1750km In 20 Hours

We took delivery of the new car on the weekend. After final preparations (unreg. driving permit, CTP, insurance, etc), we woke on Saturday at 04.20am for a flight to Brisbane, then drive 800-900km. A long day was ahead of us.

The 6am flight took 2 hours, and we were at the dealer by 9. We test drove the car and looked right over it. It has some somewhat minor scratches on it which we were never told about, but I thought about the price and the fact that the price we got the car for was a few grand less than others advertised on the net. Plus the interior is great and the general condition of the car is excellent. I concluded that I could overlook the scratches. They threw in a free tank of diesel to sweeten the deal a bit after I questioned them about it. That's after covering the airport taxi cost for us too.

So we hit the road at 11 and got a tad lost as I was ignoring signs and the GPS. I decided to ignore my internal Tom Tom and listen to our real GPS and read the signs, and we were on our way to Ipswitch. After a coffee, we were on our way to Inglewood and Goondiwindi where we turned south onto national highway 39, which wiggles all the way down to Melbourne.

A few hours later we passed through Moree, Narrabri and through the nice Pillga East state forest to Coonabarabran. I can never spell or pronounce that. It's a nice place though. We had dinner there, too. That reminds me, in central/northern NSW, they park backwards! I mean, us Victorians drive on the left, and to angle park, we turn left about 45 degrees and stop. In northern NSW, you have to stop, turn the wheel to the left and reverse into the 45-degree parking spot. So when you drive out, it's a matter of driving forward, giving way then turning left 45 degrees. What wacked out stuff. We tried it once and that was enough. We completed about 800km on the first day.

After spending the night in a nice little motel in Gilgandra, we had breakfast at Dubbo Maccas and filled the car with diesel. We didn't stay in Dubbo for 2 reasons: it was a little far, but mostly, it is known by everybody I've talked to, to be a dodgy place which has the highest rate of car vandalism in Australia. Driving our new Audi, I didn't want to take it there for the night! It's amazing how dry central NSW is. The north is not so bad but in the central/southern region, the whole landscape is dry and dead. Amazing that there are farmers out there making a living.

We stopped at the Parkes 'The Dish' radiotelescope. I've always wanted to see it, and we didn't have much time so we only spent about 20 minutes there. It was great to see, and it's obvious they have had a lot more funding/publicity since the movie, The Dish. Took some photos and got moving again.

We got back to Melbourne at 6.30pm Sunday with a bit of fuel left. Did about 900km on the second day which is a long way, though we were cruising at 113km/h (110 zone) with cruise control on.

The drive in this car is spectacularly smooth and accurate. It's smooth but not like a boat. It has sports suspension and sports front seats as factory standard, and it's noticeable. The seats wrap around you and the handling is awesome - better than my 180SX. It has 225mm tyres all around, which are the width of the rears on my 180SX. I enjoyed the drive and could go back and do it tomorrow.

Last night I took the car out to wash it at 10pm in the 8c coldness of a clear, foggy Melbourne autumn night. There was dew all over the car so it helped by softening the bug guts all over the front of it. It came up brand new. I also got a roadworthy done yesterday, and have it booked into Vicroads tomorrow for new rego plates. After then it's all done!

Anyway, I better get going - tiredness is setting in. Here are some photos from our trip. See them all on Flickr.