Perth to Sydney in 5 days

It sounds crazy I know, 3,900 kms in 5 days isn't a healthy way to spend Easter but when you break those 5 days up with a stop at Perlubie beach in the middle for two days, its not that bad. We set off from Perth on Wednesday after a hectic Tuesday appointing a new service agent for our WA owners, Care-a-van, in Canning Vale, Perth (let me know if you can't find them, they open up officially in April). This is another great moment for Geist as we improve on our service points around the country to make it easier for your 12 monthly service(this is needed to keep your 5 year warranty on water leakage into the van). On Wednesday we headed East for around 1000 kms to the west end of Australia's longest straight road (90 miles long), number 20 in the camps book under the WA section. There we had around 9 vans around us, one of the most crowded rest stops we had been to until Thursday when we travelled 1065kms to one of our favourite rest stops near Streaky Bay called Perlubie beach. At Perlubie beach we arrived on dark and could just make out a cleared section amongst the 20-30 odd vans down around to our left. I quickly turned the Touareg and Geist round and slowly went down the sandy beach track towards the last space. Sensing the soft sand I popped the Touareg into 4wd or so I thought and kept going to quickly find myself spinning in the sand, what I failed to do was stop and place the transmission into neutral to enact 4wd and the diff lockers which would have been fine but now I had lost momentum and was sitting on the sand spinning. No worries I thought, time to test my knowledge and my retrieval skills. I quickly stopped the spinning and proceeded to reduce the air pressure in the tyres but I could feel the eyes staring at me from within the dark and soon had a crowd of 10 or so campers offering their support and making some jovial comments about the lack of clearance on the vehicle,van and so on, blah,blah,blah. Well after dropping the pressure I moved backwards and forwards but it was evident that I was going to have to move on to the next step of the air jack to bring me up so I could stack timber under the tyres, but before moving onto that step two gentleman stepped forward and presented themselves as saviours by offering a snatchem strap and tow out with a rodeo ute. Now I knew that the next day Rachel and I would be remembering another saviour who died for our sins on a cross and I was hoping by excepting the tow from these guys I would not be placing these guys in a position of their vehicle breaking or any unfortunate mishap occuring. So we set up the strap and my nervous thoughts were dispersed quickly when the Touareg effortlessly followed the Rodeo with very little grunt required from the tow vehicle. Derek, our tow vehicle driver moved us onto some solid sand and from there I popped the Touareg into 4wd and we moved the van into its new position for 2 days and quickly retired for the night.
The next day gave way to the enormity of the sand bog we went through and found out that many had been pulled out before us. We quickly made friends with Derek and his wife Katie and Katie's parents Brian and Pat. They are traveling around the country for an indefinite period (probably 3 years) with their 2 children, but I think a third isn't too far off their minds and Derek, a civil engineer and Katie a teacher have the right attitude to put their minds to whatever they like and are obviously enjoying teaching their two young children about the outdoors. Brian, a builder and Pat a wonderful knitter and good hearted person are living the Grey nomad life, seeking to be around family and enjoying the no pressure lifestyle.
Derek and I decide to test out his new tinnie that afternoon and after sometime getting the 3ohp Merc to fire we finally went out and caught a few Tommies and about 12 Razor fish that evening. I met a few others at happy hour (turning into evening) Friday night. Kerry and Andrew hosted the evening with many varieties of cooked Razor Fish being served up. Unfortunately I missed that and enjoyed a feed of Tommies that Rachel cooked up before going over for a few drinks into the night. Saturday was a small sleep in and a chance to catch up a little but I was soon out with the metal detector combing the beach when Rachel and I came accross a local who suggested searching for some coin around the old bar for the Picnic races. We went over to the spot and proceeded to find the normal pull tabs when Rachel came across a faint but definite signal which I thought could have been an old coin and sure enough it was, a Florin was brought up which later turned out to be around 1912 and two threepences and 2 sixpences. we also found a $2 coin but the Florin was our big find. We cleaned them up the best we could and went back down to the beach and showed the locals. We couldn't explore the whole site so we will be back in the future to find the rest. That afternoon was going to be a kayak cruise and fish but the wind came up so it turned into a siesta for me. That evening we spent with Derek and Brian and their family having a few drinks before retiring for another big drive on Sunday.
Sunday morning came and we were greeted by a couple of easter eggs on some cotton wool outside our door, a wonderful gesture made by our new friends to all in the camp area. We said our goodbyes and with video cameras aimed squarely on us we ascended out of the sand basin to solid ground without a chance of any wheel spin or anything, this was the harder approach too! The Touareg redeemed itself and I have to admit to my slopiness when going in there in the first place, not putting her in 4wd first but I do call on my long day at the wheel in my defence. Anyway we got away finally at about 10:00am and made tracks to Broken hill where we arrived at about 7:00pm local time, another 800kms. We arrived just after a downpour in the city and quickly crawled into bed. By this time I was getting pretty weary on it and Rachel had a drive for an hour to give me a rest. On Easter Monday we left Broken Hill and headed for Dubbo and by Cobar I was getting pretty tired, after lunch there I had a kip for 25 mins before jumping into the seat for the rest of the trip through. The Mitchell Highway between Cobar and Dubbo is very ordinary and it was a fight with the rolling bumps and poor road all the way but of course the Geist was fine and we arrived solid at about 4:00pm. This was our shortest day so far on the stretch from Perth to Sydney at just 750kms. Today I meet with another potential service agent in Dubbo before heading onto Sydney this afternoon, just 400kms. We will be staying at the Lane Cove National Park for a couple of weeks. The Sydney show starts on Saturday but the setup starts on Thursday, tomorrow I have off. If in Sydney, pop into the show and say hello.