Stu Lloyd beats a dry, dusty path to the country's heart on a mission to visit the real ceantre of Australia As we plough south along the highway named for 19th century explorer and surveyor John McDougall Stuart, Ken issues a caution: "A lot of funny and funny peculiar things happen out here." The 4WD operator has keenly accepted my mission to visit the real centre of Australia. Who and what is at the very heart of this country?

Problem: The Division of National Mapping (NatMap) holds that "there are probably as many ‘centres’ as attempts to calculate it." I select the five nominated by Geoscience Australia, grouped within 360km as the cockatoo flies.

At Kulgera Roadhouse the road trains, each spanning more than half a footy field, dwarf the tin-roofed pub. Col routinely covers 1500km a day and spends $6000 in fuel from Adelaide to Darwin. He’s stranded awaiting a wheel, days away. Yard hand Andy ambles to his doorless Falcon, jabs a screwdriver into the ignition and vroom! The car’s engine  roars to life.

The roadhouse boasts a five-hole golf course, St Andy’s. The longest hole is 160m; the shortest, 60. "That’s the trickiest one," enthuses Andy. The third hole runs past the police station, the only other building of note.

Tonight is special. It’s Andy’s 59th birthday. The crowd is an amiable mishmash of road workers, truckies, and ‘wide load’ duty police.

Way later than the advertised closing time of 11pm, we retire to our rooms for a night’s rest. More like glorified containers, they are spotless and air-conditioned with Gideon bibles in bedside drawers.

Our target is the geographical centre (based on 24,500 high-water points at the coastline).

Corrugations on the 150km drive to Finke cause us to talk in Stephen Hawking-like tremolo. A rash of mulga scrub dots the countryside and signs improbably proclaim: Floodway! After two million years in the same rut, the Finke can claim to be the world’s oldest river.

"If you see something that could hop, run, slide or slither on to the road, give me a yell," says Ken. A camel soon makes a suicidal dash.

On a sign to the Lambert Centre advising ‘4WD only’ is added ‘2WD with a shovel’ ... ‘and 1WD bicycles’.

After serpentine twists through spinifex circles and sand dunes, an Aussie flag is seen flying high and proud. Woohoo! A welcoming committee of flies. One David Norman drove 7000km to deliver the visitors’ book.

A red-barrel letterbox 3.5km from the SA border indicates the 2000 square km Mount Cavenagh Station. Oi! the cattle- dog greets us at the homestead. Ethan, in Canadian Club cap, struggles with firewood. His mum, Ruth, appears in tracksuit pants, moccasins. Husband Tim is mustering cattle.

How do cattle survive here? A sun-bleached carcass reveals many don’t. Atop a miniature Devil’s Marbles, a beacon stands proud. The Johnston Geodetic Station (1965) is the central reference for all surveys.

"It’s a buzz," says Ethan of living in the centre. Ruth adds: "We’re not in the rat race. It’s not nine to five, though sometimes I wish it were."

Today’s the shortest day of the year and they’ve just had the coldest June day in 50 years.

A ute roars up. Mick, a stick figure, ambles out rubbing his hands. "Good country for roos," he says. "Could get about 50 big ones tonight."

Along the highway, where the first and last Cannonball Run blasted along in 1994, a reduced 130km/h maximum is posted. At Stuart’s Well, we stop at Jim’s Place, Jim being son of Jack Cotterill who opened up the first road to Kings Canyon. The rusting remains of Jack’s Dodge and grader sit out front. Jim is English and remembers his mother pointing to the bare centre of Australia on a map and saying, "Well, we won’t be living there." Six months later they were. "We had a good map and threw it away … now we can’t leave the place," jokes avuncular Jim.

He pats Dinky, a good-sized dingo. The café walls are lined with press clippings and Dinky-related memorabilia. "Wanna hear Dinky sing?" A nervous volunteer plays a tune and Dinky assumes a wolf-like posture atop the piano. The air is rent with a high-pitched elegiac wail.

A couple of kilometres north, Ken pulls over at Orange Creek. A ridge precludes further bush-bashing. As I clamber through mini canyons, Wedge-tailed Eagles cry, and the sound of cars is washed away by wind whistling through tinder-dry scrub.

Perhaps no human has set foot on these rocks before, but I feel watched. A shrill ring from my GPS tells me I’ve arrived – the longitudinal/latitudinal median centre. On a flat rock, a plaque.

West along the single tar lane of the Tanami Track, the top-secret Jindalee over-the-horizon radar station. Other than termite mounds, Hamilton Downs is aircraft-carrier flat in a stylist’s palette of yellow-white grass, olive-green gums, the purple West MacDonnell Ranges and Haasts Bluff.

"Albert Namatjira was spot on with his colours," reckons Ken of the artist.

Inconceivably, this area lay beneath the sea 800 million years ago.

At Gary Intersection, rifle-riddled signs direct us to either Yuendumu, Papunya, or Kintore.

"A major intersection," says Ken, stopping in the middle.

"The northernmost road that Len Beadell built."

 As a surveyor, Beadell termed the outback "a million square miles of nothing", facilitating Woomera, Maralinga, and Gunbarrel Highway.

This is Midnight Oil country where ‘Holden wrecks and boiling diesels steam in forty-five degrees’. The red dirt road is lined by paddy melons and VB empties.

Bumpity bump to the Bougainvillea-lined Derwent homestead. Chris – with tree-climbing cattledog Blue – meets us wearing trackpants, sloppy joe, Masseur sandals. She’s not fussed that they have two centres on their million-acre station. "I don’t even know what’s on the plaque."

Chris grew up in beachside Brighton, Adelaide.

"There’s nothing like the sea," she says. "I go back once a year to see mum and have a swim."

The nearest supermarket is at Alice Springs, a six-hour return trip she makes fortnightly.

"I’ve never had a newspaper on the day, so it doesn’t bother me the news is out of date."

Since 1990 they’ve had satellite TV and now even the internet. But the mother of five 20-somethings doesn’t feel the distance. "I did when the kids were young, with broken arms, crashing motorbikes … you’re so far from hospital."

We cross a colossal claypan towards Australia’s centre of gravity. Haring along past the red cattle slaking at Mike’s Bore, thar she blows! A plaque declares this to be the furthest point from the sea.

There’s a cluster of burnt-out trees and a dump of what some cow thinks of this whole thing. To me this feels most like the centre of Oz: the middle of bloody nowhere.

So, which is the real centre?

Geoscience Australia doesn’t favour one over another. GA surveyor Danny Galbraith personally nominates Central Mount Stuart.

You mean I still haven’t visited the real centre? But James, an Aboriginal ranger at Uluru-Kata Tjuta, placates me.

"Mother earth," he says. "Wherever you are, that's the centre of the universe ... your universe at least."