Itinerary

I guess in planning such a drive it can comes down to little things, for example which way to go, by which I mean is it better to travel clockwise or anti-clockwise around the country. Difficult call that really, though you have to get the north out or the equation well before the wet season starts or your just asking for weeks of sitting about waiting for roads to re-open and that just would not do at all. So for that reason I guess that travelling from Melbourne north first and then around back to the south through WA and across the bottom back to Melbourne would possibly be the best plan and with out compelling reasons not to go this way is the plan of events that I am working with now.  I am additionally working with the idea that whilst it is a trip “around” Australia, I have actually drive the coast road through and NSW a couple of times, so perhaps it would be worth running from Melbourne up the Hume and stop at Canberra to visit family, friends and some of the Morris Club folk there and then cut back to Orange and travel up the Newell Highway to Queensland and then back to the coast in Brisbane and north from there.

Mind though I have also done the trip from Brisbane up the “coast” road quite a number of times it has some large hills (for a Morris). That and the two way sections of road where people who actually commute to Brisbane for work race up and down like mad things, sections lined with memorial crosses. I think it would probably be better to stick with heading up through Toowoomba to visit some friends and then on up the back roads to Gympie to visit my parents, and from there north following as much of the coast route as possible up to Cooktown. In travelling this route I will get to visit some areas that I have rarely ever been to and some I never have which is what the trip is about really. Heading u to Cooktown will hopefully be straightforward though it will require a bit of backtracking but that won’t be the only area that backtracking would be required. Once I get to three way intersection in NT I am thinking that I will turn left and head down to Alice Springs and Ayres Rock, then head back over the distance again and u eventually to Darwin. Once I get around to Port Augusta I will do the same there too so that I have done the central section as well even though it won’t have been straight through, otherwise it would have to be get to the three ways and then drive all the way to Port Augusta, then turn around and drive all the way back to Darwin to resume the trip. To be honest I think back tracking over the two sections rather than the whole will work better as it keeps the northern part all on the go at one time and then I hopefully won’t have to worry about weather too much as I get around to doing the southern part. Who knows really, all speculation at this stage I think, plenty of time to decide that stuff later.

How thing are looking