Alison Young

Thus here is the second half of the round-up of our first week on the road:

Day 4- 25 December 2011
Once again it’s a multi-parent Christmas Day for me. We started the day with breakfast at Dad and Stepmum’s place then jumped in the car and made for Wangaratta where a very much needed fuel stop gave us enough to continue the trip to Edi where we spent the afternoon with Mum, her partner and his extended family drinking, talking, eating and playing backyard cricket. Gifts were exchanged at both houses and I wound up with quite a good haul including Skyrim which will probably consume more parts of me than I’d like to admit when we return from holidays.

Day 5- 26 December 2011
Departed Albury and made for the mountains. The route we took led us past the Hume Dam and over Bell Bridge at Bethanga. The original plan was to stop by Thredbo and ride the chairlift, however when we arrived and had just opened the car door this massive thunderclap rang through the air. Despite some pretty big pouts we decided that rainy, foggy conditions on the chairlift would not be fun and decided to try again tomorrow. Stayed at the Lake Jindabyne Hotel who once again delivered on being a great value spot with spectacular lake views from every room and tasty food in the bistro. I stayed at the same motel when I stayed in Jindabyne a few years ago after a thoroughly enjoyable day driving through the Snowy Mountains.

Day 6- 27 December 2011
The day was bright, clear and sunny… perfect for a chairlift ride and hike. We headed back to Thredbo where we collected our lift passes and headed up the mountain. At the top, all plans to not hike were discarded as we set off along the wonderful raised mesh walkway to Mount Kosciuszko. Made it almost 3km before heading back and having morning tea at Eagles Nest which is 1937m about sea level with some pretty amazing views. Afterward we drove to Canberra and finished off the day sharing a few pints with Mick who was down from Sydney.

Day 7- 28 December 2011
Up bright and early to meet Madeline for breakfast. The original location was closed so we wound up at Gus’ which is something of a Canberra love/hate location. Following a very filling breakfast we headed off to the Australian War Memorial and once again I was highly mistaken about the size of this place. Found some of Adrian’s relatives on the roll of honour and looked through all the exhibitions. Could easily have spent far longer than we did here. For lunch I couldn’t resist a visit to Koko Black while in town, and I didn’t think Adrian would have any objection After lunch we headed to Parliament House and had a look around, just quietly I think I like Old Parliament House better. Dinner was some pretty damn tasty Malasian at Rasa Sayang with Lana, Dermott and T.

That concludes week 1, I know we’re almost into week 3 of the actual trip. Aiming to get round-ups of week 2 posted before we get back, probably sometime in the next couple of days.. depending on what else is going on. You know what it’s like, this being on holidays business.

For all the photos from the trip have a look at the Ali’s Family Magical Mystery Tour set on Flickr.

Since there’s no real small way to do a 4.5week roadtrip I’ve decided to do week-ish updates of where we’ve been, what we’ve done and who we’ve seen along the way. To make this easier to put down here I’ve been carrying a notebook that I’ve been updating each day or so. When referring to people (who aren’t my direct family or have asked not to be linked to) I’ll be linking to their twitter accounts.

Thus here is the round-up of our first week on the road:

Day 1- 22 December 2011
Drove from Brisbane to Dubbo, this took almost 14hours. So long to travel ~850km was because we stopped at a couple of driver revivers for tea, made at least 2 fuel stops and had lunch in Narribri with Nicole. In Dubbo we stayed at the very dodgy Formule 1 which was a comedy of fail including dead bug collections, views of Hungry Jacks and toilet horrors.

Day 2 – 23 December 2011
Drove from Dubbo to Albury which was thankfully a much shorter trip. Stopped briefly in Cootamundra to drive slowly by Donald Bradman‘s birthplace then laughed at lot at some not very private public toilet doors. Grabbed lunch in Young after I posed like a fool in front of the town sign and made our way to my Dad and Stepmum’s place in Chiltern to stay overnight after a stopover in Albury to see Mum and have dinner.

Day 3 – 24 December 2011
Quite a busy day! Up early to get back to Albury by 9.30am where I assisted Mum and wrapped presents for 3hrs collecting donations for the Make a Wish Foundation. My favourite moment of the morning was a man asking if he could get me a coffee or orange juice as we were working so hard. I politely declined and was very glad when 12.30pm rolled around as my back was killing me from leaning over a short table. Then Adrian and I had lunch with Mum and her partner and took a drive out to the Hume Dam on the way back to Chiltern. Once back we were in the car again with Dad and my Stepmum and heading up to Beechworth for afternoon tea. Admired some stunning creations at Potters Gallery and had a quick look through the lolly shop mere minutes before they closed. Later in the evening I followed ‘xmas eve in Chiltern’ tradition and went to church with Dad and Stepmum, the priest loved my blue hair and after the service there was shortbread and sherry. Back at home we gave Stepmum her birthday presents as her birthday is the same day as xmas day.

This post got a tad lengthy so I might do bi-weekly blog posts. Hopefully I’ll have the next one up before too long!

For all the photos from the trip have a look at the Ali’s Family Magical Mystery Tour set on Flickr.

The days draw ever closer to our departure date, 11 days, I’m a counter like that. I couldn’t resist compiling a complete map of our adventure. While the exact route is very prone to changing this is the present planned route. Note that the letters start at D because the first few places we’re staying at twice.

Note: because my page design is narrow, click on the image for the non-skewed version.

The total distance of the drive between places we’re staying is 5,892km. According to Google it’ll take 3 days and 3hrs to drive it, or (because I love stats) approximately 48 days to walk it.

I haven’t done a really big roadtrip in quite a few years and I’m really looking forward to it but getting a little scared about how many photos I’ll take along the way. Presently I’m exploring options about which laptop to take (17inch Toshiba or HP netbook) and how to give both Adrian and I internet in the places that have internet included in our room price. For other places I’ll be tethering my phone so photos being posted while we’re away may be sporadic at best… unless I find somewhere with a fat internet pipe or get to LCA 2012.

[this has been sitting in my drafts for far too long and though from almost 2yrs ago I'm going to publish it because upon re-reading I still really like it]

In late 2009 I visited Albury to see family for Christmas and noted a few things that differed quite a lot between catching a flight between large state capitals and catching a flight to a regional town. Having caught many flights of both types I wanted to share some of the people watching observations from this particular trip.

• As people sat down they’d say hello to the person sitting next to them, most were strangers.
• I joined in on an exchange taking place behind me where one middle-aged lady had a seat next to a young, attractive, man. Her friend commented that she must have been a good person this year to get assigned such good company. I wished them both a Merry Christmas and noticed that the guy looked somewhat amused about the exchange between the ladies.
• An unaccompanied minor was bought to the back of the plane to be seated. A kindly older lady passenger spoke with her for a while before take-off. The steward didn’t interfere with the conversation.
• Stewards explained matter-of-factly why we’d be a little slower getting off the ground than usual. Being on the first flight of the day meant that additional checks once we hit the start of the runway were needed.
• The woman sitting next to me in the exit row noticed an empty window seat on the other side of the aisle and asked the steward if she could take it. He permitted the change. After the passenger counts were done I said to her that she should go nab her window seat now; just before she got up and moved she said it wasn’t due to the company on this side.
• After the meals were served I started up my phone and began watching some TED talks with headphones in. This was fairly introverted behaviour compared to many other passengers who were conversing with each other. Across the aisle the lady who’d moved seats had turned around to join the young guy and older lady who were in deep discussion. Around the cabin people quietly spoke to each other or read newspapers. Nobody appeared to get irritable about finding themselves in a conversation they’d rather avoid.
• The meal I received consisted of dried apricots, juice, a scone and coffee. Not a bad breakfast compared to the meal Qantas called lunch; consisting of a savoury danish and a warm softdrink.

The company I flew with has fast become one of my favourites for regional travel and I can honestly say I’ve never had a bad experience when flying Rex.

A couple of weeks ago I got an offer that was hard to refuse. An opportunity to join a team with two friends on a roadtrip along the coast of NSW over 4 days. Those who know even a little about me will attest to my longtime love of road trips and that I’m quite commonly photographing trips and on my phone tweeting when I’m not driving.

More details slowly came to light and I learnt that the roadtrip we were taking was part of a bigger event with other teams involved too doing different drives and it was all about launching some spectacular drives between Sydney and Melbourne.

Tomorrow we’re off on the 4 day adventure. A roadtrip of which the aim is to tweet, photograph, make videos and generally have a blast while completing activities we’ve been assigned and complete some mission objectives. Not wanting to give too much way until it happens but there’s going to be motorbike riding and a very, very early morning one day that I’ve been assured it will be well worth it.

If you want more details of what we’re up to, when and where then there’s no shortage of methods to track us such as: join/like the StalkFacebook page; check out the Tumblr that will hopefully filter everything together so it’s a good single point of contact and collation of tweets, photos and videos. Browse the photos we’re posting to the Flickr group- you will need to ask to join but anybody can look. Following the twitter hashtags #S2MT and #teamMal. Some things will have both but others might not. I’m also considering raising my 12seconds account from the almost dead for short’n'sweet clips from the road. There’s always a chance that further updates and longer posts may appear on the site here

I would like to thank Mal for the offer to join the team, and everybody involved with organising the Sydney – Melbourne Touring trip. It’s going to be some serious fun.