Crossing Australia: Where It Became Real

Before we even began

There’s a moment in every big idea where it quietly becomes real.

Not when you talk about it.
Not when you plan it.
But somewhere in between — when life shifts just enough to remind you what you’re about to leave behind.

Before we even reached the starting line, the journey changed.

Two tiny reasons arrived early — our newborn twin grandchildren in Redcliffe — and suddenly everything felt a little heavier. A little more real. We hadn’t even left yet, and already the pull between staying and going had begun.

Getting to the starting line

Even getting to the start wasn’t straightforward.

A friend drove us the 800 kilometres from Dirranbandi to the Gold Coast — the official beginning of our no-fly journey. But just fifteen minutes from arriving, her car gave up. A blown radiator, the kind that almost takes an engine with it.

We sat there on the side of the road, so close to the start and already dealing with the unexpected.

It felt like a quiet warning:
this journey might have other plans.

The road begins

And then, finally, we began.

We left the Gold Coast with a car full of intention and a journey that still felt slightly unreal. A white Christmas on the other side of the world — without flying — still lived somewhere between possibility and madness.

The first stretch wasn’t about distance. It was about goodbye.

We detoured through Lismore to see one of our boys and his family. One last gathering, all of us together, before the road stretched too far ahead to easily turn back. There’s something about those moments — they’re not dramatic, but they stay with you longer than you expect.

After that, the journey began to settle into its rhythm.

A slower pause

We made our way toward Dungowan, near Tamworth, where we paused for a couple of days with friends on their farm. It was the kind of stop that slows everything down in the best possible way — open space, quiet mornings, and landscapes that don’t ask anything of you except to notice them.

Into the rhythm of the road

Back on the road, Australia started to unfold properly.

Long stretches. Big skies. The kind of driving where time softens and the kilometres stop mattering quite so much.

Yellow fields and strange giants

Somewhere along the way, the landscape shifted into fields of yellow — endless canola in bloom, bright and almost unreal against the horizon.

And then, just as suddenly, rows of towering wind turbines — stark, mechanical, and slightly out of place against it all. A little ugly… and not quite belonging.

We passed through Hay, one of those towns that feels like it exists because the road needed it to — but this time, we didn’t just pass through.
We stayed the night.

Partly to break up the long stretch between Tamworth and Adelaide, but also because we had quietly set ourselves a rule: no more than seven hours of driving in a day.

It wasn’t about getting there as fast as possible.
It was about how we got there.

And somewhere in places like Hay, that decision started to feel like one of the best ones we’d made.

Crossing the line

We hadn’t just driven across a stretch of country.
We had crossed a line.

This was no longer an idea we could step away from.
We were in it now — properly in it — with thousands of kilometres past and more still ahead and no flights to fall back on.

And somehow, that made it feel even more right.

Continue the journey:
Crossing Australia by Rail: Adelaide to Fremantle on the Indian Pacific