2017 The Lap

John has been busy these past few weeks; he's lined all the cupboards and storage bins with marine carpet; organised new tyres on the car and purchased an emergency personal locator beacon; fishing rods and reels, a tackle box and ... ... ... We should be safe on the trip with the loan of a sat phone (courtesy of our Toyota 4x4 Club), the EPIRB and phones that have been transferred over to the Telstra network, leaving Optus well behind us, thankfully. Cat and Keith have finished their school reports and organised the first part of the trip - we're tagging on with them and their friends Jenny and Cameron - to do the Oodnadatta Track.  Sandy and Jim will meet us at Uluru and we'll all spend a few days there and at Kings Canyon. So tomorrow will be the last day of getting things finalised - then we'll head off on Friday morning! Stay tuned for some fabulous photos and updates!

The night before we're due to leave for The Lap and here I am updating the blog with last month's foray north! :( We left Melbourne in very heavy traffic - typically not an early start for us.  Lake Mokoan Wetlands was a lovely spot to stretch the legs before heading for our first night at Gundagai.  We hit heavy fog the next morning travelling through Young to Cowra.   Thick fog near Young We stopped at the "Cowra Peace Precinct" Japanese Gardens but with only a half hour to spare, we decided not to fork out the entrance fee but push on towards Dubbo. Fortunately we stopped at an Autobarn on the way and put some 'Sonic Animal' warnings on the bullbar; not long after, a roo seemed intent on leaping out in front of us, but stopped, looked up and bounded off in the other direction.  Seems those sonic sounds do work.  Although it was getting late and we'd decided we wouldn't drive at night-time, we ventured on past Coonabarabran to Narrabri,...