Day 1 - Depart Brisbane

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Geo: -31.7117, 148.663

We departed sunny Brisbane at 5.15am. Its still dark, so how do we know its sunny? We are looking forward to the biggest road trip we have ever undertaken and this one will make Route 66 look like a drive to the local store. We estimate we will travel approximately 12,000 km in 26 days and only cross one long section of road twice, that being the Eyre Highway across the Nullarbor Plain.

Today's Challenge - To check the theory that every town must have a Chinese restaurant before they are valid to apply for a Post Office.

At 100 km we have driven through very heavy fog and now the sun is just starting to peek through, so I reach for my new sunny's. We are already sick of counting the headlights pearing through the fog, so we decided to count calories instead. Assuming that:
a) driving uses 60 calories per hour (70 if you count writing in this blog at the same time), and

b) 1 cheese cracker = 12 calories or 1 stubby of beer = 140 calories.

Then we are allowed 6 crackers per hour or 1 stubby every 2 hours to maintain our current weight.

That doesn't sound right!

We encounter our first road works road block near Goondiwindi; consider drinking a quick slab but decide that it's probably not in accordance with our calorie counting theory, so we sit and wait. We just get moving again when we hit a bird in full flight; bang and we have feathers all over the front grill.

Our first stop is Gundi we remove feathers, repair the grill and we give Simone a call but she is not picking up so we hit the road again without a real break.

The sky becomes very stormy and we encounter rain for the next 4 hours, we stop at Narabri and have lunch at the Tattersals Hotel. We refuel and head for Gilgandra. Deb shares the driving and I relax as we listen to a CD book. The weather clears but the temperature is dropping.

We arrive at the Orana Windmill Motel at 3.30pm and it is a cool 17C. We head to the Cooee Heritage Centre for an injection of local culture. On the way there Gilgandra's finest gave us a welcome to their city with a free breathalyser for Rod, we reckon it was the QLD plates cause they did a U turn to chase us down!

We had a nice dinner at the Services Club, Deb picked up on the pokies then we hit the sack early, preparing for another big drive tomorrow.

We have to say that our challenge for the day was compromised at a small town called Gurley 50km past Moree; it had a Post Office but no Chinese restaurant.

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