What used to take explorers months, if not years, is now as easy as boarding a luxury plane and enjoying the view. By Sandy McPhie

The plane banked and dipped. “You’ll be able to see Piccaninny Gorge on the right in a moment,” the pilot announced. Passengers on the left jumped up and crowded around vacant window seats on the other side, cameras poised. 

We were flying low over the Bungle Bungle range in northern Western Australia, a bizarre landscape of striped red-orange domes that look like giant bee hives, separated by narrow gorges.

The plane curved away to show us more of the range before circling back to make sure everyone had seen the gorge. A clumsy dance ensued as passengers squeezed past each other in the aisle and swapped seats, checking views from the left, right, front and back.

We were nearly halfway through our 12-day Great Australian Aircruise, but we were only just grasping the full benefits of travelling by private plane. While we did have assigned seats (which changed daily), once airborne, they encouraged us to move around the plane and enjoy the beautiful and diverse landscapes below. The whole idea of this Bill Peach Journey was to offer a view of Australia few are privileged to enjoy. Each day the scenery varied dramatically and with just 25 passengers on the 36-seat plane, we saw plenty of it.

The journey began in Sydney, where we boarded the DeHavilland Dash 8 and met our journey director Karen, pilots Ian and Andrew, and flight director Jodie. Once airborne we got a taste of the in-air hospitality as Jodie passed around champagne with strawberries, while Karen filled us in on the day’s activities. Then there was morning tea, and lunch – obviously we wouldn’t be going hungry.

Our first destination was Longreach, Queensland, where we visited the Australian Stockman’s Hall of Fame, the Qantas Founders Museum and the drought-stricken Longways Station. It was an ideal start to an outback journey, which would cross paths with pioneers and explorers like John MacDowell Stuart, Ernest Giles and Charles Todd.

We came across Stuart again the next day in Katherine. As we drove up the Stuart Highway into town, our coach driver, Rob, reminded us we were following the route the explorer charted from Adelaide to Darwin back in 1862.

Things have changed a lot since then but passing through town we could see this was still harsh country. Rob pointed out a huge rooster on the chicken shop roof. “The water was around his ankles during the 1998 floods,” he said. 

We heard more tales of flooding at the Katherine School of the Air, where we watched a morning assembly conducted by video link with children scattered across 800,000 square kilometres. When the deluge washed away their keys, staff called on the local jail inmates to break into their filing cabinets.

When it’s not flooding, the river attracts flocks of tourists to walk, paddle and cruise up the magnificent gorges in Nitmiluk National Park. We did it in style, sipping wine and lunching on fresh prawns and salads as our boat glided between towering rock walls, and past white beaches fringed with pandanus and paperbark. 

A few hours later, we were flying north again. The country below us was rugged, with rock and scrub scored by long gorges, some glinting with water.

At Jabiru airstrip our coach was waiting on the tarmac. We wondered if life could get any cushier as we climbed aboard for a 70km drive to Cooinda to cruise Yellow Water Billabong. Here the glassy waterways were edged with buffalo grass, giant water lilies, bamboo and wetlands, where wild horses and cattle grazed. Birds were everywhere – magpie geese, darters, egrets, whistling duck, kingfishers, and white-bellied sea eagles – and so were huge saltwater crocodiles.

Next morning we visited Ubirr to see the wonderful rock art galleries and learn more about the traditional owners of this unique part of Australia before a short flight to Darwin where we’d spend the next two nights.

We had a day “at leisure” in Darwin, but there was so much to see there was no time for leisure. The NT Museum and Art Gallery was a highlight, with several galleries of Aboriginal art, fossils and an area dedicated to Cyclone Tracy, including a sound room where you can stand in pitch darkness and listen to the cyclone that stuck Darwin on Christmas Eve, 1974. It was hard not to cower at the sound of iron sheeting being hurled through the air.

Our brief time in Australia’s northernmost capital ended with a sunset dinner cruise and a visit to the vibrant Mindil Beach night markets.

By 8:30 next morning we were winging our way west toward The Kimberley. Flying at 300m, Ian took us over the huge expanse of Lake Argyle and south to the Bungle Bungle Range. Officially known as Purnululu, the unique range was declared a national park in 1987 and World Heritage listed in 2003. Until 1983, when a documentary film crew happened upon it, it was virtually unknown.

By mid morning we’d landed in Kununurra and were being whisked up the picturesque lower Ord River in a high-speed boat. Powering between the dramatic cliffs of Carlton Gorge into the Carr-Boyd Ranges, we travelled 55km to the Ord River Dam, stopping halfway for a gourmet picnic.

The dam was completed in 1972 with visions of creating a vast food bowl for Australia, but by the 1980s it was declared a white elephant. Transport costs destroyed profits. Magpie geese ate the rice. Pests ruined the cotton. The sugar mill failed. But Jeff our guide assured us things are now on the up.

“We didn’t know what we were doing in the beginning,” he said. “We have 40,000 acres under irrigation and another 90,000 acres waiting. It has huge potential.”

With its own hydro-electricity and a reservoir that holds more than 20 times as much water as Sydney Harbour, it is easy to believe this white elephant will yet have its day. As we took off the next morning I felt somehow comforted to see great swathes of land lush with crops.

With a farewell pass over the Diversion Dam and the Argyle diamond mine, we were on our way to the Kimberley coast.

The next couple of hours were some of the most magical I’ve experienced in a plane. Flying low over Kimberley landmarks including Mitchell Falls and the distinctively flat-topped Mount Trafalgar was wonderful, but what entranced me was the coastline where the ochre and green of the Kimberley suddenly gave way to white beaches and water that ranged from milky sapphire to deep turquoise and cobalt blue.

The tide was out, so we didn’t see the water rushing through the Horizontal Waterfall – but the beautiful patterns created by the receding water in the sands more than made up for it. We flew over the Buccaneer Archipelago and on down to Broome where the Cable Beach Resort would be home for two nights.

Broome is a real frontier town. It’s the gateway to the Kimberley, Australia’s pearling capital, and despite its isolation it’s a hugely popular tourist destination. From June to August, the population swells from 15,000 to 45,000.

A tour of the town helped us get our bearings and showed us some of the sights, such as Gantheaume Point where the contrast between the red rocks and blue water has to be seen to be believed.

It was impossible not to relax in Broome, and this time our free day did feel leisurely, with plenty of time for strolling along Cable Beach, swimming and, of course, shopping for pearls. Then we gathered for champagne, canapés and a stunning sunset.

I could easily have settled in here for a week, but we had some distance to cover to our next destination, Uluru. Again, our pilots made sure we got a unique perspective, dropping low to circle the world famous rock and neighbouring Kata Tjuta.

At the Uluru-Kata Tjuta Cultural Centre we were given an insight into the area’s spiritual significance to the traditional owners, the Anangu, before driving around Uluru and taking a short stroll to Mutitjulu waterhole. A 30-minute walk up Walpa Gorge at Kata Tjuta was a small price to escape the heat in the shadows of these mysterious boulders.

Later, as the sun began to sink, we boarded another bus – slightly put out to be sharing with other tourists for the first time! – for a short drive into the desert to watch the ever-changing colours on the distant Uluru as the sun set, followed by the Sounds of Silence dinner under the stars. Last but not least was a walk around the rock as the sun rose, changing it from deep purple to burnt orange.

The final stop on our journey was two nights in Alice Springs, where we explored the town and its Aboriginal art galleries.

Standley Chasm, 50km out of town in the Western MacDonnell Ranges, offered another welcome chance to walk off the trip’s excesses. The track followed a gully shaded by eucalypts and dotted with spring-fed pools and prehistoric cycads to the spectacular chasm where the midday sun turned the walls fiery orange.

At the old Telegraph Station we were back on Stuart’s turf. He’d found his way to the centre of Australia in 1860 before continuing north to complete a route that Charles Todd’s Overland Telegraph line would later follow.

Our guide, Alec Ross, had not only grown up at the Telegraph after it became a school for Aboriginal children, he was also a great-grandson of John Ross, who paved the way for the Overland Telegraph. A wealth of information, he was also happy to talk about being taken from his Aboriginal family as a sick child, expressing a little-heard view: “I don’t know about others, but if I hadn’t been taken I would have died. That’s for sure.”

Chatting to Alec reminded me that one of the joys of travel is the people you meet – a thought one of my fellow travellers echoed over lunch at the Birdsville Pub.

“It’s all been wonderful, but it’s the people as much as anything I’ve enjoyed,” she said.

By the time we reached Sydney, we’d flown 8890km and seen more in 12 days than we could have in months of arduous road travel, and we’d done it in supreme comfort. Another lesson learned: why drive if you can fly?

Open Road March/April 2010