Day 1 - Wednesday, 26 December 2012

By Steph

Today seemed to go on forever…and ever. I woke up at 4:38 am and you probably thought I would not get up like I usually do, but no, I sprang out of bed right away! We were meant to leave at 5:15 but we left at 5:30, of course late (Again). Hannah and I didn't get to bed before 11pm but mum and dad were closer to 2am!

Peter came around to our place in his car and we were on the road, on our way to Kalkallo for breakfast. On our way we passed a glider on a trailer on the back of a car. Everyone arrived and we all had a group photo before take off. I had vita-brits for breakfast and a hot chocolate from Hungry Jacks. We had a delay on the way because BT's brakes were getting warm, but after some time to cool down we hit the road once again. I watched a bit of Hotel for Dogs on our new headrest DVD players and they are so awesome! Later on I played a game on the DVD players. I also listened to music and went half to sleep while still listening to music.

We were looking for some lunch in West Wylong but the town seemed abandoned because there was barely any shops open and there was like no one was there. It seemed really odd. But anyway … We were lucky that local Brucie was with us because he told us that there was a big roadhouse down the road. At least he thought there was one. We went on and on and we still had not found it. We were starting to think it did not even exist until we finally found it. Everyone was so relieved it was actually there…at least I was so we could eat. I had a sandwich and yoghurt. Everyone was there except the Hosking's; they had run out of fuel as they drove into the petrol station. They filled up but the car took a while to start. They caught up pretty quick.

After lunch I went in Peter's car for a bit. It was starting to get hotter unlike this morning's freezingness. All I did for 2 to 3 hours was sleep look out the window and read. Dad had to drive Peter's car later because Peter was starting to get really tired.

We reached Dubbo and we were really excited because we were almost at our first campsite. We were happy to finally set up after 12 hours. (That's with stops!) It really didn't seem that long though! We got to our roadside stop and found a few other people there already, but we managed to all squeeze in. We set up really quickly and Alex and I rode our scooters even though we could only ride it on bumpy concrete paths that lead us to the toilet. The toilets were flushing ones which was good news. Alex and I also threw the Frisbee and vortex to each other.

Teslyn finally arrived after visiting some of her relatives. We are now having dinner (chops and vegetables) and I hope to go to bed at a reasonable time even though I doubt that will happen!!! Cannot wait for our journey to go on!

Day 2 - Thursday, 27 December 2012

This morning I woke to a million cockatoo's screeching above my tent. I can't remember what time it was but I know it was well before 7am. I had Honey Crispix for breakfast and we packed up ready for our next long day drive.

We left at 7.15 and started driving to Kumbia, where we were going to stay the night. If you don't know where that is, it is about 55km north-east of Dalby. I started the drive with a snooze for a bit. At our first stop I went in Alex's car for a bit and played ipod and watched a bit of the movie Transformers. Later Teslyn joined us.

We left BT in a small town as they wanted to get their hot trailer wheel checked out before driving any further. The rest of us kept going and stopped for lunch at Mooree and did a bit of shopping as well. Where we stopped there was a park with a giant slide in the middle. I forgot to tell you that while I was in Alex's car, a truck drove past and flicked a stone onto the windscreen. Lucky the crack was on the side and not the middle of the windscreen. Dad is still working on what to do… there were some shards of glass mainly on Dad and some on Mum… but Dad wanted to keep going and marked the screen to see how much the cracks would move.

We watched 2 movies - The Smurfs and The Cutting Edge and we also played ipod again. We passed the border, so now we are in Queensland! Yah!

We finally got to our campsite and found it was full… again… Oh no! But we ended up camping in the overflow campground at the local Kumbia racetrack/golf course. Surprisingly there were hot showers and flushing toilets open for us to use. This really was a perfect campsite, green, flat grass and private for just our group! We had hamburgers with the lot and meatballs for dinner and I stole some of Teslyn's bolognase. Yum!! Some of us went for the 2km walk around the racetrack before bedtime.

Day 3 - Friday, 28 December 2012

This morning we woke up and got ready to leave for our trip to 1770. We were only supposed to drive half of the day. We drove, drove, drove and drove! We didn't swap cars today, even though we wanted to. There were a few stops along the way. We stopped for lunch at a petrol station that wasn't too far from 1770. Everyone was so excited because we were nearly there and it was getting really hot! We finally got here and we set up camp, all sweating it out! After we set up all the kids went into the pool.

Dad and Peter went to check out the track to the beach and Mum and I followed soon after as I was dying to check out the beach! After a 15 minute walk through the bush we got down to the water and splashed around. Later Peter and I went to talk to a lady who was fishing. As we were walking towards her she was stung by a blue-bottle. She was an experienced life guard and said the best treatment was cold water as vinegar just makes it sting more. As we walked away we noticed along the water's edge it was filled with blue-bottles that we hadn't noticed before - lucky we didn't get stung. One had a stinger about a metre long! We trudged back up the hill back to camp, had sausages in bread for dinner and then went to bed.