I must be mad.. no wait - don’t answer that. Not only did I stay awake all night watching the second series of True Blood on Monday - but then thought it a good idea on Wednesday to go to a triple twilight move marathon, get in the car with the kids and drive to Longreach.
Now I have one this trip heaps of times - but this is my third time doing it solo.
What an epic trip. It usually takes 11 - 14 hours to drive out - with kids. and by that I mean you have to stop to run, pit stops, run and play, eat and more pit stops - about ten mins after the last one - because they didn’t want to go then but now have to… you get my gist. But with the roadworks galore, then a grass fire outsie Chinchilla which stopped all traffic - light flashing the whole bit and then me just not coping, I trundled in at 8.30 pm tonight...and really have been driving solidly since 3.30 am - having been up the entire day beforehand.
When I got to Roma - I knew I was in trouble. I was really dazed and spaced out. Usually by Roma you’ve just gotten into the groove of driving and are feeling pretty good and we’ve always considered it as halfway. My biggest issue was that had overdosed on coffee and was now having a huge reaction to it - I know - my coffee stream was getting blood in it. I thought I was feeling better by Mitchell. I’d drunk about 2 litres of water and done a bit of a run around the car a number of times as well as my power naps with the Pzizz…...but somewhere between Morvan and Augathella I started to hallucinate; which in itself would have been quite fun apart from the fact I was in charge of a speeding car hurtling down a deserted highway at 120kms an hour and that my kids were in the back seat. It was the usual stuff - spiders in my hair, building nests on the roof, that little guy who keeps crawling on the bonnet of the car and the things in the trees reaching out and sliding across the road in front of me.
Having talked to a number of other long distant drivers its about the same - trees moving into the middle of the road, black dogs running beside or in front of you.. I’m putting it down to my imagination filling in a bunch of stuff… plus there is always the screaming tear of the veil between realities….
I’d been doing some pzizes every hour for 10 mins - which really slowed my timing down - but I was literally falling asleep in front of the wheel crossing the highway and being danger to myself and the kids. I can see that now and I did know it then. but with no reception on the phone, I wasn’t sure if I should just keep going, find somewhere to sleep it off or find a room. I kept having wolf creek flashes and wasn’t keen to pull over on the side of the road waiting for some mad gun weilding weirdo to murder us and no-one know where to start looking for us.
I’m afraid I resorted to the tried and tested solution - those mini shots of V, red bull and some other energy drink - which the truck stop dude assured me was the go, followed by a chicko roll and a corn thing rolled in fat and other unmentionable grease. I followed up said prescription every hour with the V… my body is hating me but at least I was alert for the next bit.
It was nearing 4 and the gloaming was setting in. At Blackall I had to make a decision to bunk in at the pub ( where although I am sure the publican won’t remember I have a lifetime ban after a bender 25 years ago… but I didn’t want to take the chance.) or fight the roos for 220 kms in the dark.
So it was Roo Patrol - Morgan took front seat as my co-pilot and with high beam on and us at full bore - we tore into the closing night sending up prayers to the Goddess to keep the wee beasties at bay while we passed. Morgan was awesome and didn’t fall pray to the fledgling mistakes of stickaroos. We had to break with burning screeches only twice and do some quick manoeuvring a few times as a mob changed direction. The trucks going the other way were the worst issue. With their lights on, we couldn’t see the roos being chased in front of them and narrowly missed a few as they bounced off their bull bars.
There were plenty to freshly killed carcasses along the way - so I think there must have been a road train just ahead of us swathing the way through the mobs.
It was pretty intense for a while and full on concentration - and I’ve never been so glad to see the water towers of Longreach. So now we are here.. looking forward to a relaxing time with Julie and kids.
Just for fun now, I am doing something called Audio boo - which is sort of a podcast - but much easier for the person doing it to do. Its being posted up on my facebook status and I’ll try to do one every week. Its a way for you to hear my voice and for me to chat about whats been going on with us over the week. I’m limited to 5 mins - so its a quick way to catch up if you don’t have the time to read my stuff.
The link to my AudioBoo site is here
I’ve put some ‘boos’ up about the road trip ( recorded along the way) - here are the links.
Enjoy!
