TO ULURU THROUGH THE GREAT VICTORIA DESERT
Crunching across a shimmering white saltpan, sunset walkers make tracks across Lake Ballard, lured by intriguing ironstone sculptures that beckon them towards the far horizon.
On the western edge of the Great Victoria Desert, Antony Gormley’s 15-year-old outdoor gallery is one of Australia’s most striking: 51 solitary, spirit-like figures cast from real-life locals, immortalised on a white desert landscape. A stay here, camped on the lake’s gypsum, by the mulga-fringed dunes, kick-starts your red dirt adventure to Uluru – the back way.
From Lake Ballard across Australia’s largest desert, the Outback Way’s remote ribbon of red dirt pushes east to Uluru, pausing at crumbling painted canyons and lost caves, indigenous art sites and starry night campsites where dingoes howl on the edge of darkness.
For all its thrills, there’s nothing technical about tackling this remote offroad border run into the Red Centre that shaves more than 1000km off the sealed alternative via South Australia, but there are just enough corrugations and bulldust to let you know you’ve
