Day 1

I have the privilege of a long time off work while still being paid and a company car that costs the same no matter how far you drive it (if you need to know how to do this, purchase my book "How to have everything fall into your lap, all at once" available soon), and Steve was overdue to visit his parents in Perth, so it seemed a good idea to drive there. Perth, I mean. Ok, that sentence was too long.

The total of our preparation was getting the car serviced, buying an esky full of gluten free 'schmackerels' (Steve is coeliac, which means he can't eat anything that tastes good. Nonetheless, there seems to be an adequate supply of foods to maintain his ample figure, collectively referred to as 'schmackerels' - imagine some dancing from foot to foot and just a tiny bit of drool when saying this word and you have an accurate picture) and scrolling madly around in Google Earth to see how far it was between Shell service stations (the ones that give company fuel for the company car). With some dismay we realised that Shell appears to have abandoned the centre of Australia, much like most of the population, and we would have to PAY for petrol once or twice. Both of us were petrified of the standard of accommodation that we might encounter, but for different reasons. Steve was worried about running water, comfortable beds and the availability of gluten-free food, while I was wondering what Steve would beat me with when we ended up sleeping on the ground, with dingos tugging at our matinee jackets.

On Google Earth I had a pang of adventurism and randomnly selected an island to kayak around:

Eba Island

...and another to investigate because it has a hole in it:

Clark Island

Both of these are pretty remote and my logic was that if you're going to drive across a continent at the bottom of the world, you might as well examine it closely. Please do not load this up with double entendres. It's too obvious.

While meaning to leave early on Saturday morning, it took longer than expected to squeeze useless junk into the back of the car then tie a kayak on top, so we left mid-morning and drove pretty much non-stop (apart from a soggy chip place around Ararat somewhere, and a comfort stop at the utterly waterless Green Lake, near Horsham) straight through Adelaide to Two Wells, in South Australia. Not before discovering that Holden make roof-racks that can only be anchored to the car with a degree in mechanical engineering and the strength of ten men. Luckily, I am brilliant (and Steve is very patient).

Did you tie something to the roof? Well?

On the way, the only thing I remember of interest was some intensely copper colored trees sort of near the border of Victoria and South Australia. Strangely, there were some similar trees on the other side of the continent called Salmon Gums, which sounds like an exotic disease that will make your orthodontist rich.

Just before Two Wells we passed a sign that said "Proof and experiment station" (or somesuch) which was either bad English or deliberately mysterious, or both. Steve and I discussed this at length and decided it was where they grow the zombies.

At Two Wells itself, we stopped at a cafe which was hosting a wedding reception. The woman with evil looking acrylic nails and a lisp behind the counter was sort of surprised that we wanted to eat something, but we did. Sitting on the verandah in the gathering cold, and wondering where we'd be staying the night.

So we drove a bit further until all seemed dark and lost and pulled into what appeared to be an abandoned motel in Port Wakefield where another woman dealt with me as efficiently as a slot machine and voila! A room. In which Steve discoved that he'd left behind a bit of his CPAP machine (you know - one of those contraptions fat guys wear to increase the volume of their snoring). We improvised with some electrician's tape from a truckstop and a business card and felt all resourceful.