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09/04/2009 Driving solo across Australia
The route across Oz is from Sydney, due West through New South Whales to South Australia and down to Adelaide, then across the Nullarbor Plain which is 1200km of desert and straight roads, then into West Australia and across the bottom left of the continent to Esperance and then through to Dunsborough where I will meet up with my best mate Etienne Nel (also x saffa). 4500km to get there in 6 days.
From their I will continue North through Perth and on to Shark Bay, then Exmouth, then Broome. By this stage I would have done around 9000km.
This will take me up to around the start of November where I will make my way back down to Perth, drop the rig off and head home to SA for a month for some family time and a bit of a holiday :D then back to Perth in Jan where I will kick things off again.
So I left Sydney and before long was greeted with the wide open road, a sight that I was going to get very, very accustomed to.
But there's a great thing here where the local Rotary clubs volunteer their time and Bushells tea sponsor free tea and biscuits to drivers every few hours along the road. You can pull over, take a break, stretch your legs and have a free cuppa'
Here's the planned route that my safari will take me on.
Doing everything on my own was manic ... I intended leaving Sydney on the 1st April however in reality I only got out on the 9th. Traffic leaving Sydney was a joke however I was patient as I knew it would be the last time I would have to endure it for a while.
A day and a half later and having slept in the rig at a truck stop for a few hours, I made my way into Adelaide. This was a planned stop where I was due to catch up with a fellow angler for an day and also have the chance to check how the rig was going. Good thing I did as the trailer has lost one of it's brake pads so a little maintenance was needed.
Leaving Adelaide the countryside was amazing and very similar in parts to South Africa. Wide open expanses of land with massive skies, huge distances between towns and coupled with my CD player blaring and the solid performance of the rig, it felt like I was flying along in a space ship. Oh yes ... the journey was well and truly under way by now
After 3 days of driving all day, I pulled into the little town of Kimba, halfway across Oz. The rig holding together well; to say I was impressed with the Toyota's performance is an understatement.
Driving from East to West all you are doing is covering a massive distance and not for a moment did I feel bored or lonely ... you just need to get used to seeing a whole lot of straight road though
Thinking I was kinda brave doing the drive on my own, I passed a cyclist in the middle of nowhere .. what the hell are these dudes thinking ???
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