Well there I was, sitting at home
on Christmas Day wondering what to do for the next couple of days
Then ( real quick me! ) realised I had a fully farkled and ready to go ST1300 sitting under the carport!
So some quick calculations were done and I figured set the alarm for 03:00 tomorrow and go for a "little" ride.
So, as planned, my alarm went off at 03:00 Friday morning ( Boxing Day ). Very quick snack, got dressed and left the servo at 03:45, next stop, Albany. Good run out of Perth with virtually no traffic, no "wildlife" and got to Albany and discovered my camera was not recording
. Restarted said camera, red record lite on, lets get going. Next stop Jerramungup for a splash and dash of fuel just in case Ravensthorpe was closed. Red lite on camera still on, so off I went. Got to Ravensthorpe and it was open, but no chance of getting fuel for quite a while. The cars were queued out onto the highway. OK, 474k Jerramungup to Norseman, should be OK
. If I have to I could divert into Esperence for fuel with plenty to spare. Reached the turnoff for the little shortcut that bypasses Esperence, 3 bars left on the fuel guage, 215k to Norseman
. Oh, what the hell, lets go for it!!
The guage on the dash was showing only 16 - 18k/ltr all morning, but the calculations I was doing in my head said I was getting around 20k/ltr. Some more break the boredom type calculations in my head, and I figured the reserve bar should start flashing around 28k from Norseman. Dropped the speed to 110kph on the speedo rather than the GPS just to make sure. Down to 2 Bars of fuel, 130k to go. OK, looking good now, then about an hour later the reserve bar flashed, I looked at Mrs Garmin, 28k to go!!! Dash said I had 95k left. Bewdy! Shortly later I pulled into the BP on the "corner" and filled up, only 23.7ltrs for 474k! Had a quick snack as well, then checked my camera again, still nothing! OK swap out the SD Card and try and get the rest of the trip. This is where the timelapse video starts, for some reason the software clipped the first few minutes as I left the servo in Norseman, but it got the rest. Good run up to Coolgardie, started to see a bit more traffic, and someone stuck a very bright light in the sky off to my left. Got to the left turn to Coolgardie and the bright light was now right in front of me! AAAAGGHH. Didn't want to stop here so carry on to my planned stop of Southern Cross. Left Coolgardie and then the roadworks, over 20k of 80k and 60k speed limits! Unfortunately with my camera set to take a photo every 5sec, it missed some good shots. There was 3 groups of police vehicles and "bikies" heading east. The last group was the best, 2 cop cars, then about 8 "bikies", 2 more cop cars, a prison van, another cop car!! My GPS was telling me sunset was 19:00. I figured get to Southern Cross, have bit of a feed and the sun would be down before I left. WRONG!. The sun was still well and truly up, so no point hanging around. Off I went into the setting sun. Pretty eneventful for the rest of the trip, until about 65k to go, when I got stuck behind a ute doing 80 in a 110 area, a tad annoying!
Arrived at my final fuel stop at 23:55, 5 minutes ahead of my plan! Home about 15 minutes later.
Trip Totals:
Distance: 1774k
Time: 19Hrs 10mins
Fuel Used: 86.63Ltrs
Fuel Economy: 20.5k/Ltr.
IBA SS1600k done.
Here is the timelapse video of the last 8hours from Norseman to Perth:
Runs for about 8 Mins.
Unfortunately the camera does not really show the effectiveness of my headlight setup, I had a LOT more light to see with than appears in the photo's! Some of the signs show how bright my lights really are!
