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Published: September 2nd 2012
Day 63 – Friday 31
st August – Mount Crawford Forest near Williamstown, Barossa Valley to home!
I felt a bit sad as we packed up all our gear this morning for the last time on our trip. The almost daily putting up and packing away of the tent and other equipment has become a happy little routine and really not a chore. It seems strange that tomorrow we will be back into our “old” life again, doing all the things that busy families do.
The sat nav reckons it’s 744kms to get from the campsite back home. On the road at 8.15 we drove through the country roads through more of the Barossa Valley to get to Murray Bridge (last fuel stop of the trip) then Tailem Bend and finally Bordertown before reaching Victoria. The countryside reminds us a bit of England and Scotland at first but then is decidedly Australia as we pass wombat and kangaroo roadkill on the side of the Dukes Highway between Adelaide and Melbourne.
At our quick lunch spot in Horsham near the Grampians I am concerned that we won’t have enough time in the car to get to the end
of the last Harry Potter book. Imagine getting home with a few chapters left to listen to with the climax of the book in full swing… So we grabbed a quick pie and a coffee, hopped back into the car and kept on driving. Our attention to Harry, Ron and Hermione was deflected only once when we passed the 14m high Giant Koala on the side of the road at Dadswell Bridge. “Blimey Ron – why did you have to use the
Gigantorum charm on that cute little koala?” said Hermione.
The sky is heavy with grey clouds and rain falls sporadically. Luckily it is not heavy enough to make driving conditions difficult. The outside temperature fluctuates between 14 and 12 degrees for the last day of winter. Brrrrrr. We are now all travelling in long trousers and proper shoes and jumpers and have left the shorts, singlets and flip flops in the bottom of our clothes bags.
The kids are counting down the hundreds of kilometres until we get home and slowly we get into familiar territory – Ballarat, then the outskirts of Melbourne. As if Melbourne is pleased to have us home, the skies clear and
the sun comes out. We have timed our journey to perfection – arriving just before Friday’s rush hour and – get this – we manage to finish Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with about 15 minutes of our journey to spare. Hooray all round!
At a few minutes before 5pm we pull into the driveway, home safe and sound. We have driven 19,302km across 4 states in 63 days and have so many fantastic memories to show for it.
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