Brisbane to Melbourne in a ute

When my chiropractor asked me what I was doing on the weekend, he probably expected the standard response of  “oh, not much; drinks on Friday, a few coffee catch-ups, brunch, that kind of thing.”

What he didn’t expect me to say was that I was flying to Brisbane to pick up a second hand ute and planned on driving it back to Melbourne. When I told him that was what I was doing, he looked a bit shocked for a minute then very delicately said “I don’t presume to know you that well Victoria, but you don’t strike me as the ute driving kind of girl.”

I laughed, not offended in the slightest. He was right; I’m not, well, the ute driving kind of girl. Or I wasn’t until last weekend when I drove 1700km from Brisbane to Melbourne in 2 days.

When I first signed up to this adventure I naively thought that it wouldn’t take very long. 20 hours according to google maps, that’s not sooooo bad right? Well, for those of you who don’t know, Australia is MASSIVE! Driving between Brisbane and Melbourne takes well over 20 hours, despite the fact that many roads are 110km/ph. Why Australia doesn’t have an autobahn like in Germany is beyond me.

In the interest of saving time, my driving partner Sam and I avoided the scenic route and took the Newell highway straight through the un-pretty parts of NSW and VIC. If we had the time I would have loved to go the coastal road, and stop off in Bryon Bay. Alas, our only real stop was in Dubbo overnight, and the only thing going on in Dubbo on a Saturday was bowling. After much consultation of the tourist pamphlet detailing the ‘Delights of Dubbo’, we chose to forgo bowling and instead go to bed early.

It’s wasn’t a trip of luxury that’s for sure. It rained some of the way so we had to pack as much as we could with us into the small chassis. Each bump sent my ribcage rattling. The suspension on the ute was so bad at times we felt like we were on safari – the difference between our experience and a real safari being that the only animals we saw on the side of the road were dead ones.

We didn’t have a cassette tape for the very retro audio system so were stuck with the radio. Sadly one of the crap things about travelling interstate is how often the triple J radio frequency changes. We spent a lot of time scanning the radio frequency to find a semi decent station. This was not helped by the fact that the ‘scan’ button kept dropping off and getting stuck.

Despite the boredom of the road, a cracked windshield, the sheer length of the trip, a gaseous episode and a tense manual driving lesson, Sam and I made it back to Melbourne in one piece WITHOUT AN ARGUMENT. You see we actually enjoyed it! 20 hours of driving can be hell, or it can be fun, depending on who you are with and the attitude you have.

There are much easier and more environmentally friendly ways to test a relationship. Like going bowling, I guess, in Dubbo.