With all good plans there are some wrinkles along the way. I was supposed to do the final readiness yesterday in preparedness for a quick getaway this morning.

That plan came unstuck with a overtime shift following a standby shift making it 24 hours at work. By the time I got home last night, all I felt like doing was to hit the sack. Despite this setback, I managed to get most done last night with the finishing off this morning, before hitting the road a little after 1030 (a bit later than I planned).For a Saturday, South Road was still a car park and it took a lot longer than expected to get away from Adelaide, however the delays didn’t stop there.

Both on Port Wakefield Road and Augusta Highway there were roadworks which either had us slowing down to 60kph or stopped and waiting for an escort.

There was the “compulsory” stop at Port Wakefield for a couple of pasties from Kiplings Bakery. The seagulls certainly like them too with a scene resembling Alfred Hitchocks “Birds” around our car when we threw them the scraps.

What would normally take around 4 hours and change to Port Augusta, today took 5 and a half hours.There is not as much daylight these days but we kept moving arriving at Wudinna around 7pm, staying at the Wudinna Showgrounds.

The plan is to make haste to the Western Australia border, then take it easy when we are within the State. With COVID, the State Borders can go up in a heartbeat so we would like to at least get into WA, even if we have to bypass Perth due to any snap lockdown.

We managed 576 kilometres for the day with fuel being $1.319 a litre at Port Augusta.