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Finally got around last night to encoding the video of the drive home from Adelaide to Melbourne Last night… and here it is… compressed down to 6min and 13 Seconds… yes the video is a bit rough in places as the camera moved during the trip and I forgot to hit pause on a couple of side stops to get photos… but hey it adds to the interestingness I think.

For those are wondering the video is captured on a webcam hanging of the sunvisor in the car plugged into my Asus R2H and recorded to a WD Passport HD.

Sourced from 148Gig worth of 320×240 Video and approx 17 hours of driving and stopping to take photos

So this is Adelaide to Furner in one day.. stop at a friends place then 2 days later drive to Melbourne…

Here is the kml of the trip… so you can see what the video covers…

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Tags: General, RoadTrip 08, video by Me
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yes.. it has taken way to long to do this.. but with work and all the stuff getting in the way of fun…

anyway here is the first draft of the kmz file for the #wtrip08

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Tags: General, RoadTrip 08, google, gps by Me
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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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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

Tags: General, Nikon D90, Photos, RoadTrip 08 by Me
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O.k… I am 24 hours away from leaving and printing out my final set of maps for the trip. I have located all the camp grounds that I need to as well so have tweaked the maps as well.

The other thing was that I plan on doing a good number of hours around Silverton and Broken Hill, so I will arrive in Broken Hill late Friday leave on Monday Morning, which gives me 2 full days.

I have also started to use the hashtag #wtrip08 if you wish to follow the tweet stream. I will be able to receive direct messages only so conversation may be a bit one way. Why the hell should I pay $29 for 100meg of data on my prepaid phone!

So here is the route day by day…

Tuesday 16/12/08: Melbourne to Echuca/Barma State Forest: 272 km

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Wednesday: Echuca to the Willandra National Park: 418 km (Just south of Ivanhoe)

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Thursday: Willandra National Park to White Cliffs, via Ivanhoe and Wilcannia: 400 km

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Friday: Broken Hill 274 km (Depending on Weather and Road conditions which I can work out at White Cliffs, I can take the main sealed route to Broken Hill, by travelling back to Wilcannia as well)

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Saturday/Sunday: Base myself in broken Hill.. will go out to Silverton for at least half a day as well

Monday: Broken Hill to Burra: 356 km (Remembering to be in Burra before Thorougoods Cellar Door Closes to stock up on some of the best Cider in Australia)

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Tuesday 23/12/08: Burra to Adelaide Airport: 161 km. Most important thing to be at the Airport before Cat arrives from Melbourne.

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Total Distance of trip will be if I only followed the maps 1,881 km – Will over 2k by the time you do all those other running around bits e.t.c… but a holiday I am very much looking forward to.

Plus the return trip home from Adelaide will be via Millicent and the coast taking a few days to do that as well

Tags: General, RoadTrip 08, twitter by Me
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Telstra 156 – Prepaid with Monster Aerial

Yep… despite my love for my N9-8gb it simply isn’t going to work where I am going. So I have had to fork out more money for another phone.

This little phone is what is referred to a blue tick phone and with the big aerial on it should give me coverage for nearly the whole trip… sans a bit of the Cobb Highway and the back road to Broken Hill from White Cliffs. (a road that I may or may not take depending on speaking to the locals at White Cliffs before hand)

I am looking forward to sending tweets from the middle of nowhere to let people know how I am getting on as well.

The other nice thing about this phone is that it charges via USB. So the power inverter in the car can be charging either the UMPC or the Camera and the Nokia will charge of the other lighter adaptor I have and I do not need to fork out for another car charger for this little phone.

Thanks to @JonoH for the aerial as well.

Tags: Mobile, RoadTrip 08 by Me
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