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Well, we've made it... After raining last night, we awoke to a clear, sunny day for our pack up and departure from Ballarat. Not ony that, but our fears of a dismal pack up, caused by wet walls etc, were unfounded and unwarranted, as mostly it had dried up and disappeared by the time we needed to fold the walls up. It took us two hours to get underway, (we had well and truly settled in at Ballarat), but only an hour and a half to drive to Halls Gap.
As an experiment, I attached our Go Pro camera to the front of the bullbar, and set it to take a photo every 5 seconds. I'm hoping to be able to create a time lapse video of our travels, when the scenery is worth it, or if we discover some picturesque 4wd tracks... I don't know if it'll work or not, but if you've got any ideas about how to make it work, I'd love to hear them...
The 'Caravan Clan' wave is back in full swing, and I reckon we're probably getting a 90% response rate. (We like to keep count... Don't worry, some of the trip is boring... It's a long story...) Today was an interesting trip. Was only a short drive, mostly highway conditions, but we saw more caravans today than nearly any other day we've been on the road. At one stage, we were following another van, doing the speed limit, and I'd left plenty of room between us and the van in front. It was single lane traffic each direction, with regular oncoming traffic. I looked in my side mirror, and there's a blue commodore coming down the side of us, overtaking. So I slow up, to allow him more room to get in, as there's oncoming traffic ahead. But he doesn't pull in! He continues down the wrong side of the road, and commits to overtaking the next caravan as well. There's absolutely NO WAY he has enough time or speed to get in front of that caravan before the oncoming car has serious problems getting by him, even if it hit the skids... Which it did... And right in front of us, hopefully captured by the camera on the bullbar, we have three cars wide on a dual lane highway, one towing a caravan, another one overtaking, and the third one skimming the gravel shoulder trying to create enough room for everyone to fit without having an accident... It was a close situation, and not one I hope we see too often on this trip! But it makes you realise that not everyone is on the road with all day to get where they're going, or happy to sit behind cars pulling vans that slow to around 80kph going up a hill, and then take another 10 minutes to get back to 100kph on the other side... Caravans are like cholesterol, clogging the arteries of the nations roads, restricting the normal flow of traffic, and creating bottle necks where there would otherwise be no congestion or problems. Caravanners have a responsibility, like truckers, to make sure they're allowing the average motorist to travel the road unhindered and unrestricted. It's easy on double lane motorways, to sit in the left and maintain whatever speed we can manage, but on the average single lane highway, when some caravanners slow to 80kph in a 100kph zone, they need to be a little more considerate and pull over to let people past, or learn to tow at a more appropriate speed... Hard to say, I know, and even more difficult to bring in a relevant license for towing, but it's probably the only way to avoid the situations that we saw first hand today...
Halls Gap is gorgeous!! It's a beautiful, little tourist town, nestled in a valley between towering mountain ranges and craggy cliffs. Everywhere you look is up into stunning scenery. We'll be doing a drive into the mountains and the Grampians National Park tomorrow, and visiting some of the lookouts and waterfalls that we can get to. Unfortunately, most of the 4wd tracks have been washed out in the recent floods, and are still closed, but the ladies at the Visitor Information Centre assured us that the route we've planned will show us what we want to see... The forecast is for more sunny weather, and although cool, it should be a splendid day for us... Besides, we've got Mr Dyson to take care of the cold problem...
When we get photos, I'll put them up. And I'll see if the Go Pro thing can be done as well, that would be an interesting video...
- comments
Michelle East The overtaking car situation is not unique to caravans. Experienced the same thing in my car when we were all doing the speed limit, all 4 or 5 of us!