We are on our way to Broome!  Should be around an 10,000Km trip (7,000 miles).

Not too much drama leaving on time as all the big jobs got finished, but the first night's stop brought up a number of things we completely forgot!  Only small things, but we should have remembered:

• a headlight torch
• clothes pegs
• a set of allen keys
• a bread knife
• beer (how could I forget the beer?)
• and a few other items

Nothing that couldn't be solved with a trip to the local Woolworths in Port Augusta.

So far we have free-camped on the beach at Port Germain, in the sandhills north of Woomera at Lake Hart, and in a desert meadow close to Ayers Rock.

This is our first night out, just back from the beach, and already it looks like a Chinese laundry:

On the first day my special air-dryer muffler system blew off (too much air pressure for the tubing) so it was on with the overalls and under the truck to get it sorted.

The hose wasn't coping with the blow off pressure, so I got some heavier duty stuff at Mitre10.

The countryside changed to desert pretty quickly after our first night. Mainly red-sand country without much vegetation. This is where we camped on the 2nd night, about 500m off the road in some nice sandhill coutry.

You can just see the yellow "L" plates on the truck. Becky has been doing a bit of the driving, and hasn't got her full truck license yet. 

Over about 1500Km we are averaging 24L/100Km which is fair but not great. Spoke to a bloke towing a big van with a petrol Land Cruiser and he thought that was good because he was using almost 30L/100Km!  Diesel prices have been around $1.70 to $1.80 per liter out here, compared to $1.25 in Adelaide when we left.

So, no problems with the truck for the first week, but we haven't asked very much of it yet, just bitumen cruising and a small amount of easy off-road to get to camping spots.  Next week sees the start of the corrugations, so that's when it will really start to get tested.