And so, it ends. Eager to return home, we set the alarm for 6:30am but we did press the snooze button once so we could enjoy the warmth of the bed before exiting into a cold caravan.
We had a quick breakfast and were ready to leave well before 9:00am. Once again, we said our farewells to our friends and then proceeded to hitch the caravan as we would be blocking the road once hitched. Today marked the easiest pack-up we have had with the caravan. We aligned the hitch first go and five minutes later, we were the second to depart.
The run home was uneventful with the only incident being a broken tooth which chewing a soft lolly. He was grateful that this happened on the last day and not the first.
We arrived home at 11:30am and over the coming hours, we received confirmation that everyone had made it home safely.
We will do the statistics later, but we have driven a little over 8000 kilometers. We started with 10 member units at the beginning of day one, we had 9 at the end of day one due to a mechanical failure, we said goodbye to another at Port Douglas, another at Longreach and another at Nindigully. We returned home with 6 member units. The numbers worked well but anything over 10 would have been a struggle to manage. Some participated in a convoy but other decided to travel by themselves. This did not cause any problems with most of the group reconnecting at the morning stop if we had one.
We figure that the group probably did a combined total of between ^5,000 to 70,000 kilometers. Except for day one, there were zero mechanical problems, one broken windscreen, two chipped windows that we are aware of and one slow leaking tyre. This took place on many rough roads that had been impacted by floods and cyclones in recent years as well has the relentless pounding by massive road trains.
What was significant from this trip is that during the entire duration of our travels, other than our group, we encountered only one other ACC member and that was at Longreach. Unfortunately, due to having booked for dinner at a local hotel, we were not in a position to spend time with them or include them in our evening meal numbers.
We left Sydney in the dry, we returned in the dry and a comment was made to us on our return that the 4th of July was the nice3st day in Sydney, weather wise, since we departed on the trip. Other than day two and day three, rain was something we didn’t see, only the occasional shower overnight or insignificant showers a couple of other times.