Roo Mania!

We set off from Adelaide a little later than I had hoped, ok, two and a half hours later... what can I say? We're not morning people. We didn't even reach the boarder of SA, yes, even after 7 hours of driving. We cooked Dinosaur pasta, which appeases the child in me, and only afterwards remembered we had tuna or spam to put in it, oh well. With faces stuffed and tea drank, we attempted a crossword using our head torches, surprisingly helpful for spotting on the correct place. Then it was bed time. 

Just away from the road enough to pee without watchers, we went to bed and tonight was chilly. Luckily we kept warm and woke with a tent full of condensation. Don't touch the walls! We dried it as best we could with a cloth, packed up and headed on our way, we needed to cover some serious ground today. 

With barely any stopping, apart from toilets or fuel, we headed straight towards Bourke, stopping for lunch and adding our travelling graffiti to the wall of travellers notes! Big hello if you're checking out my blog because of that travel stop. 

Through Bourke we decided to trek on to Cundamalla, eating our food as we went. It was starting to get dark and it was "roo'o'clock", so we slowed the speed down. After about 50ks I decided to start counting the Kangaroos. 1, 2, miss a few, 99, 100... miss a few more, 148, 149, 150! A jumper. Jumped out in to the road and BANG, ran over its tail. I have never known an animal to be so stupid. In NSW it was overrun by goats, goats that ran AWAY from traffic. 

We got to the next town and considered stopping, but we didn't feel safe, by this point we'd seen around 400 Kangaroos, but only about 5 jumping in to the road. Feeling apprehensive and weighing up all the stats, we decided the next wiki camp would be perfect, 95k to go. 600 roos in I laughed and said 'lets make it to 1000 before we hit camp'. Driving even slower now due to the stupidity of the roos, we were making slow progress. Bear in mind, we weren't counting any dead ones, which were a hell of a lot! 700... 800... more and more jumpers... we're driving in the centre of the road now.

Kangaroo blood and fluff under the car

Let me put it in to perspective to those of you who have never driven Australian country roads at night... in a space of perhaps 400k, we saw 1 truck. ONE TRUCK. We were the only other vehicle on the road. Along that 400k we drove slooooow, very slow; it was a hefty amount of time spent surrounded by the stupidest animal I've ever come across. 

Phil turns to me and, in regards to the not stopping, says "I'm going to label this under 'mistakes'". In full agreement I continued driving, carefully, sometimes stopping, sometimes speeding up. 850 roos; are we seriously going to reach 1000? I would have never estimated that in recollection, and these were just the ones at the edge of the road. 800, holy moly, really? 889. BANG. Jumped straight into the side of the car, thud. No stopping. Keep going. QLD this is crazy. By the time we stopped we had reached 1072, it was supposed to be a joke, A JOKE, not a challenge!


Tense, tired and full of adrenalin we pulled out the tent and went to bed. At least it was considerably warmer than the night before. 

After a disturbed sleep from the adrenalin it was time for another long day on the road. At least the sun was up and it was daylight, goodnight to the kangaroos, good morning to the day ahead. Let's go!