The hostel, Ozzies' Backpackers, gives free breakfast (cereal and toast) but you have to buy milk and orange juice if you want it, at exorbitant prices! We pay up, as we have no idea where the nearest supermarket is.

We thought our van pick up was at 10am, but it looks like we could and should have got it earlier. After a briefing on the controls, a practice drive, a supermarket shop, fuel (2 tanks, a 1000km range) we don't leave Alice until after 12pm, and we have a long long drive! I should mention there are two roads out of Alice; south to Adelaide and Uluru, or north to Darwin. That's it.

The van is a 4x4 Toyota Landcruiser, with extra height, for a bed on top. It sleeps three. It has a sink, fridge, kitchen cupboards and utensils, and a convertible sofa. The rescue pack we're given is useless; one spare tyre and a jack. A jack isn't much use when you're stuck in sand. I ask about rope but they're not forthcoming, and look at me with suspicion! We hire from Britz, which has various models of van all over the place, but costs us over $200 a day.

We see a couple of scary looking roadtrains. They're limited to 53.5m long on the Stuart Highway, where we're heading, with up to 4 trailers. Wouldn't want to meet one in a dark alleyway. Sadly we sit behind one for an hour, as we're too scared to overtake (apparently you should have 1km visibility). However, he's cracking along at 120kmph, which'll do us. The Stuart Highway (named for the first explorer to cross Australia, along a somewhat similar path) has an unrestricted speed limit here.

[Jim's Place]

Lunch beckons, and we stop one hour out of Alice; it's looking iffy to get to Yulara (Uluru resort, where we've booked a campsite for the van) tonight, sundown is at 6.30pm. There's a sign to Jim's Place, and since nothing else is around, we stop here. Jim is Jack Cotteril's son, who essentially founded tourism in central Australia. Bet the Aborigines loved him. Jack is around, and tells us how the owners of the land he leased near Kings Canyon wanted it back as it was such a successful tourist area. They wouldn't compromise, so he bulldozed it to the ground, to spite them! He's quite a character.

We leave at 2pm, 440 km to go! Oh dear. The road is okay, single track, but few vehicles. There are a few Red Kangaroos but they're all squashed. We pelt along, I don't want to tell you how fast.

[Cathy wimps out on the chance to see a meteor crater]

[A big hole in the ground]

We stop at the Henbury Meteor Craters, having driven a half hour detour (yes, I know) on appalling unsealed road to get there. This means that instead of tarmac, you get sand/stone/many rocks/lots of dust. We drive around 30kmph, nervously.

The craters are hard to see, and Iain is disappointed, he was looking forward to this. They were formed millions of years ago, and have been cleared of any interesting debris; they're just shallow pits now.

The slightly hilly, green bush/red sand/black burnt/yellow arid landscape changes as we see a huge rock in the distance - no, it's Mount Connor - twice the size of Uluru but four feet shorter! I feel sorry for it, to Iain's amusement.

[The lonely world of Mount Connor]

[Curtin Springs campground]

We arrive at Curtin Springs camp site at 5pm. It's an hour from our destination, but we decide to stop, as it's heading for dusk; dangerous to drive when there are animals around, and also tough to set up camp and cook in an unfamiliar van in the dark.

It's free to camp here, unlike Yulara, the only place for 10000 square kms, which is owned entirely by one company, and charges whatever they like. In Yulara's case, $28 for a piece of ground on which to park your vehicle overnight. All resort accommodation books out months in advance; this place is busy.

Once the sun is down we see a spectacular sight; the milky way. It's so remote and dark here you can see a wide band of thousands of stars stretching out over the sky; amazing.

[Iain models a Britz Land Cruiser RV]

We cook veg spag bol in the van, and run out of things to do by dark (7.30pm). The van is okay but cramped. Glad there's only two of us in it. Getting the bed out is a nightmare in logic. Picture this:

Two of you can fit in the bed, but only one of you can turn around in it. You can't sit up in it (it's in the roof). You have 4 pieces of wood 2x4ft which slot onto a small ledge, and two mattresses which slide out over them. One of you has to sit in the bed and try to move mattresses from under themselves, which the other manipulates planks, whilst getting less and less space in which to stand. The bed bows, more worryingly when someone moves, and the person below is Cathy, who is unconvinced at getting onto a bed 4 ft up, with an 18 inch gap to get through, then turn round without killing Iain.

Now guess how well we slept. Add in the constant roadtrains roaring past, the cold (goes from 25deg to 10 remarkably quickly here), and the fear of the whole bed collapsing.