My planned trip from Brisbane to Kalgoorlie(WA)

[jazzyjames999]

So I bought a mk5 GTI for my new job - problem being the new job is in Kalgoorlie!! I have to make the ~4000km trip next week.

Any tips for the journey? RACQ, first aid kit and spare gerry can are a start. I'm wondering also if there are any places/things of interest to see along the way.

And then the most important question - how is speeding handled with an interstate licence in terms of demerits and fines??

[GTD_XU1]

Narrabri to Coonabarabran, through the Piliga is full of wild life at night, try to avoid travelling through there at that time, else drive slowly. In the Narrabri area (north and south) you will probably have at least one Highway Patrol experience - they don't like speeders. In Nyngan eat at the pink cafe, can't miss it. A lot of people don't stop in Wilcannia, so make sure you fill up in Cobar, it is a 450km run to Broken Hill and some people use more fuel than they think they will, but if you need a cup of tea between Cobar and Wilcannia there is Emmdale Roadhouse ( about 180km west of Cobar). Broken Hill is a great place to visit and there is plenty to look at, probably too much in the time you have, pity. Silverton has a great history to it, worth a quick drive for a lunch and a shandy. I presume you will travel the Barrier Highway to Adelaide... at about 25km west of BH is the Thackaringa Hills, can't miss it, there is a Telstra comms tower out there, when you see the tower I would check my speed, the hills were full of wild goats in May this year and I encountered groups of 5 or 6 on the side of the highway a few times.
I get to travel from BrisVegas to Broken Hill often (kids) and my experience from many trips is that if there has been any rain in the last few weeks there will be plenty of "green feed" about to attract wild life to the roadside and plenty of bugs to squash all over your windscreen and radiator/ air intake etc. To keep the big bugs out of the radiator etc I made a screen out of some plastic flyscreen from Bunnings, a bunch of small cable ties and some gaffer tape to reinforce the four corners of the screen. Take a few minutes and you will work it out for your car. I would suggest a wet cloth or similar for screen cleaning in between town stops, I once had a yellow and green screen after driving through a cloud of grasshoppers.
Take lots of your favourite music, unless you like to hear the latest update to the live cattle prices on ABC radio. Take a camera, stop and take photos often, turn it into a mini-break, drive to stay alive, get plenty of quality rest when you stop for a sleep.
Your car will be cruising at elevated speeds and most likely elevated temperatures for quite a while, is it ready for the effort; enough tread on the tyres?
Happy cruising!

Bug Screen...

[Guest001]

Easiest way to avoid fines is not to get them.

Also its illegal to carry fuel inside the passenger compartment. Should be plenty of servos going that way as its not all that isolated.

I got a speeding fine in SA and it incurred 3 demerits but it never appeared on my QLD licence. I can go back now as they expire after 3 years LOL You can buy a bugscreen from Supercrap for $20 Remember to check it as if it fills with bugs car could overheat

[Mountainman]

I have done the Brisbane / Perth run 4 times in the last few years. If you are used to travelling in rural Australia there is nothing to fear about the trip. Don't carry any extra fuel as there is always premium unleaded available at all places and you rarely have to go more than 150km between stops. (And it is a real smelly pain and illegal to carry fuel in the car). It's just an easy but long trip that will see you sitting on 115km/h with cruise on if you value license. They do aerial speed checks and I was pulled up in the middle of nowhere by 2 police stationed at Eucla doing license checks. Australia seems so big out there it doesn't matter how fast you go it doesn't seem to make any difference.

I found the cheapest fuel on the Nullarbor stretch was at Mundrabilla just over the SA /WA border but be prepared to pay more than $2/L. At the Nullarbor Roadhouse I had to hand over my driver's license before being given a key to unlock the pump as the guy said they'd had trouble with drive-offs.

In the last 100km east of the WA / SA border you'll be travelling very close to the sea which is really 130m below the Bunda Cliffs. Stop a couple of times and take a look because you'll be awe struck. What a big wild remote world!

About 5km after crossing the border you'll come to the (very) small town of Eucla where you drop down off the escarpment for a few hundred kms until Madura. You are very close to the sea and can drive the couple of kms to some sand dunes where there is an old half buried telegraph station next to the beach and the old jetty is still standing.

It is 1200km from Ceduna (the last town in the east) to Norseman (the first town in the west) and the last 2 times I've done the run in 1 day easily even with a couple of stops I've mentioned. most roadhouses have some type of accommodation - some quite good but the one I stayed in at Mundrabilla a few years ago was, ahhh - basic. Also take a small esky with some of your favourite foods because stuff bought on the run can be bloody awful.

I've done these runs in my Forester but when I take the Golf next time I will almost certainly replace the spare with a full size one. I doubt whether you will find a replacement tyre in that 1200km across the Nullarbor and I came across a guy in an Alfa coupe creeping along at near running pace on a temp spare and I've always wondered how far he got.

Happy travelling - Kalgoorlie will be a real eye-opener!