Friday 26 October 2012

The road goes ever on and on...

... or Day One of the 2900km road trip.
With the house all safely packed up and on a train we spent the night at Lee Point Holiday Resort - well when I say the night I really mean a bit of it as we were up and off by 0430.
The first bits were obviously done in the dark but it started to get light not too long past the end of the bits we have already driven and by 0600 it was light and we were heading south.
We got 300km under the belt before breakfast; we stopped at Katherine expecting to use a truckers stop but were pleasantly surprised to find a Breakfast Club [a chain of coffee shops that do good food]. We were all refreshed with cold drinks and a light snack before fueling up [a very regular activity during the day] and heading off deeper into the unknown.
As the title implies the road went on, and on, and on, and on, and on...

...you get the picture.
Every once in a while we had to cope with the excitement of........................................a corner

But it was OK our heart rate had a chance to calm down on the straights afterwards!
At times there was a variation in that not only did the road go on, and on, and on etc but it was also on fire!!
And very occasionally there was a landscape feature to oogle
The road was not completely deserted although at times it felt like it. The record for gaps between cars coming in the other direction is held by Tish [so far] at 20 minutes - I should also point out that this was in mid morning not early or late!
The majority of what we did see were cars or road trains but we did pass this brave soul halfway along a 10km straight
completely insane if you ask me!
We stopped for a snack at lunchtime at Daly Waters.
Our quiet snack was slightly hijacked by these guys..

These characters are Apostlebirds - no idea where the name comes from but they were great.


We got to Tennant Creek our first stop at 1530 after 952km on the road.
The pool unfortunately was freezing so much so that even Xanthe and Cameron our regular ice freaks got out after about 20 seconds. We are now waiting for the Restaurant to open at 1830 before tea and sleep.
The children were great and this is the longest of the three main days [we have a four day break before the last 500km] so it bodes well for the rest of the journey.
















3 comments:

  1. Glad to see I did get you started on the Ring again as well! The apostle birds had probably come to keep an eye on your little angels

    ReplyDelete
  2. What an experience! And what big feet the apostlebirds have. Glad everyone being good.

    ReplyDelete
  3. apparently they tend to travel in groups of about 12 - hence the name. Glad your trek is going smoothly. I think Xanthe, Hamish & Cameron are real stars - I wouldn't like to drive all that way!

    ReplyDelete