Overland to Adelaide

Tomorrow morning at first light I set out to drive from Toowoomba to Adelaide with my no. 2 son. The reason for undertaking this relative marathon is to help him get settled at Flinders, a much easier proposition with a car (and trailer) than with a pushbike – his sole means of transport.

Both of us have seen Vietnamese people carry all manner of appliances around on pushbikes when we visited there year before last, but this method of conveyance loses in the translation south.

I bought a new (locally-built) tradies trailer, which can be locked, and is large enough to take his worldly possessions – mostly books and CDs – without pulling the proverbial out of the vehicle, a BA Falcon with LPG conversion. This afternoon I spent $92 ($75 unleaded plus $17 LPG) topping up on fuel. This gives a theoretical range of 1100km, which is more than we need in the unlikely event that LPG supplies aren’t available en route. In theory they are, but it will be interesting to see what the prices are. Hopefully, we can avoid unleaded altogether, given the astronomical costs in more remote locations.

Not that we’ll be anywhere too remote – day one is Dubbo, day two Balranald, and we should arrive at the city of Light on Sunday evening. The whole idea of travelling south-west at this time of the year is counter-intuitive, but my kids have never been all that conventional. Total distance is 1900km, and temperatures along the way are between zero and fifteen. Thankfully, the recent westerly seems to be on the wane.

When this marathon is over, the trailer will be useful in (over time) disposing of twenty years of accumulated gear that gathers around children at their various stages of development. As they’ve left one at a time, they’ve left their gear behind, and apparently lost all interest in it. There will be garage sales!

The intention is to submit a report at the end of each day using my Telstra blue tick country phone linked to my laptop. If no report appears – blame Telstra.