10 November to Coonabarabran

I'd forgotten what it felt like to drive for 8 hours. We felt like stiffs when we arrived. One good point was there were not many cars or trucks on the road unlike our last experience of the Newell Highway when we felt like the meat in a sandwich on many occasions. On crossing into NSW, the road safety signs included a warning of fines for speeding being $1380 – how fast would that be?? We had our Tom Tom on and I have it set to blow a trumpet when we go over the speed limit. The speed on much of the highway was 110 but the Tom Tom thought it was 100 so we were constantly being serenaded. My mind started to create a conspiracy theory especially when the signs suddenly showed $3300 for speeding: were the 110 signs not real, was Tom Tom right???

On the drive we saw three jabirus in a swamp east of Warwick and a clump of emus cleaning up the grain in a paddock after harvesting. Also a white necked crane on the flood plains in NSW. We heard the bell birds on Cunningham's Gap where we were held up for about 30 mins because of roadworks. Otherwise lots of road kill but of course the nocturnal animals were in the land of nod.

We got into the Matthew Flinders Motel at 7pm, NSW time, so we made it in time to watch “The Slap” and “Crownies”