Nullabor

We woke before sunrise this morning to get an early start on the Nullabor road.  Excitement in the air, as the children had slept in their clothes and were transferred into the car in the dark.  “What are you doing?” said Larina as she looked around in the dark, confused.  This all seemed a bit ridiculous, but exciting all the same. 

Breakfast was an hour down the road.  The biggest challenge in my mind was not the drive itself, but how to entertain the kids for hours upon hours in the car, when I had confiscated the iPad last night for 24 hours during a moment of frustration dealing with kids who insisted on NOT going to sleep.  By 9am I was wanting to close my eyes and rest, but it was not to be.  You’d think that it is a cruisy job sitting as passenger – but it actually takes much coordination, patience and multi-skilling.  Ben and I swap roles every now and then, but it is usually short lived.

In total we ended up driving for 849km, and we were in the car for a good 13 hours.  Larina, Sam and Nick did the most incredible job of staying sane.  We have the best little travellers' in the world.  We were not planning on driving so long, but we were all doing so well we just kept on going.  The captain also did an amazing job – cool as a cucumber the whole way.  We were lucky, a coolish day with a light easterly breeze.   It made stopping at the views along the coastline pleasurable too.

We made stops at roadhouses for lunch (biggest plate of wedges you’ve ever seen) and dinner – burgers of course.  Finally pulled up to rest a t stop that took us enough off the road that we only faintly hear the traffic. 

Oh – the strangest sight today was definitely a fellow traveller we passed – who was headed east with a jayco camper like ours – fully up…. like a massive sail behind him…as he was doing an amazing 80km/h. Surely he didn’t forget to put in down?  We made a mental note to selves not to loose our winder!

Ps. Put a rip in the camper canvas today – our second repair job so far.  It happened when we were under pressure – having to put it up at the quarantine station because the guy wanted to go through our cupboards.  Waste of time though, because when he saw how much stuff we had stored on the floor in the camper – he couldn’t get in and open the cupboards anyway.  Oh well.  That’s why we have duct tape.