Day 1
Depart: Newcastle, NSW - 9am
Arrive: Glen Innes, NSW - 4pm
430 kms

Lunch: Walcha

Other Stops:
- ~20kms south of Gloucester in someone's driveway (car sick child)
- Gloucester: buy bread rolls for lunch, and quick toilet stop

Things we learnt today:
- Ms9 can't go in the very back seat of the car. The air doesn't circulate enough, and combined with winding roads, she becomes unwell. This was a first for us. Mr7 seems to go just fine, so it looks like that will be his spot from now, but we might buy a small 12v fan when we hit a big enough town.
- there's a big bloody hill on Bucketts Way, north of Gloucester. By big, I mean several kilometres of up, up and more up! It. Just. Keeps. Going!
- cars towing camper trailers up big bloody hills go through the petrol like there's no tomorrow, (and also come perilously close to overheating)
- the fuel warning light comes on when the trip computer says "90km to empty"
- the "distance to empty" on the trip computer stops giving you a distance below "50 km to empty". After that it just flashes at you, and presumably thinks "amateurs" as it does so.
- given we think we have a 70L tank, if you look at the photo, you will probably agree that we were lucky to make it to Walcha, where we set a new record for volume and dollars of petrol going into the car. We're notching that one up to experience, and don't intend doing that again.
- first day set up of the camper trailer took about an hour, which wasn't too bad considering there were some "one off" jobs to do, like make the bed, and the fact that we hadn't done it before.
- when setting up the bed, we realised we left our doona at home. We have some other light blankets, but given that single digits are forecast for tonight's temperature, we may put Ms3 in with us and use her sleeping bag as a doona instead.

Tonight we're staying at "Fossickers Caravan Park",Glen Innes. A small clean park with a small camp kitchen (which we used), and set back from the highway enough that the passing trucks shouldn't bother us. It has free wifi, and a friendly face at the counter. The wonders of modern technology meant that we sent an email about an hour before arriving, and had confirmation of availability back with 50kms still to go. There's a back gate that is a short cut to the RSL. Given we are set up right next to it, we're hoping our fellow campers are not the partying types. Just heard a clock tower in the distance chime eight times. I think the kids are almost settled.

Time for a shower and an early night