We left Canberra at 12.00pm on Thursday - bound for Hay. We passed through Yass, Gundigai (stopped to see the dog on the tucker box), Narrandera and then eventually reached hay at about 5.30. We set up camp for the night at Big 4 Hay Plain. We saw little of the town before it got dark but the locals seemed friendly and we had a decent pizza from the take away. Hay Big 4 was impressive. We have a rooftop camper, and rented an ensuite camp site which was lovely.

We departed early in the morning bound for Port Augusta. This was always going to be a huge day but it turned out be bigger than we expected. 828kms - the distance from Hay to PA and an estimated 9 hours. As it was only the second day, we were up early and excited to start the long drive. They Hay plain is just a long expanse of nothing. Although it was not boring. This is where we started to see emus (much to our delight) and even saw a huge flock of pelicans out in the middle of nowhere!

Around Lunchtime we made the border crossing into Victoria. We had lunch and a break at Mildura, which was a beautiful town and a great rest and recovery session. We once again crossed the border into our third state for the day - South Australia. We felt very accomplished getting this far although it was only the start of our journey. We passed through vineyard country and experienced lots of little farming towns on the highway. Around Burra (200kms south of Port Augusta) we had some car trouble - a bolt from our roof racks had fallen out. We experienced some country hospitality with the local mechanic helping us out. This made the day a little stressful and quite exhausting and not what you need on a long day of driving. We ended up at Port Pirie in the dark and realised that the caravan parks would be shut by the time we got to our destination. We had a quick dinner at PP and continued on to Port Augusta. We stayed at a nice little motel and had a good shower and rest after our long and tiring day.

I must say that the South Australian sunset, while on route through the hills surrounding the coastline was spectacular and defiantly the highlight of the day!