Road trip: Sydney to Alice

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After all the dawdling, and people gawking (u will never make it there) followed by a "go soon people" send off at "The Ranch" in Sydney, me and dinesh finally left on our first and longest road trip till date. Sydney to Alice Springs, ya right, to a town called Alice.

We took off in a rental station wagon a ford falcon, and since we rented it out from a german company, everything was in order. Only missing was a satellite phone, heard it was essential, but well cant have everything... We actually bought a first aid kit, which come to think of it is still sealed. May be we can still return it to Woolworths.

As usual Josephites that we were, everything happens at OST, our standard time, and we left an hour and half later than planned. Negotiating through the one ways, and cross here, and free drink zones, stop revive and survive signs, aided of course by my stupendous driving and d's splendid map reading capabilities, at the end of an hour we finally were heading in the right direction and on the proper highway. Reached a petrol station somewhere midway from sydney to wagga wagga (our proposed night halt) we fed ourselves and the car and headed off. We were still in the busy Hume highway, so had to be cautious, but still there were no signs of those enormous road trains that everybody till then had talked about. We got used to the knack of finding something new in the car. D discovered that the CD player doesnt work, then a side pouch in the car to dump all our stuff, and we figured out how to get that AC working. I have always been used to BTS buses or drving bikes all my life, so this was a sort of wierd exploration. We reached Goulbourn, known for the remarkablly big sheep structure, which lab mates had reminded us U CANT MISS, but we ended up searching for that too. And we enventually gave up and headed towards Canberra and there it was. A monstrous huge structure, with green eyes for some wierd reason, at the end of the town. Anyway satisfied that we can also do the touristy thing, we sped off to wagga wagga.

It was to enter into Wagga wagga that we actually started heading west from our earlier southern route. The change became suddenly apparent, with we being challenged to the vigour of dryness. We were quite looking forward to get a decent meal at this place and D had already found a place where we could be for the night. Courtesy LP. Wagga wagga ended up to be a very darb town for all our liking and clumsily hot. Dust in the air, things tried to be kept neat and tidy, but met with failure, didnt strike either of us as a place worth of a night halt. We redecided and headed off to another place, interesting because of its name..Narrendra. We really needed a small and peaceful town and hoped that Narrendra would be that.

Driving was great through this lane, now that we were on the highway towards Adelaide. We were constantly confronted with signs of fruit fly and then threats of fines for carrying fruits. Though we came across these signs here itself, it was only over 2 more days of driving, i.e., something like 1000 kms off that we met the security fela at the checkpost. So guess they gave us 2 days to eat up all the fruits that one would carry. But since our shopping consisted mostly off Pitta wraps and MTR's Ready to Eat, fruits were a distant thought that never occurred.

ok! more to follow.....

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Photos

Road
On the road again...