South Australian Adventure Day 1

Day 1 Saturday June 11th 2011

We got up at 3:30am and had a cup of coffee to brace ourselves for the journey ahead. It was cold but clear outside as we packed the last few things into the car along with Toby and Bacci and then turned off the electricity and gas before locking up the house.

James drove first as I’m a bit hesitant towing the camper trailer down the Victoria Pass and up the range before Lithgow. It was very dark out with no moon to light our way. It wasn’t long before I started feeling tired and wanted to crawl back into my cosey warm bed I had not long left. I was so glad James was driving as I don’t think I would have gotten very far before wanting to pull over for a nap.

It was 6:15am when we finally reached Cowra, our stop for a breakfast break and to let the dogs out for a wee walk. The grass was covered in dew and it was freezing cold more so with the breeze which made us shiver through and through. After we put the dogs back in the care we went into Macdonalds for breakfast. Unfortunately, it wasn’t very warm inside the store as they had not long opened, but a hot breakfast and coffee soon had us feeling awake and well fed.

By 7am we set off with me driving this time. It was light by now and the sun was starting to show. It was a glorious morning with clear blue sky and warm sunshine making the countryside look splendid in winter greens and golds.

After passing the last town before Hay, we had a bit of a scare with the fuel gauge. We were 108 km from Hay, and had just over a quarter tank of fuel, which James was confident would easily get us there. But after driving about 40 km the gauge seemed to drop very quickly and then about 60km from Hay the fuel light begin to come on. James was napping until I woke him to share the news. We decided to continue on to see what happens because there was no traffic on the road and no phone signal. It was a very intense 40 minute drive and I prayed the whole way. Well my prayers were answered as we made it to Hay with about 7 litres of fuel to spare.

The experience taught us that the fuel gauge isn’t 100% accurate but thank goodness we also learned by referring to the car manual, that the reserve tank holds 10 litres of fuel. After fuelling up we had a picnic lunch in Hay beside the Murrumbidgee river.

James drove to Mildura which we reached around 4:30pm. After fueling up we realised that the sun was already starting to sink low on the horizon and we only had about another 90 minutes before sunset. We still had another 400km of travel on our original timetable but we decided to change it and camp at a roadside camp spot near Renmark.

Just before Renmark we reached the border quarantine station and was surprised when they wanted to know if we had fresh vegetables not just fruit. We didn’t take any fruit because we knew we couldn’t but we had no idea about the vegetables. Luckily, we only had half a capsicum and a couple of expensive tomatoes confiscated. We were able to keep our lettuce, carrots and cauliflower.

We picked up take away pizza before heading to the camp ground. There were already a couple of other campers already settled in for the night. We spent some anxious minutes trying to find a suitable spot in the dark but once we picked out a site it didn’t take us long to set up. We shared our pizza dinner with the dogs who thought it was yummy.

It was about 9am before we got into our warm comfortable king-size bed and snuggled down into our sleeping bags to get a good night’s sleep after such a long day.

Today’s animal tally:

Dead foxes 3, live foxes 2, 1 beautiful eagle, a few rabbits, a couple of mice and tons of birds on the road playing possum with our car.

See ya all tomorrow

G'night from the Short & Sweet Tourists
xxx