Pre-trip reading

What a great pairing of trips — the tour takes you up the Oodnadatta Track through Marree to Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre and Birdsville, then back through the Flinders and Clare Valley, and your drive south-east covers two of Australia's great wine regions. Here's a reading list matched to the route, roughly in the order you'll encounter things:

The Outback Leg 

(Marree, Oodnadatta Track, Lake Eyre, Birdsville)

Mailman of the Birdsville Track by Kristin Weidenbach — the story of Tom Kruse, who carried mail from Marree to Birdsville through the 1930s–50s. You'll pass right through his territory, and the restored mail truck is in Marree. Pair it with the classic 1954 documentary The Back of Beyond if you can find it.

Lake Eyre: A Journey Through the Heart of the Continent by Paul Lockyer — the ABC journalist's photographic tribute to the lake in flood, published after he died in a helicopter crash there in 2011. Given the tour is pitched around a major flood year, this is probably the single most relevant book, and as a photobook-maker yourself you'll appreciate it.

Birdsville: My Year in the Back of Beyond by Evan McHugh — a light, affectionate account of living in the town you'll overnight in.

The Cattle King by Ion Idriess — the life of Sidney Kidman, whose pastoral empire was anchored on exactly this country. Old-fashioned but a ripping read. 

Flynn of the Inland by Ion Idriess covers the Royal Flying Doctor story you'll hear echoes of everywhere out there.

John Flynn

The Dig Tree by Sarah Murgatroyd — the definitive Burke and Wills account, superbly written, and much of the tragedy played out in this corner of the continent.

The Flinders Ranges

Rock Star: The Story of Reg Sprigg by Kristin Weidenbach again — Sprigg discovered the Ediacaran fossils in the Flinders, the oldest complex life on Earth. Nilpena Ediacara National Park is near your route, and knowing this story transforms how you see those hills.

Flinders: The Man Who Mapped Australia by Rob Mundle — the ranges are named for Matthew Flinders, who charted Spencer Gulf right past Port Augusta. As a sailor you'll enjoy Mundle's treatment of the Investigator voyage more than most.

For fiction, Patrick White's Voss is the great novel of the explorer-in-the-desert obsession, if you're in the mood for something heavier.

The Wine Drive 

(Barossa, Coonawarra, and across to Melbourne)

The Sun on the Stubble by Colin Thiele — a warm, funny classic of the Barossa's German farming community, by a son of the valley. Short and perfect trip reading.

Salt Creek by Lucy Treloar — a fine historical novel set in the Coorong, worth reading if you take the coastal route via Meningie and Kingston SE before cutting inland to Penola and the Coonawarra.

Around Penola, there's a surprising literary and historical cluster: Mary MacKillop founded her order there, and poets Adam Lindsay Gordon and John Shaw Neilson both have connections. A slim MacKillop biography or the local interpretive centre will cover it well.

For the wine itself, anything by Max Allen (The Future Makers is good on Australian wine's evolution) or James Halliday's regional guides will sharpen your tastings — Barossa shiraz and Coonawarra's terra rossa cabernet are two of the most distinctive terroir stories in the country.

If you only pick three: Lockyer's Lake Eyre, Weidenbach's Mailman of the Birdsville Track, and Mundle's Flinders. Between them they cover the landscape, the human history of the track, and a sailor's-eye view of how it all got on the map.