Truck Camping in the Australian Outback

We've spent the last four days driving from Alice Springs to the most remote town in all of Australia. So remote that for the majority of our time out here, we've been closer to the International Space Station than the nearest traffic light.

Hope that we don't get bit by a snake this far away from civilization.

Yesterday afternoon, after leaving Kiwikura, we started the long journey to Uluru. That's the big red rock in the middle of the outback and probably one of the most famous rocks in all the world. So we're on our way to see it with our own two eyes.

I think that might be a camel outside of our tent.

Hit unlock on the keys in case I need to jump in the car.

Kind of spooky that I don't see anything. There was definitely something walking around. It sounded like it was chewing. And then something rubbed up against our tent.

Too much wind. Well, that was an exciting way to start day five. I have no clue what was tall enough to rub up against our tent and then disappear before I could get out. I still feel like a camel's just gonna be, like, right behind me at any moment.

Okay, according to Google maps, we have 11 hours of driving to do today, which means we need to hit the road soon. But before we do, I wanted to quickly show you around our new home. Waiting for the water to boil right now. Haven't had coffee yet, so this will be the earliest tour I've ever done. We have nicknamed this truck the Batmobile because it has two wings that flip up. And then in the back of the truck is where all of your camping stuff is. So starting over here. But this is the same size fridge that we have in our van. Carabot. Hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of groceries. Cara has an irrational fear of going hungry even in everyday life. And I'm scared that now we're stocking up for seven days in the outback. She's going to spend $1,000. And we made them all fit. Although I will say it's not really made for an off road vehicle, because every time after a long drive, we're like, what's going to be spilled in the fridge this time? All the oh, no is gone. This is like our, what you call this? Anything you can need for cooking. It all lives in this drawer. And then if you need a little extra counter space, this pulls out, has a nice map of Australia on it. And then this is like our food pantry, our dry goods. Pretty nice system. Just a big box that can hold all your food. The cooking setup in the back of the truck was supposed to be this induction stove. And it worked beautifully all morning. One kind of works since thankfully they did give us a backup gas stove. Instead of taking two minutes to boil water, it takes close to an hour. This is what we're currently living with. But at least there was a backup because I don't want to be stuck with Cara in the outback if she doesn't have coffee. Me neither. Moving on to the back of the truck. This is pretty much storage and is also our bathroom. This is probably the biggest difference between our van and the truck. It's the bathroom setup in our van. Toilet looks kind of normal. It's composting toilet here in the truck. This is our bathroom. Take this. Let's go on a nice little walk somewhere out there. I'll let you fill in the blanks. Come on over on this side of the truck. It is mostly storage. So I was very pleasantly surprised that we could get both of our gigantic suitcases in the back here. Probably the most exciting thing on this side of the truck is the inverter. There's also a lithium battery bank hidden somewhere. There's a solar panel on top that I would guess based on the size is probably 150 watts. The truck also charges off the alternator. So we've been driving long distances every day. Every time we stop, we have 100% battery. Oh, last thing over here. This is our water. We have 140 gallons. No, we're in Australia. 140 L of fresh water. Which is actually really comforting being this far out. Everybody, when we're going out on these little roads, they're like, do you have fresh water? And we have a scientific measurement for 140l a ton. Okay. The cab of the truck. It's pretty standard truck. The only really exciting thing up here in the cab is here in the glove box. This is a GPS that will call an emergency helicopter in a life or death situation. I've never rented a car that has one of these before. Before we came to the outback, I heard stories about people breaking down and then just dying because nobody found them. And that was hard for me to fathom before we came out here. Now I totally see how that could happen. This is a collapsible ladder. Climb right up, make your shoes down. This is the bed situation. I'd say it's a queen size bed. Got about two inches of padding. And it has been surprisingly comfortable. I have actually slept amazing minus the first night.

I cannot tell you how Easy. This rooftop tent is to set up. Compared to the one that we had in Costa Rica, this one goes up and down in less than five minutes. And then, last but not least, lights. Yeah, I think that about wraps it up. Can I have some coffee now?

Yes, please.

So it turns out we are not totally crazy. That is a camel track. That's where we slept last night. Look at the size of this footprint compared to my hand. They're going towards the truck.

Kind of disappear and go into the grass over here. My guess is when it's dark and super quiet outside, everything sounds a lot closer than it actually is. And there was a camel this morning. It was just a little further away than we thought. Still can't explain the rubbing up against the tent, but maybe it was like carrots foot or something. The reason that I was so sure it was a camel this morning is because just about 10 miles before we got to our camp last night, we hit a little traffic jam. We saw at least 10 camels on the way here.

It is a good thing you can't smell us through the screen because the one thing that this camper doesn't have is shower. And we have not showered in five days. Also, in case you missed part one, let me fill you in on a few things that we have going on on our little road trip. The first one, and probably most important is the outback Big four.

We completely made this up. It's like the big five in Africa, except we're in outback and there's four animals that we want to see.

Emus, yet to be seen. Kangaroos or roos as they call them out here in the outback. Yet to be seen, dingoes, which are like wild dogs, yet to be seen. And camels.

And we have seen a lot of those.

We are on Camel number 39. We're keeping a camel count. I didn't count the one this morning because technically we didn't see. We heard it and it was real. We saw its tracks. And we also have a car count.

Like a broken down car count.

For whatever reason, there are broken down cars on the side of the road. Typically they're flipped over, completely gutted and have been caught on fire. It was a little eerie the first three days driving and just seeing like car after car after car. Like, why are they there? Why have they been caught on fire? What happened to these people? Are we next?

Now it's just become completely normal.

So we're on number 40, abandoned car number 45.

We drove for two hours last night and I think we have four more hours of driving this morning until we get to the nearest town. Being out here, even though it is more vegetated than I expected, it is a desert. So during the day, even though it's winter, it gets quite warm, and at night, it gets down to about freezing. 46, 47.

Is that a school bus?

This is definitely the biggest one we've seen yet.

Whoa.

That's cool. Cool. I can't believe a bus just broke down. That must have been out here for 50 years.

Let's go look at it.

Also, since this is the outback, we can just leave the car in the middle of the road, go check out the bus, and hope that we don't get bit by a snake this far away from civilization.

Oh, God. Biggest thing to look out for is probably snakes as well. So make sure that you've got some decent boots and things like that on.

Yeah.

Wow.

This is cool. Like, who was on this bus and where were they going?

This kind of reminds me of that movie into the Wild.

Is there anybody here?

Guess not.

Back on the road, we keep saying, yeah, we got to get going. We have a lot of driving to do. But the outback is just too interesting to do anything fast.

40, 41, 42, 43, and 44.

I seriously feel like I'm driving like a go kart or a dune buggy, not a truck. I'm sorry, Adventure Rentals, if you're watching this, I just feel like it's actually smoother if you go faster down these washboard roads. Also, thank you, Adventure Rentals, for hooking us up with this truck. If you're coming to the out and you want to do the same, we'll leave a link in the description below. They didn't tell us we had to say that, but the truck is actually amazing, and I'm having such a good time.

That's so good.

And we may owe them after this trip is over.

Oh, 51.

Oh, that's a good one.

That is a good one. Oh. Oh, please. Clicking them all. Okay, wait, what were we at? 43, 44, 45, 46, and then 47.

Oh.

Hello.

Any more, mummy? No, no, just me.

All right, be careful.

More might be coming behind us. More coming.

Oh, good to know.

Thank you. Have a good.

Hello. All good?

All right. Yeah, yeah, Very Good. Welcome.

Bye.

Two people in 20 hours. I know.

Heavy traffic tonight.

Are you doing that on bar?

I am exhausted.

You've been focusing for a very long time.

Feels good.

To not be bumping for a minute.

Gosh, I forget just how calm and quiet it is.

Lunchtime.

Our lunches have been pretty quick and easy. As you can imagine, trying to go to Australia's most remote town and Uluru in the same week means we've had some really big driving days. And we've pretty much been buying schedules since before we even started this road trip.

What spilled today?

Everything is off the second shelf and it's all falling down onto the first shelf. Oh, there's a chocolate bar in the lentils.

Oh gosh. Most days I've taken a tortilla, put as many veggies as I could possibly squeeze into it, and that's lunch. We didn't do very good math when we were at the store and we only bought one thing of tortillas. And this is our last one. So I'm gonna make it extra big and delicious today with a side of celery and peanut butter.

Mmm.

There's your chocolate. A couple days ago I made this delicious, delicious lentil salad. I know it doesn't look very good now, but trust me, it's been amazing. Oh, we're out of lentils and tortillas. What are we going to eat tomorrow? We're going to starve.

Followed by avocado.

Tomatoes, pickles, without much pickle juice cuz it all spilled in the fridge. Sadly, I think we've reached the end of our leafy greens. They've gotten a bit soggy banging around in the back. And now for the piece de resistance. Did I say it right? I've been putting this on literally everything we've eaten all week, lunch and dinner. You kind of have to pick and choose when you're only going to be living out of this kitchen for a week. Like we couldn't get all the sauces, but sriracha mayo is pretty.

I think I have four flies on my face right now. These things are brutal.

I'm probably speaking way too soon, but we may have just finished the last of the four wheel drive single lane roads. We're on a wide open, beautiful highway for all I'm concerned right now.

Oh, that makes me sad. It's still a dirt road and I still haven't seen anyone on it.

Two cars can easily pass each other and we're not going.

What's so funny about that is day one, when we turned on to this exact road, we were like dirt, dirt road. And now it's like luxury.

So tame.

Why? Whoa. Here we, here's the photo opportunity.

Northern territory.

All right, for the first time in 24 hours, we're back on pavement Hitting the tarmac, baby.

Ones and twos.

Let's go smash some ones and twos.

Sorry, I just can't say tarmac without.

The hardest geezer watching too much. Hardest geezer.

He's the best.

If you haven't started yet, he's running the length of Africa and you should watch it.

I had a job making minimum wage Told myself that I got to get paid.

Now Made you into Cleo.

More than just a breath and one of.

The things I simply said was vibes vibes if there are any other YouTube nerds out there like us two podcast recommendation for you. One the Colin and Spear podcast and two the editing podcast. So good when we're not listening to music. That's what we've been listening to.

We've worn out all of the music I've downloaded on my Spotify account.

Sam.

Good morning. We did something kind of crazy last night.

We stayed at a campground. Did something even crazier. We took a shower. Honestly, we had a little bit of reverse culture shock. Pull again.

What are these other metal things with wheels?

This feels so wrong.

We've only been off the grid for five days and we're acting like we've never seen civilization before.

It felt weird after being so remote in the outback, having to park right next to other campers after going days without seeing anyone. I feel like I have to whisper right now. I'm really missing my unobstructed views of the sunrise and the stars here. They were decent last night, but nothing like what we've been experiencing for the last five nights. But being back in civilization does have its perks. Sure. I saw a coffee shop at the front of the campground and we have something very special put in for tonight.

It's.

In case anyone is using this video to plan their trip. That walk around took 2 hours and 45 minutes and that was with the camera, so you can definitely do it faster.

Totally worth the walk though.

After spending the last five days living out of a car, we decided to treat ourselves to a fancy sunset dinner set up right outside the national park. Cheers. Palia. How different is this experience from our life the last five days? I just got served a cold towel. She told me I could wipe my hands and my face with it if I wanted to. And we were served cocktails and they have snacks. The pairing with my rose wine this evening is a local delicacy. It is a slice of cucumber topped with shaved green ants. You heard that correctly. There are ants on this piece of cucumber and they're green.

Quite delicious. If I didn't know that the ants were there, I would never have guessed.

That is actually exactly what I did. They set it down, I picked it up, ate it, and Cara was like, you just ate ants? I remember having ants in our rice in Cambodia. Like, accidental ants, and it really grossed me out. But that was surprisingly good. How many ants did you find in the race?

A few.

There's 1200 drones as part of the show. This here is, I guess you'd call it the drone airport. So each one of these containers consists of six drones. In each of them have some drawers that pull out, and the drones actually take off from within the drawers. Each of the containers or compartments are air conditioned because obviously it gets pretty wild out here in the summer.

I'm sure most people are just here to see the show and enjoy the food, but we are so impressed with the technology that goes on behind the scenes to actually make this happen. This is the largest continuously running drone show in the entire world. There are going to be 1200 drones in the air tonight. This is such an epic spot. I don't know which way to look right now. We have the sun setting behind us, and then Uluru is just glowing from the sunset light.

This is, without a doubt, the most gourmet picnic I've ever had in my life. Instead of me explaining all the foods to you, why don't I let the chef do it himself?

That's the ancient grain salad, Waldorf salad, cheddar brie, sweet potato crockets, samosas, falafel. We also have the ice plant, olives, sun muscat, some dried tomatoes there.

Not only does everything look absolutely delicious, but it's kind of like going on a food tour. They've incorporated so many local ingredients, and the craziest part is this one's just for me. Nate has his own basket here.

This is our view right now. The drones are gonna fly somewhere here.

This would be special no matter what. But I've been cooking out of a truck in the dark with limited gas for the last five days, and no.

One has to do dishes after this meal is over.

This is such a treat. Oh, my gosh. I'm so excited.

Stop it.

All right. I can only watch you eat for so long. Wow, there's even a flashlight in here. So we do this stuff all the time on our channel, where we go from, like, a really hard challenge that's very uncomfortable to a very luxurious experience, and that's almost designed on purpose, not for entertainment. But for us, those challenges, or putting ourselves in uncomfortable situations or peeing in the bush for a week or surviving on a deserted island, whatever it is, makes us appreciate these moments so much more. If we only did luxurious stuff like this all the time, I think it would get really old really fast. But going from living out of a camper, having to conserve water, having to conserve electricity, spending an hour boiling water to make coffee in the morning just makes this. These experiences like this, it makes us appreciate them so much more.

This was our first time ever seeing a drone show, and it absolutely blew us away. I cannot think of a better setting to watch a show like this. As Uluru faded into the darkness and the drones lit up the dark outback sky, I literally got goosebumps. The drones were choreographed to tell an ancestral story of the Malay people. And the whole experience was just.

Just magic.

I didn't really know what to expect, but that was absolutely incredible. There was a part of me that this 4th of July, read the news and read about how all the fireworks were replaced by drone shows, and I felt like that was a little sad because, like, that was my childhood. But this is so much better than fireworks.

Hey, you got to get up so I can take the tent down.

Remember what we agreed to last night?

Good morning. We packed the tent up in the dark and came back out to the park. And I can already tell that it is going to be totally worth it. After the sun rises, we will officially have seen Uluru at every time of the day. When you're laying in bed and it's dark outside and you know you have to get out of your warm sleeping bag and you've got to do all the annoying things associated with tearing down camp and get somewhere before the sun rises. I was majorly talking myself out of doing this this morning. As soon as I'm out of bed and there's just a little color in the sky, I have never regretted it. All right, I'm going to stop rambling and turn the camera back around for the sunrise that we came here for.

Well, the outback has left a lasting impression on our hearts. And all my Birkenstocks.

This is pretty much the end. We have a five hour drive back to Alice Springs, which on day one would felt huge, but it's all on pavement and now it just feels like we're going down the road. U was amazing. And like, obviously the food that we had last night, the wine, the show, like, it was all incredible. But if you saw part one, what I will remember Most is the journey to and from the most remote town in all of Australia.

It wasn't like the big tourist attractions or like the animals that really stuck out to me. It was all the little in between moments, like meeting the people, having three locals in the back seat.

So alone, driving for an entire day and only seeing one other person stopping in the middle of the road and making lunch, that was the outback experience that I didn't know that I wanted, but that we ended up getting and that I appreciate way more than the bigger tourist attractions. If you thought we saw a lot of Australia in this video, just wait till the next one. Tomorrow we are flying to Perth and jumping on a train called the Indian Pacific, which I believe is the longest train in all of Australia. And we're going to be traveling all the way from Perth to Sydney. Four nights on a train.

The end.

The end.

We can finally mark emu off our big four list. Hey, little guy.

We're at a gas station. They have one in a fence. I don't think it counts, but it is cool to get to see one this close. I think it thinks we're gonna feed it. You know what's actually crazy? When I was growing up, my dad raised these. Like, we had these living in our yard. I think, like, emu oil was a trend in the US and it was like a business thing. It does, like, weirdly remind me of my job, but normally they live in the storage bin. Actually, they don't, do they?

They live on the. Okay, okay, Forget the chairs. Free coffee tour. Okay? We're gonna have some coffee and then hit the road.

What about the tent?

Oh, yeah, there's this place that we sleep on top as well. Does this not just look like a pigeon with a Mohawk? Can we please add some rock and roll music in the background?

This is absolute madness. I've never had this many flies on me at once. What the heck? It's taking everything in my power to remain still, especially, like, my eyes and nose. Oh. Before we get to question.

This is why we're always late.

Dingo tracks.

Dingo tracks.

The eyeballs. Oh, my goodness.

We finished a lot of our snacks today.

Oops.

Look at this.

Sunset. Sunset.

Where is it?