Wednesday – A quick drive into the country

The big day has arrived. I'm heading out to part one of my grand tour. I loaded the car with a couple meager provisions, and a few clothes and hit the road with some intripidation.

I filled the car up with petrol, and did the usual stuff and then following the directions of my little SatNav drove up the motorway to the end (it is really that far – about 10 miles from my house) and then turned onto a small link road.

I don't know if you have used SatNav's for getting around, but you get instructions such as "Turn Right in 2 miles", or "Stay in the Right Lane." Even when I was driving to the Alps in South of France, the longest leg that I can remember was about 60 or 70 miles before there was some highway merging, or an exit to take. Anyway my trusty little machine gave a couple "Turn left in 2 km." "Take the exit in 3 km." (I have put it in Kilometers as it is what everyone talks about out here, and you look like you've got two noses if you talk about miles).

Funny aside – I have a dog with no nose. "How does it smell?" I hear you ask. It stinks, but that has nothing to do with its nose.

Anyway after leaving the motorway, and then going up a small single carriageway road for about 15 km, I thought that I would come across the highway (at least a dual carriageway) for the main road (actually one of only two roads) north to Geraldton.

I got a "Turn Left" onto another single carriageway, and then the SatNav told me to "Turn left in 300km" I was so staggered by that thought. Sure enough for 300 km, there was a single carriageway north, with hardly a car or truck on it (except for a couple road trains – trucks with 3 trailers – rocking along at about 110 km/h), maybe two petrol stations, and a couple little dirt roads off with signs indicating villages and places.

I couldn't easily get lost on that road, although there was a lot of nothing.

I did come across a convoy of two great big trucks, each carrying on half of a giant dumper truck. The dumper truck convoy was so wide we had to go right over to the dirt off the edge of the road, to let it come by the other direction.

So there I was miles from nowhere, with no radio station reception. You can imagine how grateful I was for some audio books that Earl had stuck on my iPod. He copied me about 20 full length novels (each take about 5 or 6 hours to listen to).

I eventually arrived into Geraldton, found the Ambulance Depot, and got clued up about work the next morning, and then went to the hospital to get my key for the room I'm staying in at the nurses lodgings. I'll make sure I keep my door locked at night, so I don't get any unwelcome visitors.

Day one of my Grand Tour went reasonably well!!! More about Geraldton soon.