Brisbane To Ceduna - Setting off on our way to Western Australia. (2022 Trip - Part 1)

I set off around lunchtime on my way up to Tewantin, which would mark the starting point of this years trip Catching up with family once there it was a noisy restless night marred with the sounds of trucks passing by and the odd Commodore, deciding 3:00AM was the perfect time to do a burnout, all before heading off the next day toward St. George, just north the border of Queensland and NSW.

The drive down wasn’t all too eventful, save for the infrequent stops for roadworks coming out of Gympie and some rain as we made our way inland. By 11:30 we had made a stop into Miles, to visit more family on our way through and a lunch stop at the local lagoon.

On the way down south, between Miles and St George at a small place called Westmar, we pulled up to the first of many Gnamma Holes (One of the main sources of Water historically for the local Indigenous peoples, with these sites holding significant cultural value).

We ended up pulling in at around 4:30PM that afternoon, settling in for the evening before preparing ourselves for our next leg of the trip, an almost 700Km Day driving down through to central NSW and to Cobar.

After a better nights sleep, aided by less noise coming from the highway, we were up and on the road at around 7:00AM. Leaving St George, our first point of interest, which also fell on our border crossing, was the small town of Mungindi. From here we found ourselves on a small dirt track, winding between fields and pastures before being eventually spat out onto the Gwydir Highway. We ended up pulling up for lunch at a small creek just outside of Walgett.

Cobar wasn’t far after that, with only a few hours drive, eventually arriving at 4:00PM that afternoon. We were in for one of our coldest nights by far. As the night rolled in, the temperature slowly but surely dropped down below zero at some points through the night, easily the most difficult night to sleep through by far.

Waking up the next day to find the tent and car covered in a pale white frost. It was an early start, as the faster we were able to start up the car and get on the move, we figured the better we would be. So with the heaters ramping up and the windows defrosting, we made out way out of town and toward Peterborough, South Australia. We experienced some of the most varied country today, going from green fields and plains to the reddest of red dirt dust bowls. Fog banks in the morning to the clearest of skies by mid day, it was truly something special to experience.

Our stop for the evening was the first of two in South Australia, the small but history rich town of Peterborough. Peterborough has a long history of being a junction point between the two major Australian railway lines. The North - South line that runs between Darwin and Adelaide as well as the East - West Line that runs from Sydney to Perth

A long and cold night later and we were off again, westward toward Ceduna for a few days worth of rest after a couple of long drives the past week. The drive to Ceduna was a symphony of red dirt and green grass, trees growing in height and number as we reached closer to the coast and the Flinders Ranges. Crossing that line that sees the red dirt country open up again into lush fields and fertile farm land. The areas around these farms were peppered with Wind Farms and as we drew closer to Port Augusta we started noticing truly just how much the land had benefitted from all the rain they had had down here recently, being the greenest we had ever recalled seeing it.

Like clockwork, we made it into Ceduna at 4:30PM that afternoon and after a few days straight of driving non stop, we were able to relax, and what better place to do so than a beautiful coastal town such as this.