Finally got around to writing the #wtrip08 end post

Well o.k.. I will have a couple more I am sure to write about the trip whilst it is still fresh in my mind, but I thought I should get some of the facts and figures down asap.

So here are some facts and figures on the trip.
The Car Computer for the Road Trip

  • Planned Distance to Adelaide: 1881k, Travelled 2425k (Trip Total inc getting home via the Coast 4069k)
  • Total Fuel Cost S415.54 across 13 fuel stops (a couple were only top ups for long runs) (Most expensive was 146.9 at Ivanhoe, White Cliffs was only 128.9!)
  • Road Kill : 2 Galah’s (1 on the windscreen right in front of me… not happy!) + countless locusts!
  • Technical Failures 2 – front cigarette lighter in the forester and then the power inverter died as well, plus 2 blown fuses. result of this is about 50k of gps trace missing plus it will take me a few days to pull some nema logs together.
  • Car Issues – 2 – 1 – Leaking transmission fluid since rebuild pretrip, noticed it 100k from Wilcannia up a dirt road in a telstra dead spot… total cost of repair $20!. 2 – have bent the chrome around the towbar after bottoming out on a dip somewhere.

Farm Machinery

  • Number of wrong turns – only about 3, and no more than 1 or 2k in total. (Silliest was not seeing the Ivanhoe Caravan Park as I drove into town… of course it is the petrol station!)
  • Photos taken – 6400 (65gig! worth) (have geotagged about 50% already) (have uploaded 50 to flickr, a lot of them are repeats or differing angles working out what looked the best, or are going to be used in panoramas.  Most of the pano’s I have uploaded already use at least 50 shots to make them so smooth.

Death in the floods

  • Number of tweets with a georeference included 43.
  • Bad People I meet on the journey = 0; good people = all those I talked to along the way.
  • Number of days with rain 1 which did mean a change to plans to camp near Ivanhoe, but worked out just fine anway.  (Protip if you hear rain on the tent in the morning… wake up and put it away then don’t go back to sleep for an hour and wait till the ground has turned to mud!)
  • Number of times I wished I had the 18-200mm lens as opposed to the 2xkit lens’ I have.. most days, oh yeah and the 12-24mm DX lens would be great as well given how big the country is)
  • Number of times I was stopped from taking photos for security reasons = 0.  Lost count of number of times people asked me questions about all the gear I had and how cool it all was.

In the next few days I will try and stop spamming my twitter timeline with images from the trip, and get the KML file for the whole trip put up as well.

And yes the next trip is in the pipeline… Easter: Melbourne to Coober Pedy and back 🙂

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