I finished work on Friday at 2:30pm, jumped in the ute with Dave and Dan and headed north for our 4WD adventure from Melbourne to Darwin. My adrenalin was pumping. Seven whole weeks off work. Seven! So exciting!
We drove through Maiden Gully and Marong. At Bridgewater on Loddon, we saw hundreds of enormous mirrors in a field pointing skywards. They are like solar panels but around 1500 times more powerful. It is what is known as photovoltaic technology.
We zoomed past Inglewood, Wedderburn, Buloke and Charleton. At Wycheproof we drove up the smallest mountain in Australia, which is actually the smallest registered mountain in the world – Mt. Wycheproof – with an elevation of 148 metres. It was dark by this time and we had a tiny sliver of moon in the sky to greet us on our summit.
We stopped for fuel and on the other side of the road was a semi-trailer divided into many hundreds of small sections. It was full of South Australian racing pigeons! Don’t they just fly home themselves?
Finally we stopped to set up our tents in mallee country on the edge of Hattah-Kulkyne National Park in north-west Victoria (about 70km south of Mildura). We are already in red dirt country. Loving it!
