Road trip across Australia

On the map of Australia this trip looks fairly minor - we barely went anywhere compared to the enormity of the continent, but we drove almost eleven thousand kilometres just to go to Brisbane and back! We aimed to only drive in good light, and to limit driving to around 500 kilometres per day. In the event it took twenty-three driving days; nine days to Brisbane, via Parkes, and the remainder going down the east coast to Melbourne, via Canberra, then along the south coast to Yankalilla in South Australia, before heading back across the Nullabor to home.

Crossing the Nullabor this time was a surprise - almost no dead kangaroos. We're not certain why - perhaps they've all been killed by the trucks, so there are none left to become road kill. We almost felt sorry for the crows. We saw very little in the way of live animals - a few emus and a dingo on the way east, and a dingo and some emus coming back west. Oh, yes, and an ant. Just the one.

The drive to Brisbane was fairly straight-forward. We had only one pre-determined place to visit on the way; we called in and spent two nights in Parkes, with a friend we hadn't seen since 1976. She has since married, raised children and retired! We have been in touch all these years, and it was a pleasure to finally see each other again and lovely to meet her husband, who we only knew through letters. Brisbane has changed a lot since we were last there in the 1970s. No surprises there! They have made a real feature of the river and it was a great place to wander around and find somewhere to eat in the many restaurants. We were really impressed that the old Expo site has become such a focal point for the city and not fallen to developers.

We left our car with friends in Brisbane and flew out to the South Pacific islands. When we came back we stayed another night then headed off down the coast. Getting out of the city was a bit tortuous, and we were glad we had a GPS system to put us on the right track. We deliberately drove down the coast, calling in to places we had never been before. One of these was Lennox Heads, where within seconds of getting out of the car we saw two whales breaching quite close to shore. They have a good walking track all around the cliffs where we could get a great view. We drove through western Sydney to get to Canberra, but didn't stop there at all.

In Canberra we stayed a night with Geoff's cousin and his wife. They also arranged for Brian's sister to come over for dinner, so it was a good family get-together for us. After Canberra we headed back out to the east - through Cooma to Bega and Merimbula, then all the way along the coast to Portsea. A lot of this country was burnt out in the 2019-2020 bushfires. There is a lot of regrowth, but the extent of the devastation was obvious. One of the other things that was a bit shocking about all of our drive along the east coast was the number of dead wombats on the roads. We saw dozens of them; few kangaroos, but far, far too many wombats.

We spent a couple of nights in Portsea with Kaye's cousin Jenny. Again we had a family reunion, with all four cousins from that family getting together over dinner - that was quite special, since we hadn't seen three of them since the 1970s.

We also stayed with friends in Melbourne for a few nights, and took the opportunity to go into the city - again, it has been a long time since we've been there. We also drove up to King Lake - more stark evidence of bushfiles in the past. From Melbourne it was another coastal drive to South Australia, where we stayed with another friend on her farm on the Fleurieu Peninsula before driving back home.

We had a wonderful road trip! It was a major part of our holiday, giving us the chance to see people we've only had remote contact with for decades. We're extremely glad we decided to drive rather than fly.

There are three slideshows for this part of the trip. Choose the slideshow that you want to see from the selection button. The slideshow will automatically change pictures, but you can stop and start this automatic display and choose individual pictures from the thumbnails or use the forward and back pointers to view the slideshow at your own pace. Swapping between slideshows can take a few seconds to synchronise, and you may miss the first two slides, but they will loop back again!