are looking forward to teaching the kids about sailing and experiencing life on a boat for a few days.

From the Whitsundays, we continue north along the Queensland coast for a further 2 weeks, hoping to get as far as Cooktown by mid-July. (But if we decide to go slower, we may only get to Cairns.)

We then return to Cairns and turn inland to head southwest down to the Flinders Highway at Hughenden, once again delving into outback Queensland. We travel west along the Flinders Highway to Mt Isa and then continue along the Barkly highway across into the Northern Territory. The Barkly Hwy meets the Stuart Hwy at the Three Ways Roadhouse, and then we turn south to head down to Alice Springs. All this should take about 2 weeks, which brings us into August.

We plan to spend 2 weeks in the Red Centre (Alice Springs, West McDonnell Ranges, Uluru, Kings Canyon and surrounds).

We will then travel back up the Stuart Highway to Katherine, where Andrea’s sister, Liz, now lives. We will spend a few days with her, before we head west towards the Western Australia border. We anticipate spending 3 weeks in NT altogether. (We spent 3 weeks in Darwin, Kakadu NP and Litchfield NP 2 years ago when Liz was living in Darwin, so we won’t visit this part of the NT this time).

We hope to spend the last week of August and first week of September in the Kimberley region of northern WA.

Then probably a week in the Pilbara region and coral coast of WA.

Then 2 weeks travelling down the central coast of WA, down to Perth. This will take us through to the end of September.

We hope to have 2 weeks in the southern part of WA.

Then we will spend 2 weeks travelling back across SA and Victoria and home to Canberra. We will decide the route and how many stops along this leg at the time, depending on how we are feeling.

At this stage, our plan is to be back to Canberra by the beginning of November, which gives us 1 month at home with Michael still on leave (he goes back to work beginning of December). However, we’ve made the first 2 weeks of November a “grace” period, in case we take longer to get back home.

Below is a google map with our proposed travel path marked on it. You can zoom out to see the whole of Australia. However, to complete the travel map, we had to use 2 pages, so to see the last few legs of our trip (which aren’t marked on the initial map), bring up the larger image (click on link below the map) and scroll down on the left-hand column to the bottom of the text section and click on “page 2”.

View Around Australia Trip 2012 in a larger map