by Tom Pitt
Even though this trip doesn’t revolve around Peugeots, it could be of interest to anyone that might be intending to do a similar trip.
We originally had thought of driving the whole way, but after considering the time it takes to travel the Eyre Highway and the cost of fuel and accommodation for the three days either way, we decided to fly to Adelaide and pick up a rental car there and save the wear and tear on our own vehicle in the meantime.
When we did a similar trip over east two years ago, we travelled over by the Indian Pacific train and picked up a car in Sydney, did our travelling around, and had arranged to drop the car off in Adelaide and fly home from there. That was fine, but the cost of dropping off the car at a separate point meant that we had to pay quite a surcharge on top of our hire rates. We decided to rent through Europcar for that trip, and it wasn’t cheap by any means. We were up for over $4,000 which included $1,500 for the one way drop-off, for a period of 28 days rental. We were also on a limit of 5,000 kilometres, anything over that was added on at a set rate.
This time, I did a bit of homework well before we went on the trip, and found East Coast Car Rentals had a good price structure for rental and with no kilometre restrictions. The cost this time was $1,550 for 28 days with full insurance cover and no distance restrictions. The car was a similar size to the one we had before, which was an MG, which I didn’t like for many reasons, and this time we had a Hyundai Venue, which was great. Only a small car, but plenty of room for the two of us plus our luggage. This car had a built in GPS, so we used that instead of our Tom Tom that we had brought over with us. This created an interesting trip out of Adelaide, as it had its own way of telling you whereto turn off the freeway! I was used to my own GPS, which indicates the slip road before you do a turn right, but not this machine, it just says sharp turn right, which doesn’t work on a freeway! Eventually I realised how to interpret what it was meaning.
To backtrack a bit, we arrived at Adelaide Airport on the evening of Thursday, 11th, and as we had booked a room at the adjacent Airport Motel, we rang them up, and they sent a transfer vehicle to take us to the Motel. The next morning, we only had to walk less than a city block to where the car hire firm had their depot. As it was on a main road, and we wanted to head to Wentworth, which is in NSW, at the junction of the Darling and Murray rivers, we put Wentworth in the GPS, and blindly followed its instructions, until we realised that we were heading north towards Port Augusta! So it was a case of heading east at the first opportunity and letting the GPS catch up with us, which it did eventually. We ended back on the Sturt Highway, which is where we should have been in the first place, and motored on towards Wentworth, passing Renmark on the way. So we started off in SA, passed through a bit of Victoria, then ended up in NSW just before we arrived at Wentworth.
As we were motoring along on the speed limit, a Tesla zoomed past us at a fair rate of knots, and disappeared into the distance, but about 40 kilometres further along the road, we caught up with it and it was putting along at about 50 kilometres an hour, we can only assume that they suddenly realised that they had better save a bit of battery to get them to Renmark!
Wentworth has an interesting feature in one of its parks, a Grey Fergie stuck up on a pole about 6 metres in the air. The reason for that is that in the 1956 major flood, it was a team of local farmers with their little Fergies that put up a levee bank around the town, that saved it from being flooded.
Where we stayed there was with a cousin of mine, who has just built a house on a bend of the Darling River, just out of Wentworth, lovely spot, and up out of flood reach. Great views from the house of the river, with a great flock of pelicans and other water birds there all the time. After two nights there it was time to head to Condobolin, which was basically my home town before we headed over west, so plenty of old friends and relatives to catch up with there. The trip up there follows the Sturt Highway until we reach Hay, then we turn north east over the Murrumbidgee River onto the Mid Western Highway through to Rankin Springs, where we head north towards Lake Cargelligo before heading east to Condobolin. The crops in this area are looking really healthy, they were the best that we saw on our whole trip. The roads were a mixture of fair condition through to pretty bad that day, the wet weather over the last year or so has made it pretty hard for the local councils to maintain them in a reasonable condition.
We stayed in Condobolin for a few days, then off to Forbes along the Lachlan Valley Way, which follows the Lachlan River for a few hundred kilometres. The main reason we went to Forbes was to spend time with my uncle, who now lives in a retirement village. He is the one who introduced me to Peugeot cars many years ago, and he now is down to two cars. The 406, which was his pride and joy, is now off the road, because he got a fairly severe hit on the front right side in a traffic accident. The insurance company decided in its wisdom, that it was not economical to repair it, so he driving his 505 GTI for the time being. While we were there in Forbes, we took my uncle to see a couple of friends that live out of town, and also to the local Car Museum, where he has a couple of vehicles on loan to the museum. Since he moved to Forbes after he sold his farm, my uncle did a lot of work on various vehicles that are now in the museum. He is not a trained mechanic, but very handy with his hands, seems to be able to get most motors to go. As the museum is up for sale, he has to make up his mind as to what he will do with them. They are not Peugeots, one isa 1935 Morris 8 tourer, which we converted to a rough utility many years ago, and the other is a 1952 BSA 350 motor bike that is still in original condition and still a goer. I spent many a mile on that bike when I was working for my uncle on a sheep property near Condobolin. This was back in the mid fifties, before there were such things as ag bikes.
While we were based in Forbes, we went across to Parkes for the day, to catch up with friends there that were involved in the car club that I was in before we moved over west. They have a very nice Borgward Isabella coupe, still in original condition, plus a collection of Renaults, ranging from R4s,Caravelles through to an R12. There would be enough parts cars there to make up a lot of complete cars. Also , while we were there, Rex took me down to his workshop to show me a vehicle that he was doing the motor up on. It is a 404utility, originally from South Africa, fitted with a very nice metal utility body with a fibreglass canopy. I hadn’t seen that type of body on a 404 before, it looked really nice.
The trip from Forbes and back to Parkes was the only time we spent on the Newell Highway. It is a disgusting road to travel on, both with the bad surfaces and the amount of transports that travel on it. It would have to be the worst road that we travelled on while we were away over east.
From Forbes we travelled further along the Lachlan Valley Way to Cowra, where we headed south to Boorowa, then across to Crookwell, Goulburn, then onto the Hume Highway to reach our next stop, which was Cobbitty, on the western side of Sydney, near Camden. We stayed there for a few days, before heading north to Williamtown, north of Newcastle.
The first part of that section of the trip north was on a very new and well made road in the vicinity of the new airport, but it didn’t last for very long, and we were on old roads as we headed through Penrith, then Richmond, before heading to the Hawkesbury River at Wisemans Ferry. Here we crossed over the river on a vehicular ferry, following our cars GPS instructions, and headed north. Unfortunately, the GPS decided that we needed to travel on the original Old North Road, which was fine for a start, but when it ended up a single lane dirt road, we started to doubt whether we were on the right road! We continued on along the road, and eventually came out at Mangrove mountain at a tee junction, and onto a tar road, which led us to the main freeway north. From there it was an easy run up past Newcastle to our friends place near Williamtown.
We spent a few days there before heading west along the New England Highway, before turning off onto the Golden Highway which goes through to Dubbo in the central west. We didn’t have to go as far as Dubbo, as there are a couple of roads that cut across to the Orange road just past Dunedoo. The first one was closed due to bridge works, but we went across on the next one, which was a road that I had never been on before.
We were now on the Mitchel Highway, so down through Wellington, then Molong, before reaching Orange in the late afternoon. Luckily, the motel that we stayed at in Orange has under cover parking, as the temperature went down well below zero, and there was a heavy frost. The maximum temperature the next day was 5 degrees C. Not used to that! We only went a few kilometres that day, as we were catching up with friends at Millthorpe, where we stayed overnight. My friend there, Warren Ridge (driver) and his wife, Joy,(navigator) were very active in off road rallying, but have retired from that now. One of his rally cars was a Peugeot 404, which they were quite succesful in while they rallied it. They then went on to a Pajero with the V6 engine, which is now rallied by one of their sons.
The next stage of our trip took us south through the Abercrombie river area, to eventually come out at Crookwell, where we stopped to catch up with an aunt of mine who lives in a retirement village there. From there it was on to Goulburn, to spend a few days with friends there. A cold hole of a place in the winter, the wind never seems to abate. But it was good to catch up with our friends. Then on to Bungendore for a couple of nights. Tona wanted to do some research at the War Memorial in Canberra, so we spent a day in there while we were so close.
The next town on the list was Wagga Wagga, so we headed down there after we found our way around Canberra, then on to Yass, where we joined the Hume Highway, to travel down as far as the turnoff to Wagga Wagga, where we arrived in the early afternoon. Two nights there catching up with relatives and friends, then off again, this time heading south to Albury- Wodonga on the Murray, where we then turned west along the Murray Valley Highway to Echuca. We stayed in Echuca overnight, as we wanted to have a look at the old jetties and paddle steamers on the river, but it was a pea souper fog the next morning, so we headed along the Murray river as far as Swan Hill, where we were able to have a look at the jetties, paddle boats, etc. We would like to spend more time there if we get over east again, as there is so much to see with the history of the river boats and the irrigation farms around there.
We ended back at Wentworth that afternoon, and spent the night with my cousins, before heading back to Adelaide on the Wednesday, to stay overnight at the Airport Motel, as we had to fly out on Thursday, the 8th August. On Thursday, we handed our hire car back, and they took us to the airport in their shuttle bus.
Some interesting facts regarding costs while we were over there.
Motel accommodation costs ranged from $110-00 to $165-00 per night. Total kilometres were 4,536, or 2,835 miles. Total fuel used was 286 litres, or 63 gallons. Which comes back at 45 mpg, or 6.3litres per 100 klms. Total fuel cost was $547-21. The cost per litre ranged from $1-68 in Adelaide, to $2-15 at Narellan, near Goulburn.
Arriving back at Perth Airport, we caught the train into Perth, then the Mandurah train, then a bus to within a block of where we live. Very handy.
Great to be home again! Even if we did end up with Covid!