We drove back from Melbourne to Adelaide via the Ocean Road on the 3rd. It’s a great road — a lot like Highway 1 in California, but the coastline is a bit more like Oregon.
After a few hours of twisty roads behind some, say, slower drivers, we realized this was going to take while. (We’d taken the more direct highway on the way to Melbourne — an easy 8 hours.) We checked in with our Melbourne accommodations; we had to check in by 22:00. It was 16:33, and we had 532 km to go.
OK, Leena would rather walk over hot coals than read this stuff, by my Dad and Dave will love it. And I was a math major. Skip if you like…
Posted speed limits on the highways are 100 in Victoria (Melbourne’s state) and 110 in South Australia (Adelaide). And the highways wind through towns that slow you down to 80, 70, 60, even 50. If we averaged 100, we’d make it with about 7 minutes to spare. Then Leena points out: 30 minute time change to Adelaide. An extra 30 minutes. Of course I make multiple announcements on our progress and the state of the “cushion”. It peaked at 48 minutes. High drama, I can assure you. We made it with 20 mintues to spare.
Lovely sunset along the way.
