Where there's a wheel there's a way: French couple Sebastian Guesney and Lara Jaillon on the road, heading to Karumba on the Gulf of Carpentaria. Most European tourists to Australia like to chill out on a beach, or perhaps check out the Sydney Opera House and Uluru. French couple Sebastian Guesney and Lara Jaillon are not like that. They are spending nine months walking 4500 kilometres through Australia, from Melbourne to Karumba, north Queensland. For the adventure of a lifetime, they chose to follow the steps of explorers Burke and Wills on the 150th anniversary of that trek - without dying. Six months after departure at the Burke and Wills monument in Melbourne's Royal Park, Mr Guesney and Ms Jaillon are steaming ahead, already overflowing with stories to tell the grandchildren. They have walked 2800 kilometres through Victoria, New South Wales, a sliver of South Australia at Innamincka, and have just left Birdsville in far south-west Queensland, heading north to Diamantina National Park. Mr Guesney told The Age that Birdsville schoolchildren stared at the rickshaw-like trolleys the couple pull and were amazed anyone would walk in scorching sun the 380 kilometres to the next town, Boulia, when even in a car it takes four hours. Mr Guesney says most strangers at first think the couple mad, but after a good chat ''realise we are well prepared and determined''. Unlike Burke and Wills, they are following roads rather than going cross-country, and carry a satellite phone, emergency beacons and can use solar electricity. Among highlights, Mr Guesney names meeting dingoes, which he dubs ''Australian wolves'', at the Dingo Discovery Sanctuary in Toolern Vale near Gisborne. At Dingee, 50 kilometres north of Bendigo, Gwen Houlden offered the couple a plum pudding - repeating the gift given by her great grandmother, Mary Ann Robbins, to Burke and Wills when they walked through her Barnadown property along the Campaspe River at the end of August 1860. The couple blogged that this would ''surely remain the most amazing experience of our journey''. The couple's blog for Balranald tells how an Aboriginal elder related stories of 50 years working on Yanga station, and how he counsels troubled young Aborigines. A local couple, Neil and Lorinda, showed them around Yanga National Park ''where Australia's first phone was installed. We also enjoy, to our great pleasure, the Aussie national dish; a barbecue. Neil and Lorinda will even walk with us on our way out of town and offer us sweets to help us carry on with our walk.'' They encounter snakes, kookaburras, emus and kangaroos; herd, shear and paint sheep at Glenora station; explore the ''ghost town'' of Milparinka set up for the nearby mine from 1880 and 1920; and answer the questions of primary school students at the Tibooburra school of the air. Thanks to taking regular week-long rests, the couple are in good health and should reach the Gulf as planned on September 1. The couple plan to write a book and are filming for a documentary.

Article by Mr Vas Venkatramani.