Today I woke up somewhere I hadn’t intended to be.
I had prior to this road trip worked out where I would be stopping each night.
Of course I knew I could change things around but I hadn’t really considered where else I might be stopping.
So while I knew how to get from Port Augusta home I hadn’t really considered where I might stop and things like that.
I had driven the route I’d been following today though in reverse, coming up to Port Augusta on my previous road trip to Woomera.
I thought I might stay in Stawell or Ararat on the way towards home. They were each within the 8 - 9 hour range from Port Augusta.
Once again South Australia blew me away with its changing landscape, from Port Augusta all the way through to Victoria, it’s just a wonderful landscape.
As I approached Adelaide I mostly relied on my previous road trip driving through Adelaide in order to navigate through, or more accurately around the city centre to get out to the South Eastern Highway in order to head back towards Victoria.
Heading out along this road I realised at some point that in fact I hadn’t driven along all of it the last time I was in Adelaide because I’d taken the coastal route from Kingston SE.
At some point in the day I passed through Murray Bridge, which, had I stayed in Wudinna rather than Port Augusta the previous night I would have stayed there tonight. But as it was still relatively early I continued on.
As I entered Victoria and continued in my passage through along the road something, perhaps not immediately, but at some point in the day I noticed this; Victoria’s roads are **awful**.
South Australia and Western Australia’s roads, perfectly smooth, drive for hours, not notice anything, but almost immediately as I re-entered Victoria the Western Highway just became awful; rough, uneven and just so much more badly maintained than the neighbouring state’s roads. I found myself lamenting ‘this is the main highway that connects Victoria to South Australia. Why is it so bad?’
As I continued driving I was now aiming to stop in Horsham and as I got to there I thought I’d push just a little more, there was only an hour’s difference from Horsham to Ararat, so I thought I’d stop there as I knew from earlier in the day that there was plenty of accommodation at Ararat as Horsham.
However as I was going through Ararat I seemed to encounter what passed for peak hour (certainly more traffic than I’d needed to deal with since going through Adelaide 7+ hours previously) and I was also fielding a few phone calls. These things combined made looking for accommodation a little tricky.
So I continued on.
At this point I knew I’d need to stop somewhere because I’d already stopped I think twice earlier in the day for power naps and knew I was approaching my limit. Plus twilight had passed and now night was falling, and while I was in less danger of kangaroos jumping out I also knew that my patience and awareness was waning.
I didn’t know which town I would stop in, I thought I would need to continue on to Ballarat a further hour on from Ararat. However there was a town with a pub and various shops that had a motel; Beaufort, which was 30 minutes away from Ararat. I actually drove post the motel and had to do a U-turn as there was traffic behind me and I didn’t quite take in that it was a motel as it was set quite a ways back from the road.
The Beaufort Motel was surprising, in that it was reasonably priced, comfortable, the room had some interesting quirks; a full sized fridge / freezer, TV with a DVD player, microwave.
I’d stopped and eaten a large meal fairly late in the afternoon, so I dug through my car, found a king size KitKat I’d bought the previous day, also some biscuits and had a cup of tea or two and then retired to bed.
According Google Earth Port Augusta, South Australia to Beaufort, Victoria is 868 kilometres, estimated travel time 9 hours 17 minutes. I think factoring in fuel stops, food stops and power naps stops I probably travelled for 10 maybe 10 and a half hours. It felt like it was the longest day I’ve had on any of my road trips thus far and not something I want to replicate.