Alison Young

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.