The Great 2005 Australian Tour Revisited

Nullarbor at 110km/h

I recently dusted off my laptop and switched on my laptop for the first time in over a year – I normally use my desktop at home and work laptop if away with work. Whilst looking through the drives to remember what I had stored on their I re-discovered some of the photos I took on my 3½ month drive around Australia in 2005.

I did a warm-up for the main part of the road trip in early January 2005 by driving up the coast from Sydney as far as Brisbane before heading back to Sydney. During this time I hooked up with the best-band-that-should-have-been, The Hauntingly Beautiful Mousemoon, and hung out with them in Byron, Brisbane and the Gold Coast. The band then stayed with me in Newtown after a Sydney show at the Hopetoun in February 2005 and I started my road trip by following them down to Melbourne where they were playing a few gigs, including playing at The Espy during St. Kilda Festival. I think there are some photos from that time that I developed but that have never seen the light of day. I might have to dig them out and scan them in.

But then the real adventure started, with me saying my farewells to the band before they headed back to Newcastle and heading out on the open road.

My trip then took me along the Great Ocean Road to Adelaide, over to and down the Eyre Peninsula to Port Lincoln, back up and across the Nullabor, down to Cape Le Grand near Esperence, along the coast to Perth, all the way up to Exmouth in north WA, back down to Geralton, across via Mount Magnet to Leinster, down to Kalgoorlie, back across the Nullabor to Broken Hill and finally back to Sydney. The original plan was to do a figure-of-eight and keep going from north WA up to Darwin and back down via Uluru and Coober Pedy on the way back to Sydney but in the end I had nowhere near enough time and probably not enough money. And there are some that would have doubted that my $1,900 car would have made it that far…

It’s getting near the time of year when work takes me out of Brisbane – I’m off to Cooktown for work (and staying up in North Queensland for a few extra days holiday) in mid-July and will then be in Melbourne and probably a couple of other places in rural Victoria for much of September. I’m also taking some proper holiday in August, so expect less band photos and more travel/landscape photos in the coming months…

Some more photos on Flickr.

Cape Range Sunset

Killer Roo

Bunda Cliffs 

Southern Ocean

Cape Range Moon

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