This trip has been a year in the making, a decision to go to Darwin and then home via Far North Queensland, an invitation initially to three other couples and then a fourth to join us and finally a change in the route from Far North Queensland to Western Australia.
Planning for many aspects of the trip has taken place over recent months but it was not until we said goodbye to our family today that the trip became reality.
Intending not to return until the end of August or early September, this will be the longest trip we have made both in distance and time. We are also travelling through winter but spending time in the tropics so it will also be like summer for us.
So, at just before 10:30am, we pulled the caravan from our drive and started our journey west.
The trip from home until Mount Victoria was uneventful and we only stopped a couple of times for traffic lights. With new brakes recently fitted to the Navara, thought that we would have numerous stops crossing the mountains giving time to bed the brakes in. That was not to be.
We had a slow decent down Mount Victoria and then found it to be a very slow run into Lithgow due to road works and several stoppages.
We had lunch in Bathurst and refuelled the Navara. Fuel consumption was reasonable for the climb over the mountains.
We arrived at Macquarie Woods Recreation area and met the first of the other couples who are joining us. The camp site is great, we are parked flat, we have television and phone coverage but more importantly, we have peace and quiet and a beautiful location to spend the first night of our trip.
“He” flew our Phantom 3 quad copter and took both video and stills of our camp site and the surrounding area.
Just before we started to cook our evening meal, the third couple in our group arrived after a relative quick trip from Sydney. We spent time talking before bidding “goodnight” to our travelling companions.
We had hamburgers for tea followed by a little television before an early night. We slept very well.