I’m a proud Australian, but I’ve never felt entirely comfortable saying it.
Maybe it’s because I grew up on the coast, feeling more connected to the ocean than the centre. Or maybe it’s because so much of what’s sold as “Australian pride” feels one-dimensional: a kind of rugged nationalism that doesn’t always include or acknowledge the complexity of our past or the depth of First Nations culture.
Travelling overseas, I’d sometimes meet people who dreamed of visiting the Australian outback. Usually older, often British or European, they spoke about red dust, endless roads and Mad Max landscapes with a kind of wild-eyed admiration. I never quite understood the sentiment.
In July, I had the opportunity to explore the elusive outback on a one-week road trip through South Australia, ending with a rare chance to witness one of Australia’s most remarkable natural events: the flooding of Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre.
The trip began with an early winter flight to Adelaide, where I picked up an all-wheel-drive rental and began the journey north. Following the A1, a highway that connects much of Australia, I stopped in Port Augusta to stock up for my solo trip. So far, the drive had been typical of Australian highways: cattle paddocks broken up by shipping ports and industrial towns. But beyond Port Augusta, the landscape began to shift. The Flinders Ranges Way weaved between the rugged hills of the southern ranges, and the earth deepened to a burnt orange – a hint of what was to come.
I arrived at Trezona Campground just after dusk and set up beneath a stand of River Red Gums. The sky was completely clear, and the winter night soon came alight, with the Milky Way stretched directly overhead. As Australia’s first official dark sky national park, the Flinders Ranges offer some of the clearest stargazing in the country. And, after setting up camp, I lay back and gazed upwards in the quiet. I’ve always marvelled at the power of aviation. Just that morning, I had been on the other side of the country, and now I was somewhere remote and ancient, completely alone.
I woke before sunrise for the morning’s mission: Razorback Lookout. One of the most iconic views in the Flinders Ranges, it did not disappoint. Behind the mountains, the sky turned purple before the first light touched the distant peaks of St Mary’s. The light cascaded down until the valley filled with a golden glow. What a place it was to make myself a morning coffee.
The rest of the day I drove the Brachina Gorge Geological Trail, an iconic route tracing over 130 million years of geological history. The gorge is sometimes called a “corridor through time”, its rock layers revealing some of the oldest visible fossils and formations on Earth.
Stopping intermittently along the trail, I found myself thinking about the cultural depth of this place, the land of the Adnyamathanha people, whose name translates to “rock people”. Their stories, language and knowledge are not just part of the landscape’s past but remain deeply connected to it today. I drove further north to Parachilna Gorge, where I set up camp for the night. Campsites lined the edge of a dry riverbed, and with a storm front approaching, I bunkered down for the night.
The following morning, I continued through the gorge back to Flinders Ranges Way, stopping at Stokes Hill Lookout and hiking Mount Ohlssen-Bagge for a sweeping view into Wilpena Pound. One of the best ways to grasp just how ancient this land is lies in a simple geological fact: the Flinders Ranges were once part of a vast mountain chain that rivalled the Himalayas in height.
Over the last 500 to 600 million years, erosion and weathering have gradually worn them down to the folded ridges and valleys we see today. It’s hard to describe, but when you’re looking out over the landscape, it even feels old. The red, banded rock crumbles away down the slopes below. That night, I camped at Rawnsley Park Station, with sweeping views of the cliffs of Wilpena Pound.
The next leg took me to Coober Pedy. The landscape grew sparse, and the soil deepened to a richer red. The ancient mountains flattened out into what was once a vast seabed. You know you’re getting close when mounds of excavated earth begin to scatter across the horizon. Coober Pedy is one of those places every Australian kid learns about: the town so hot that people live underground.
I find it amusing that the name Coober Pedy comes from the local Aboriginal words kupa piti, often translated as “white man’s hole” – a reference to the miners who burrowed underground to escape the heat. It’s a rough, strange and oddly beautiful place, where opals are still dug from the earth. Formed over millions of years, opals begin as silica-rich water seeping through sandstone.
As the water evaporates, it leaves behind silica that hardens into stone. Their vivid colours come from the way these silica spheres scatter light. At the town sign, a local miner stopped to show us his daily haul, not high quality, he said, but fascinating all the same. That night, I stayed in one of the local hotels, above ground, though part of me wondered what it might be like to sleep in a dugout.
The next morning, I visited one of the town’s most famous attractions, Crocodile Harry’s old dugout house. In many ways, it summed up Coober Pedy: eccentric, improvised, and full of personality. Out the front were rusted cars and old movie props, including relics from sci-fi films once shot in the area. Inside, the surprisingly light-filled cave was lined with photos from wild parties once hosted by the man said to have inspired Crocodile Dundee. Out the back, he had his own private opal mine. It was incredible to walk through these lived-in, deeply personal spaces.
That afternoon, I turned east onto William Creek Road. The scenery was classic outback Australia: red sand, sparse scrub and a sense of enormous scale. A large sign declared the road open but warned that conditions could quickly change in bad weather. I had made it just in time, with one of the season’s first winter rain fronts moving in behind me. What I hadn’t expected was how dramatically the landscape shifted along the way. One moment, I was driving through barren, flat plains with hardly any vegetation; the next, I was weaving through undulating dunes and rocky hills. It challenged my assumptions about what this desert landscape would be.
After passing Anna Creek Station – the largest cattle station in the world, covering over 15,000 square kilometres – I rolled into William Creek just after sunset. This tiny settlement sits in the heart of the desert, little more than a handful of buildings clustered around the main attraction: the pub. That night, I was staying in a glamping tent out the front of the William Creek Hotel, famously one of the most remote pubs in Australia.
Despite its isolation, the pub was buzzing. Lake Eyre was in rare flood, and William Creek is one of the closest launch points for scenic flights, so it had become a hub for outback travellers chasing the spectacle. As I paced back and forth trying to find a table in the crowded bar, one of the older patrons called out, “Aye, you’re wearing the lino out!” He wasn’t a local, just another classic Australian character: sun-worn, straight-talking and clearly amused by my indecision. He guessed I was from Sydney, probably because of my oversized puffer jacket. I headed to bed early, in preparation for the highlight of the trip.
The crescendo of the journey was worth the wait. After being allocated a plane and a pilot, I walked down to the airfield and climbed aboard. Before we boarded, we had a quick safety briefing (it felt a little absurd to be shown how to use a life jacket while standing in the middle of a desert). Together with fellow passengers, we took to the sky just as high clouds began to glow red. We flew directly into the sun, and it felt like we were gliding over a vast desert.
From the air, the ground patterns were starkly beautiful. What had looked random and sparse from the road now followed the natural contours of the land – faint vegetation tracing ancient watercourses, with salt pans etched delicately into the red earth.
On the horizon, the main attraction slowly revealed itself: Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre, under a once-in-a-generation flood. Rainfall from hundreds of kilometres away in Queensland had made its way into the basin, bringing water to a region more often remembered for dust. When I visited, the northern lake was already filling, though the southern section had yet to break through. From above, it looked as if the desert was slowly turning to glass – a vast inland mirror reflecting the colour of the sky.
While flying over the vast expanse of water, I found myself torn between being present in the moment and trying to capture it. The golden morning sun flared off the surface, flooding the cabin with glare and making it hard to frame a clean shot. Below, the desert shimmered like glass. This was the lowest point in Australia, a shallow, salt-encrusted basin with no outlet. The water didn’t flow anywhere. It simply spread out, then slowly evaporated or disappeared into the ground.
While this road trip only lasted a week, it gave me a taste of what the Red Centre had to offer. I am keen to keep exploring, to keep getting lost in the Australian outback, and to keep learning from the Traditional Owners of the land.
And perhaps now, for the first time, I feel a little more comfortable calling myself a proud Australian, not because of a flag or a slogan, but because I’ve begun to understand and connect with the land itself.