Mel’s Guide to Road Trip Essentials:

(01) Car (may be a good idea to have one), all fueled up, spare tires and all required tools & thingiemajigs - Check
(02) Bags packed with things for all coming destinations. Including tickets for flights home & money - Check
(03) A good map - Check
(04) A sense of adventure - Check, check!
(05) Journal (I do have to write things down before I type them here y’know) - Check
(06) Camera (would be lost without it!) - Check, check
(07) Water - check & Snacks - nope (but plenty of Mackers on the way, so..) *Ozzie for McDonald’s!
(08) Book - Check - I picked up Kerry Greenwood’s ‘Raisons & Almonds’
(09) Varied Music to suit everyone’s tastes (everyone? what, are you friggin’ kidding me?) - nope

The road trip started out well. We had all packed the night before and gotten up on time (pat pat on our backs) so we left relatively peacefully and on schedule (barring arguments on what music ought to be played)

Breakfast was at Mackers (Ozzie for McDonald’s).

My first adventure - to get handcuffed by a (very sweet) cop! It was Sim’s great idea, she thought it’d be a funny picture & the cop was very obliging.

Jest of course though, like everything else, can cease to be funny (for some people at least) when taken to an extreme. I remember the cop, with great enthu (after he had handcuffed me in a split second before I realised what was happening), asking Sim -

Shall I also pin her on the ground?

er… NO?????

Next stop was ‘The World’s Biggest Merino‘, which is on Hume Highway at Goulburn.

It was not a real Merino of course, but this huge thingie:

Can you see it’s eyes? We also climbed all the way to the top where we coud look out, through the World’s Biggest Merino’s eyes & check out the view! I felt like a child going to Hanging Garden’s (in Mumbai, off Peddar Road) for the first time & climbing into the Old Lady’s Shoe!

Also learned what ‘Ugg Boots‘ are - and they truly are super sexy. No shoe lover in the world should be without a pair.