Time to start!
Well, the first 1,000 km was exactly the same as the last trip, so you can look at the first two photos in
this thread. For ten hours. I was stingy with photos because I wanted to conserve the camera battery for the Main Event.
I stopped for the night, camping in a roadside rest area. Just on dawn, there was a thunderstorm, and a radio tower about 200 metres away got struck. I was fine in my tent, but in the morning the car was in a puddle about an inch deep.
Unlike my previous trip, from this point I went north, through Bourke, Cunamulla and Blackall, and, as with country driving, began seeing the same few vehicles several times, as we alternately stopped for fuel and passed each other.
Towards evening I saw a small kangaroo bounding along beside the road. Knowing how stupid they are, I went hard on the brakes, and of course the silly bugger swerved across the road just as I got to him, but I "chucked out the anchors" as we say down here, and avoided him with a full panic stop. I took this as time to stop for the night, so at the next area I made camp, and was soon joined by other traveler/campers, who I had seen at a fuel stop earlier in the day, driving from Melbourne also to the eclipse. There were three humans and George. George is quite well known, having been to more than 50 festivals in Southern Australia and spending the entire time on the dance floor at every one. We had our own mini-festival, and these kids hit the
pretty hard. We took this photo of George.
Next day was more northwards. The roads got worse, since there is no direct Adelaide-Cairns route. I took the Muttaburrasaurus Byway ... really ... which looks like this:
When two cars approach, we each put two wheels in the dirt and cruise past at about 80 kph (keeps flying stones down) and give each other a wave (it gets lonely out here); but when a truck is approaching the procedure is:
Get off the road and let them by. You don't want the back end of a road train fishtailing around in the gravel and kicking up stones all over.
And when I say road train I mean one of these.
Yeah, that's a fuel tanker, I figure 72,000 litres, with 82 wheels, does 100 kph, and has one person in charge. Yes, that is my car behind it, but yes, there is a *bit* of forced perspective. I had passed a few triples earlier, but when I saw this, I decided to stop for the night!
I'll also say I chose not to pass trucks a few times. In one case I was behind a triple with standard shipping containers on it, and the back was getting blown about by cross winds pretty badly. I wanted to do 110, the truck was doing about 100 - but it was barely 20km to a town where I was going to stop for fuel and food anyway. I sat behind it and lost maybe two minutes.