Closed the garage door at 4am & headed off to meet the guys at McDonalds McGrath's hill some 300 odd km's away. Froze, a very large section under fog could only manage about 70km/h in a 110km/h zone. No wildlife that I saw (surpisingly) but very large road kill. My additional driving lights were aimed a little too high and I kept getting flashed by the truckies which isn't too good. They were starting to get very annoyed from what I could tell on the radio. Met the guys at McGrath's, the time slot of the meet was 0730 to 0800, I arrived 0740 and had some time to defrost. The beast at idle at our first stop on Putty rd at a former truck stop. Some early arrival strommers still sleeping... Footbridge out of Urunga 622m long by my very accurate foot spacing that was confirmed by a sign at the beginning.... There were a few day trips by those who were there early, this was the ugly crew that went into Coffs Harbour. Back at the campground, AceRider arrives not long before the dinner, automatic crowd gatherer DonUnder, Mr Farkles and TS.... Look at Mr Farkles face.... he know's he has lost his crown... The evening dinner, I enjoyed mine, thanks Guy for organising the dinner procession. The regular 0800 meet at a point after the previous nights dinner. Even after this shot there were still a few late coming. This is outside the Urunga pub. The farkle comp winner; Emmjay, judged by Saab Not my thing....:huh Left just before 0900, straight hwy to home, only once I didn't stop for fuel, this was a very surreal feeling as I prefer as most do to get off the highway for the country roads plus dirt. Plenty of road works for the first few hundred km's, stopped just after Sydney for fuel, I was going to have a decent rest and have a lay down but these 3 snotty smoking 15 yr olds were bugging me so I decided to stop at the next rest stop. This turned out to be very lucky, not long after I left about half dozen police cars were tearing up the other side of the hwy lights/sirens blaring. I found out later that there had been a serious accident within 15 minutes behind which had closed the hwy for 8 hours. When I got to Marulan hwy rest stop, closed all the vents on the jacket, put the neck warmer on, swapped the gloves and put on the kidney belt (luckily) as this stop is about 1.5 hours from home so I decided to get going after a short rest. As I approached lake George I froze, and that stayed that way until I got home. I forgot to put the inner liner back in. Ahh good ol' Canberra weather. I did a total of about 1800kms for the weekend, used only about 100ml of oil, we raised about $1000 for 2 charities; $600 for the Royal Flying Doctor Service and about $400 for Westpac choppers. The ride was fairly trouble free. Any other ADV AUS strommer inmates on here feel free to add.
