Bumblebee takes flight

Below is the route we took when we left wagga to head up to meet the girls in townsville.

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After a night of packing on thursday we were finally ready to hit the road, so we had a good nights sleep that night and hit the road at about 10:30am. Heading inland through central NSW and QLD was the quickest route, so thats the way we decided to go, as soon as we got past West Wyalong Nelson lost reception and every road from then on was dead straight, which made for quite the exciting drive hahah. We got all the way too Charleville at about 1:00am after dodging many kangaroos we only hit 2! not bad hits just a couple of tails. We were just about out of fuel, Nelson and i were bickereing over nothing because we were tired and grumpy. I remember saying to Nelson in a pissed off tone
"Have you got the shits with me for some reason?" to which he replied in a similar narky tone
"No i thought you had the shits with me!" Anyways after that crap settled down we pulled over in a random street in Charleville and had a sleep for around 4 hours to wait untill the Servo opened.
We set off at 6:30am heading for Augathella more kangaroos along the road untill the sun came up, i don't think we hit any along this stretch, we had realised if we kept cruising at 100kph the noise of the exhaust scared most of the roos off before we got near them. Below are a few images of the roads along the way.




Obviously the best place to stop for a sleep. (charleville)

 


Between Aramac and Torrens Creek




After Torrens Creek i think in the low fuel section.



My favorite stretch of road was between Aramac and Torrens Creek it was a small tarred road for a majority of the run and it ust ran through the middle of grazing properties, there were cattle, kangaroos and ems on the road, we also spotted a few eagles which was awesome. As we got about 30kms out of Torrens creek the road turned to unsealed bulldust it was very cool, the Bumblebee eats up the dirt roads. We had all the windows open by this stage as the climate is alot dryer and warmer here than in Wagga obviously!!

Alright now for the nailbighter of the journey we were just above empty on the fuel gave as we drove through Torrens Creek the servo at TC didn't have any diesel so we had to continue on to the next town (Pentland) which was about 35kms down the road, we had enough fuel to get there so we continued on our merry way. As we approached the only servo in Pentland we noticed the Service staion was closed due to a "family emergency" so we gritted our teeth and thought we'd push our luck and drive to Homestead. This drive was alot more delicate didn't push the speed to much and managed to make it to Homestead with the fuel gave right on the lower part of empty, luckily we could fill up at the servo... WRONG two guys watering a barrel full of flowers came over and kindly informed us that they were completely out of diesel, it was about this time i slumped heavily in the chair and let out a couple of quiet choice words. The next town (Balfes Creek) was another 30kms down the road, the flower watering man with slightly crossed eyes told us that we should make it there. We had no real choice but to give it a go. So we drove slowly, in tence silence along the highway to see if we could make it to Balfes Creek, i was putting up the hills and rolling down them in neutral to conserve every last drop we had.
Somehow with the gauge now well below empty we made it to Balfes Creek Servo, we asked the owener if we could pump some diesel, he told us we might get some if we were lucky as his pump was playing up, at this point is said something like
"we'll pump it by hand if we have too!" after 10mins of persevering with the pump we had $20 worth of diesel in the tank.
"That'll get ya to Charters Towers" said the old bloke pumpin the diesel, we paid him and continued on our way to said town. The tension was lifted and we were getting stoked about being so close to townsville.
After filling up at Charters towers it was 130kms to Townsville, we were no longer concerned about conserving fuel and were getting anxious too meet up with Mikgater and Heff. Thundering along the highway at 110km p/hr we made it to townsville and navigated our way to the share house where the Girls are living.

After stuffing around at the house for a couple of hours we unloaded some things out of the Bumblebee and went and picked Mikgater up from work, we went back to the house and partied on untill early in the morning. It's awesome to be back with the girls! now we just have to figure out what we are doing next!