It seemed that we had waited an eternity for this day to arrive as it was to be the start of the longest trip that we had undertaken since February this year and the second trip since “Her” surgery in August. We had booked several months ago for the “Victorian” Winnebago Christmas Party intending to travel south as family (and subsequent work) commitments would stop us from attending the NSW Christmas Party that is being held in December just to the north of Coffs Harbour.
We packed Blue Snoopy on the previous weekend and all that was left on the Tuesday night before our departure was the storage of food and beverage and the loading of a few personal items.
We departed home at 7.30am and headed towards the M5 motorway at the Roselands entry point. For possibly the first time ever, the route chosen to take us to Roselands carried very little peak hour traffic and “He” had a massive grin on his face as Blue Snoopy entered the freeway. Smiles were immediately replaced with frowns as the traffic heading away from the city was stationary. Our recently acquired traffic receiver upgrade for our Garmin GPS had not indicated any delays on our route out of Sydney. Fortunately, the traffic started to move and we were soon travelling at an acceptable speed towards our overnight destination of Albury on the New South Wales and Victorian border.
The trip south was very pleasant and we made our first stop at Suttons Forest (McDonalds) for some refreshments and our second stop just before 11.00am for a driver change. We were reminded of the time when music was briefly broadcast over UHF channel 40 followed by a reminder by a truckie that it was 11.00am and everyone should have a minutes silence for Remembrance Day. This was most unexpected and was certainly a very welcomed reminder to cast back and remember what had been done for us in the past.
We stopped for lunch and another driver change just before Holbrook.
About 60 or so kilometres from Albury the low fuel warning light came on and the Iveco’s computer indicated that the remaining range for fuel was about 80 kilometres. We had never really tested the endurance of Blue Snoopy and suspected that around the 550 kilometre range would be safe. Our intended journey today was 548 kilometres. Unlike a petrol vehicle, it is far from good to run out of fuel in a diesel vehicle. It is not a simple matter of adding fuel and then getting on your way. Apparently you need to bleed the fuel system and that is something that “He” wants nothing to do with if it can be avoided.
We arrived at Albury around 3.00pm and headed to the first petrol station we could find where we added 82 litres of diesel fuel. Our tank capacity is said to be 100 litres so there should have been about 100 or so kilometres still left in the tank. (It could be possible that there is a bit of a margin built into the tank but we may never put that to the test willingly.)
We then headed to the Albury Motor Village Tourist Park (Top Tourist Parks) where we connected to power and reduced the heat that was building up in the motor home. Once again, it looked like travelling south was taking us towards extreme temperatures.
The caravan park was probably the smallest park we had ever stayed in with only 12 powered sites available. This caravan park is also one of the best we have ever stayed in with excellent amenities and a swimming pool that we enjoyed for about 30 minutes after we had eaten our evening meal and as the sun was setting.
As we headed to bed, any thought of work had disappeared from “His” mind. We were on holidays and in our motor home.