There is a moment of trepidation when you drive your first motorhome. Ours is an Avan Ovation vehicle, about 7m long, 2.5m wide and weighing in at 3,000kg. It’s big, and there seems to be a rather long list of Dos and Don’ts, not least of which is The Cassette – the wonderful euphemism for the toilet waste container - and what to do when it’s full (information I park in the back of my head for later). We have booked the motorhome through Camptoo, a company that allows travellers to hire other people's campervans – a sort of Airbnb on wheels.

We pick it up in Sydney from the owner, who runs us through the check list and accompanies us on a suck-it-and-see round-the-block trial run before we head off into traffic on our own. It’s easier than you might think, and the high seating and large windscreen proffer panoramic views that come into their own when we hit the wide-open landscapes of the bush.

There is a lot of driving on this trip and you'll cover some huge distances. While we completed it in five days, you could easily take more time and break up the journey. Some of the areas you'll visit are very remote, so remember to plan ahead, make sure you're well stocked with fuel and supplies, and try to avoid driving after dark.

Google maps says it’s under seven hours from Sydney to Pilliga but that’s without stopping on the way. We take nine hours in all, heading up the F3 to just short of Newcastle before following the Golden Highway inland and stopping for a hearty lunch at the welcoming Tourist Hotel in Sandy Hollow. The countryside here is flat and well-tended, much of it given over to thoroughbred stud farms. You might want to slow down here and there to watch some of these magnificent beasts in their manicured paddocks.

We follow the signs to Pilliga from Coonabarabran but the last 100 or so kilometres on Cypress Way are slow going because of the rutted, gravel road. We arrive in Pilliga just before sunset and head straight to the baths. Opened in 1902, the Pilliga Artesian Bore Bath is a simple affair, about the size of a children’s swimming pool and, as we find out when we park up and change into our swimmers, is a popular spot for both residents and visitors. The natural thermal water splashes into the pool at about 37 °C and is a hot, liquid balm after the long drive. The pool is a little slimy underfoot so be careful how you get in and out.

We park the motorhome at the back of the Pilliga Pub, hook up the electricity, and sink a couple of cold ones in the bar before retiring early, and exhausted, to our home away from home.

Thanks to the early night, we’re up bright and early and I take a short stroll around Pilliga village. It doesn’t take long because there’s not much to see; a store, a cafe, a police station, post office and school. And, of course, the pub. There is some excellent birdlife here, thanks perhaps to the nearby wetland walk, and I photograph a couple of cheeky galahs also taking the quiet early morning air. We pay a quick return visit to the bore to get an idea of it in the cold light of day and then head off towards Burren Junction and our second destination, 42km away to the north along Bugilbone Road.

This is an excellent, sealed road which is meanders through flat country resplendent with a myriad of multi-coloured birdlife (one of which, sadly, flattens itself against the windscreen in an unavoidable kamikaze dive). After about 45min, the grain silos of Burren Junction appear on the horizon like spaceships ready to blast off into a bright blue sky strewn with Simpsons clouds. A hard right at the railway lines and we’re on Kamilaroi Highway, passing the quiet hamlet of Burren Junction, until we find the sign to the bore on our right. Unfortunately it’s closed, so there's no soak for us today. Lesson learned; always check with the local visitor information centre first.

Moree, the main town on Moree Plains shire, is 158kms away along the Kamilaroi Highway and then north along the A39. It’s also known as Australia's Artesian Spa Capital because of the amount of hot spring water that has been tapped here since 1895. Driving in it seems that every other hotel or motel has a hot spring spa, bath or pool. It’s like a huge, leaky pressure cooker.

The big spa attraction here is the $7 million state-of-the-art Moree Artesian Aquatic Centre on Anne Street. It’s a large complex with several pools (one Olympic-sized and two smaller hot pools) all fed by natural mineral waters ranging from 26-41 degrees Celsius. There’s also a small private pool area-cum-wellness centre that you can rent if you don’t want to mix with some of the 300,000 people who visit the centre annually.

Moree is a town that more than rewards a day spent mooching around its neat, clean streets. For those of an architectural bent, there are the 17 or so beautiful Art Deco building scattered through the town. Another building of note is the Bank Art Museum Moree (BAMM) on Frome Street. As the name suggests, it was once a bank and is a good example, stately and imposing as it is, of the affluence of Moree at the start of the 20th century. Many of the most impressive buildings can be found on Balo Street, the main thoroughfare through town. Balo Street also boasts the Yaama Ganu Gallery, a not-for-profit Aboriginal art gallery with a café which is well worth a lunchtime visit.

We also take the time to head out of town to try to find an off-the-beaten track bore that we’ve been told about by some locals. A casual conversation and a set of scribbled instructions see us half an hour outside of the town and taking a side road down past a cattle station and along a wide gravel road bordered by corn fields to the horizon. After 20min we find the bore, which is simply a single bore splashing hot water into a circle of cement-filled oil drums which would fit maybe six people at best. There is nothing and no-one under the great blue dome of Outback sky, so we take a moment to soak in the warm waters and relax.

At night, we headed out to the Amaroo Tavern, a large pub set in green fields just off the A39 as it enters town. The tavern is big and bustling and has the added attraction of (I kid you not) a full size C47 Dakota aircraft sitting in the beer garden. Popular with kids big and small.

In the morning we are up by 4.15am and drive out of the caravan park in the dark. The plan is to head to Walgett and then Lightning Ridge but to try to catch sunrise at the bird hide in the Gwydir Wetlands State Conservation Area, about 60km northwest of Moree. We get lost and miss sunrise at the hide but it’s still worth the trip to see some of the 75 waterbird species that have been recorded there. And for the family of emus we surprise around one bend. And the massive eagle that swoops up into a tree at our approach.

In Walgett, we're faced with a change of plans when we find that the baths are closed and won’t open again for some months. It's another timely reminder to check with the local visitor information centre. Instead, we stop off at the Stone's Throw gift shop and café on Fox Street for excellent coffee and a couple of tasty wraps to tide us over.

On the way to Lightning Ridge we take another detour and head off to visit the Pubs in the Scrub. The Glengarry Hilton, the Sheepyard Inn and the Grawin Club are three taverns found way, way off in the opal fields 70km from Lightning Ridge along rutted, corrugated gravel roads. It’s a teeth-rattlingly slow trip in a motorhome but an experience I wouldn’t have missed for the world. The Grawin Club is the best of the bunch – it actually looks like a pub while the Glengarry Hilton is essentially a series of corrugated iron sheds clumped together, and the Sheepyard was closed. They’re good places to get a beer, some basic food and have a yarn with the grizzled local characters, many of them opal miners.

As usual, we linger longer than we should and it’s getting on sunset when we finally make it to Lightning ridge along a straight flat road peppered with birdlife and roadside kangaroos that seem to have been bred to disappear into the evening penumbra. In Lightning Ridge, we find the caravan park, hook up and, rather than cook in the motorhome, take a free shuttle bus to the Lightning Ridge District Bowling Club for a meal. And then it’s early to bed because we’ve got an early start in the morning.

It’s dark at 5.30am when we venture out of the caravan park for the short walk to the Lightning Ridge Artesian Bore Baths on Pandora Street. There’s nobody about on the streets but when we reach the open-air baths, there are already three locals lounging in the pool. Lightning Ridge is best known for opals and mining but this free, naturally heated thermal bath on the edge of town is possibly the best destination after a hard day fossicking in the scrub. And, as we find out by sinking into the steaming hot water, it’s no slouch first thing in the morning either.

First opened in 1962, the baths, as we see over the next hour or two, are a popular meeting place for locals to steep in the 41.5-degree waters, relax and have a yarn. One local even turns up to do slow, short laps as the sun comes up. The baths are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week (though closed for cleaning on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 10am-12noon). There’s a basic but clean changing/shower/toilet block. In the dark quiet before dawn, we poach in the pool and watch the starry night give way to sunrise.

According to the locals, winter is a good time to come as that’s when the cold air temperatures create an atmospheric ‘fog’ above the water. There are other thermal baths on the Great Artesian Drive at Mungindi, Goodooga, and Boomi but we’re due in Sydney so it’s back into the motorhome for the nine-hour trip. You can break up the journey by taking a day or two to visit Coonabarabran, Warrumbungle National Park and the Siding Spring Observatory.

On the way back we take a different route, travelling down the B55 Castlereagh Highway past Mudgee, Rylstone, and Capertee before joining the B59 at Lithgow and coming in over the Blue Mountains. There’s not much difference in time or distance but it did afford us the opportunity to stop the motorhome at one point and watch a giant goanna drag kangaroo roadkill off the highway. Not something you see every day, that’s for sure.