I woke up at about 6:00 this morning, lay in my bed trying to preserve body heat until 7:00, and turned on our improvised heater (it was -4 degrees outside). We got back on the road at 9:00 and got ready for a big day of driving. We reached Dubbo at 10:00 sharp. We stopped for a heater that doesn’t use gas and that can work in Arctic temperatures. By the looks of things, we should reach Cunnamulla (south Queensland) at about three this afternoon. After that we should be able to relax for a bit instead of driving all the time. Our plan is to get more than 1000km away from Canberra. We should just be able to slowly work our way up central Queensland and then cut across to the coast in about a week’s time, seeing all the towns that we haven’t seen before.

Well, we had a little problem about 22km past Dubbo. The net that was holding the stuff on the roof rack broke. Our travel keyboard came off and just managed to land on the crossbar of the caravan. It was alright, but we had to go back to Dubbo to get a new net. So we wasted about an hour on that. We had also lost our little guitar (for good). So we didn’t get into Queensland today, but we’re about an hour and a half away, so we hope we can start catching up on the time we lost leaving late. I’m writing from a place called Byrock, and it is pretty warm here. It feels really good going from a sub-zero climate to sub-tropical one.
It doesn’t feel at all like we’re gone for a long time, because this place feels just like home. It feels like we are only visiting northern NSW for a week, or even a weekend.