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I'm no good at this blogging ***, I can never think what to say, but I've just started my
holiday road trip. I've decided to call it "My Search for Sunshine."
Now, I've stopped a coouple of k's out of Alexandra just to show ya... There's no sunshine
in Melbourne. So I've gone lookin' for sunshine and we'll
see what we can find. So I stopped for, uh, a bit of tea at a Gundagai
petrol station. Chicken and cheese sandwiches , they're bloody
stale! I looked on the back and I realised why and I just took a photo of it.
They - can't see it - there we go. They're bloody well made in Bayswater! No
***' wonder! Just something I thought I'd share, something
I always do on these long trips. I've just gone through Gundagai after stopping for tea,
maybe 15 minutes down the road. Keep on seeing those safety cameras over the
highway. I don't know what it is, but I have to stick my finger up and go
BLUEUGH!! Every single time I pass them. Just me? ...Probably.
And if you can see... Which you probably can't, Ahhh, there we go.... I'll probably get booked
for this... Still no sunshine!
This I will say about hittin' the road: Drop-down dunnies SUCK!
So after a failed attempt at sleeping, I wake up and realise I've got this entire rest stop,
about an hour and a half south of Sydney, to myself which is great, because it means
I get to do this....
(Pentatonix - Daft Punk Medley plays at a cacophonous roar out of the car)
I pulled into a 7-Eleven somewhere random on the side of the highway only about half
an hour down the road from where I stopped before.
Second lot of sandwiches, egg and lettuce, much fresher, much better. These ones are
made in Mount Waverly, Victoria. MUCH better than Bayswater.
Mmmm. Hell yeah. Mmm Mmm Mmm. Pity It's not curry.
And that was the other thing here, too. I found Mocha Dare. Fantastic!
Dammit! I gave it a good review before I tasted it,
Dare Mocha... Second mouthful's as bad as the first, it
tastes like *** don't do it to yourself! Nyam Nyam Nyam Nyam.
Sandwiches were good though! 'Bout 10 to 6 on the 2nd of January.
I had a much more successful attempt at sleeping at a rest stop in one of those frickn' towns
that's impossible to pronounce so I'm not even gonna try it.
So I'm about 10 minutes south of Newcastle at the moment. Bit early to say, but lookin'
up at the clouds here... wooeee... Still no sunshine! Given that it's pre-dawn but there's
still cloud cover from horizon to horizon. It's not looking good, hopefully it burns
away. So I'm still Seaching for that Sunshine!
So I had quite a day yesterday. Uhhh..picked up a hitch hiker at about 6
o'clock the morning. Drove him 550 k's, dropped him off in Brisbane. Kept goin'.
Still no sunshine. Stopped at a rest stop, slept on the back
seat of the car, woke up to THIS...
Found my sunshine. Frickin' fantastic. So I'm finally on my way again, I had a brilliant
11 hour sleep last night at a rest stop - video I made just before.
I can't believe the day I woke up to. Uhh I've gone from cloud cover to literally not
a cloud in the sky. ...Except for probably THAT car that just
overtook, probably gonna make a mushroom cloud in the sky cos he's an idiot. Well, didn't
hit me... So I just passed the turn-off to Bundaberg.
I'm gonna spear for Rockhampton today and uh, maybe stop at the beach for a bit.
So I just took a bit of a walk back to the roundabout, uh, took a photo of the "Welcome
to Rockhampton" sign. It's quite a walk so I decided to do one of
my favourite pass-times and do a bit of bush-bashing in the Fiesta, which is all the way down there.
So what I'm gonna do is set the camera up and I'm gonna show ya just how it is.. and
no, I didn't just drive off the road here... there's cars goin' past. I went the long way
round. I'm gonna show you the path I took to get the car from where it is parked in
the shade right there, right, there we go - right there... I mean, it'd be really easy
for me to chuck a U-ey and drive up from there up to the main road..
But where's the fun in that?
Ok, Hello, Fiesta! Good girl!
I went through that! And that's the way back we'll be goin'.
It is really bloody hot up here. I basically passed under Yeppen Lagoon Bridge..
Uhhhh, not under, along side. Alrighty, so we'll just slide this forward.
Okie Dokie. Tried doin' this the other night, problem
is, ya couldn't see anythin' in the camera. Alright, so we'll just slip that under there.
Alrighty. That should do. Bloody hell it's hot in here!
38 degrees in the shade. Yeah. Alrighty, so let's pick our way back across
that... It may look bad, but I've driven worse..
And I will say for the record, there was no sign saying
"No Entry", "Do Not Enter", "Do Not Drive On", Yada yada yada...
I was tempted to go under the bridge actually, but I thought I'd better not push my luck.
I mean, this is a road... this is a track... My toes are itchy now, bloody grass seeds
all over my feet. Windows down, I think...
Now that was it. As simple as that. And here's the park that I drove down here
to get there. Didn't plan it. Just sorta drove down and
had a look and managed to wind up where I did.
Nice little shady park here, I might stop here on the way back.
And that's the story of how I got the "Welcome to Rockhampton" sign.
And that's the story of how I got the "Welcome to Rockhampton" sign.
So I've just left Gladstone, I went up to visit Ben and Uncle Dave, "Hi, guys!"
hehe, again! On my way home again, still got about 2000
kilometres to go, give or take.. 2100 k's something like that.
I'd never thought I'd say this, but the sunshine up here is phenomenal and I'm actually looking
forward to cloudy overcast Melbourne. It is ridiculously hot up here.
It's - ah - 37 degrees outside now, it was 43 when left Ben's.
I gotta LONG way to go. There's a cloud in the sky... Hmm. Doesn't
really matter that much. There's a hell of a lotta smoke up ahead.
It's what I'm hoping is back-burning going on through there.
But it's coverin' the highway in a lotta smoke.
Smoke like that's a pretty scary sight when
you're driving in the middle of nowhere.
I'm a happy little boy. I just bought farm
fresh mangoes. Probably shouldn't eat them while I'm driving
though, especially not on a windy back road like this, or comin' up to a blind hill.
Now, mainly because I said I shouldn't and that I thought it was going to be funny, to
take a video of me attempting to eat a mango while driving.
(Inconsequential high-speed chatter)
That is incredibly juicy!
There really is only eat - one way to eat a mango and that's face-first.
Forget ya artsy-fartsy dicing it into little squares ***!
Ahhhhhh! Yum yum!
This hand is far too juicy and wet and sticky
to change gears or indicate...
Good thing I'm on a freeway though. Or highway.
Whatever the frick the difference is. Mmm-mmm-mmm!
D'oh!
So that was fresh from a mango farm about
10 k's north of Childers. If you're ever a crazy *** like me and
wanna go for a massive road trip up the coast, definitely stop in.
...Although, to be perfectly fair, we're nowhere near the coast. But, we're on the M1.
God, that's good!
If you feel like you have to eat a mango without
making a mess, you SHOULDN'T be eating a mango! Mmm!
I think I've stopped in this town one time before.
Don't think I did anything...
Or went anywhere...
Except for straight through the other side of the town.
Certainly wasn't to buy mangoes, I would've remembered that.
15 bucks for a tray of 20, 24 mangoes.
24 mangoes.
Yum! Mwyaeah, my face is so sticky!
So it's Sunday morning, I had a much needed
12 hour break just south of the Queensland border and my sunshine's disappeared, I've
got horizon to horizon cloud cover again. But I'm definitely on my way home.
There's not too many places in the world where you can judge the distance to go by how many
tanks of fuel it takes to get there. I just filled up the tank. "Oh good, I've
only got 2 tanks to go to get home!" Still a bloody long way.
You know, it's really funny and it's the same thing every time I do one of these big trips.
Finally get south of Sydney, finally feels like I'm on the home stretch!
800 kilometres to go... But I'm on the home stretch!
There's one thing to be said about hittin' the road, on top of the dozen other one things
I've said about hitting the road so far.. Is that the meals - if you can call them that
- tend to be a bit ordinary. Servo sandwiches, servo pies.
Got a bit fed up with it. Finally south of Sydney...
Roast pork and vegies! Courtesy of Coolabah Cafe.
Beatif-... Not as good as Mum's... But beautiful! Alright I - turn this off - Alright I'm finally
on the real proper home stretch this time, coming through Toolangi now.
6 days on the road. What have we got in the way of kilometres?
5000 kilometres? And only 4 drivers in 6 days ran me off the road, so by and large, a rather
uneventful trip. And, provided I put the damn camera down now
and put both hands on the wheel on the mountain, I'll be home safe and sound very shortly.