Friday, January 1, 2016

Epilogue - Sydney to Alice Springs

I just finished a trip of a lifetime. How did I feel? After a new year's party and a good night's sleep, I wasn't tired or sore the next day. No fresh sunburn after that second day. After that, I used sunscreen and/or a cap and sun glasses. I have a lost a bit of weight, so some muscle mass may have been replaced by fat - nothing a few visits to the gym can't fix. If you sit cramped in a single position day after day, this is bound to happen.

Will I do it again? You betcha! Not the same trip of course but there are trips that can be imagined just by staring at a road map of Australia. But now that trip to Perth, that was a dream for a long time, no longer feels challenging enough. At 4100kms it is shorter than the 6600kms I did. So if I do it, it will be going to Perth, resting for a day and then driving all the way back. That would make it a respectable 8200kms in about 9 or 10 days. So when would that be? The last trip I did was Sydney-Adelaide-Melbourne-Sydney. It was a distance of 3000km over 3 days with the trip hugging the long way around the coast. That was back in 2012. Extrapolating the two trips, the next one should be in 2018.

Boredom and tiredness do not seem to be an issue. A drive down empty roads is somewhat zen like and time stands still. It is important to keep to the right speed - not too slow or you waste time and not too fast or you get a speeding ticket. The cruise control works wonders and I used it most of the time. Still, there were times when I reached a town at the end of a hard day and my attention to the speedometer may have wandered. I have no doubt that any speeding tickets will soon come home to roost.

So what about my choice of what to carry with me? Of all the food I lugged across, most of it came back except for a few chocolate bars. So on the next trip, I can eliminate most of the food, which accounted for half my luggage. I might take a instant meal or two - something microwaveable or instant noodles made with a kettle of hot water. Also untouched was most of my camera gear and tripod. But I may still take that along. The video camera and the windshield bracket did get used. I may look for a better bracket to reduce camera shake.

The petrol and water jerry cans were also untouched but they were mostly a safety precaution. They stay on board next time for sure. The Personal Locator Beacon (PLB) was not used either, thank heavens, but that will stay as well. The satphone did come in useful and makes it on the list. Using it is a bit fiddly and receiving calls at all times is not possible. I might look at something other than a Thuraya satphone next time. Small towns with a low population do get ignored for mobile coverage and short of traveling in groups of 10,000 there is no way to ensure constant mobile coverage. For the record, the mobile service provider was Optus.

The Esky was close to useless. It was one of the soft ones cooled by ice bricks. Most motel freezers are ice encrusted and do not manage to refreeze the ice bricks overnight. A powered Esky is in order. It should be kept up front instead of the boot and filled with chilled water and sports drinks for the road and cold beer for the night. The chocolate should also live there. In the heat they turn into a shapeless mass and soon metamorphose into a turd shape. Constantly drinking water does go straight to the bladder but I should be treating the entire outback as one big dunny.


2 comments:

  1. Nice blog, enjoyed reading it. In a trip tripod is useless. I settle for smallest one - or a beanbag to stabilize my camera. GoPro maybe a better option for action photographs -- that's in my list.

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  2. Zen and the art of letting time still - very powerful religious metaphor that I can go along with.

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