Joel's place is really nice. We had the luxury of a ceiling fan in our bedroom, which was nice because its starting to get hotter around here. We woke up at 4:30am to hit the road early. After meeting up with the Gosdens, we loaded up two cars with food and clothing and people and started heading west. We'll be taking the direct route to Adalaide, which runs through the thick farmland and hills of the Australian countryside. We stopped in Toowoomba for a picnic breakfast. There was a great lookout point there from where you can see smoke rising from many brush fires nearby. Everyone is looking foreward to the long overdue rain.

Matt's Cheeky Smile	On the Road to Toowoomba	Joel Driving	Miles from Everywhere
View from Toowoomba	View from Toowoomba	View from Toowoomba	View from Toowoomba
View from Toowoomba	Flattened Hill	Ness Playing Footie	Marnie's Tackle
Percy Kicking	Marnie Passing	Opening the Museli	Brekkie in Toowoomba
In Joel's Sunnies	Getting Dizzy	Can't Reach

After Joel and Ness, It was my turn to drive. After watching everyone for five days, I've gotten used to the idea of driving on the left side of the road. But what I wasn't ready for was driving with my head closer to the right side of the lane. So, the car kept drifing over onto the shoulder while I drove, fighting the instinct to center the car in the lane. The other problem I had was the automatic impulse to reach for the turn signal with my left hand. Each time I went to overtake the truck ahead of me, I inevitably signaled with the wiper blades instead! The only bad thing that happened was a terrible sunburn down my right arm from driving. Stopping every few hours for a really fancy picnic in a park really gives me a sense of the simple pleasures that we sometimes miss out on. We stopped again in Narrabri for lunch and a nap.

Meat Barn	Ness Driving	Aussie Clouds	Windmill
Fence	Marnie on the Grass	Picnic in Narrabri	Salad Sandwiches
Happy Nappie	Footie in the Park

We went through a place called Coonabaraban, from where you can see, all around the horizon, hills. Some were covered in green rolling feilds spotted occasionally with gray leaf-less trees, others covered with purple flowers as thick as grass, and others with sheep.

Brains

An Ocker Ute Behind Us at the Servo

Hills near Coonabaraban

Sun Behind Hill

We've stopped for the night at a cabin in Gilgandra. We went for a walk to pick up some chips for dinner and passed The Rural Museum as the sun was setting. The batteries in the camera had died, but I was able to turn-it-on-and-shoot, taking one shot at a time without focusing or zooming before it completely died. There was an assortment of artistic windmills attached to kangaroos that hopped. One was of Ned Kelly raising his shotgun. Our cabin has two queen size beds, four single beds, and a full kitchen, but only has one tiny toilet (bathroom) with saloon type swinging doors that dont close at all! We're about halfway to Adalaide. Tomorrow we'll try to make it the rest of the way.

Slow Motion	On a Walk for Chips	Big Windmill	The Rural Museum
Sunset in Gilgandra	Ned Kelly