July 4

Left Wollongong at 6.15 am and made good time to Penrith, well as much as speed limits and traffic would allow! However it took us 3 hours to get from home to Lithgow (180 km) where we made the obligatory stop at McDonalds. Why so long? Well it was a long uphill climb but I really doubt we could have done it faster – a combination of 60 kph speed limits, school zones, traffic and road work conspired to slow us down.

The weather station inside McDonalds indicated the temperature was 7.6⁰ while the wind chill was 5.7⁰ so it was pretty cool!

A tail wind all the way from Lithgow was a big help with fuel consumption and ensured we used about the usual amount of fuel for the distance travelled. Normally, when towing, we can cover about 500 km before needing to switch over to the second tank – we did 470 km before switching over on this leg of the trip. The other thing which probably helped was the fact that we weren’t carrying any water in the van – a full tank equals 60 L / 60 kg! We gambled on Dubbo water being OK so will fill the van’s tank with water before leaving here.

We pulled in to the caravan park at 2.00 pm so we made pretty good time. We found out that the temperature here this morning was -2, the coldest day Dubbo has had for some time. Thank heavens it’s going to be warmer tomorrow.

The caravan park is quite good and VERY popular – all the sites are full tonight. We learnt in 2004 that the best time to arrive at a park is early afternoon before things start to get busy – nothing’s changed!