Nobody believes me when I say that the 80 days thing is a coincidence. But it is.
We leave the day after Isabel's last exam and return the day before the first full day of school. 80 days.
Actually from take off to touch down at Winnipeg International is 79 days and 20 hours, but door to door from our house... precisely 80 days.

And a bit about the backstory. In 1993 after three years in veterinary practice Lorraine and I quit our jobs and backpacked around the world for eight months, doing everything from living in a cave in Greece (a very nice cave mind you) to camel trekking across the Rajastani desert to celebrating Christmas in Hong Kong to island hopping in Thailand to volcano climbing in Indonesia to living with a family in Samoa to... well, the list does go on and on. Everyone said, "Wow, that was the trip of a lifetime!" To which we responded, "Nooo! It can't be the only time we do that! It just can't be." We swore we would do something similar again when we had kids. It's 22 years later. Isabel is 13. Alexander is 10.
It's time.

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Day 10 - Bonus Post!

Things seen on the road to Mt Isa:

2383 dead kangaroos and wallabies by the roadside (this is an estimate, I eventually stopped counting).

512 blown tires (also an estimate).

110 kilometers at one stretch without a curve, sign or intersecting side road or... anything.

40 skeletal African famine cows plucking leaves off thorntrees.

8 actual passenger cars, the rest of the minimal traffic being poo softening roadtrains, safari style farm trucks (where do the farmers live??) and campers like ours.

4 settlements of any sort.

0 farm houses or any structures outside of the settlements.

0 live kangaroos.

0 police.

Oh, and I forgot. Either a bazillion or gajillion, whichever is the bigger number, termite mounds. The locals sometimes put t-shirts on them. This is distracting and strange. "Look, there's...! Never mind."

We didn't make it to Mt Isa, only Julia Creek as darkness comes much sooner here than expected. And after dark you don't want to be driving. See the kangaroo masacre statistic above. It's like they've joined a doomsday cult that tells them to gather on the roads at night and jump in front of roadtrains so that they can become reincarnated as... what? Wombats?

At least we got some laundry done at Julia Creek.

3 comments:

  1. So why haven't you hit a roo yet? Skilled driving? Lucky misses? Or denial...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Simple - don't drive at night in Australia! You definitely could not deny hitting one... they are large and heavy enough to even stop the camper. No "roo bars" on it, unlike most Outback vehicles.

      Delete
    2. Simple - don't drive at night in Australia! You definitely could not deny hitting one... they are large and heavy enough to even stop the camper. No "roo bars" on it, unlike most Outback vehicles.

      Delete