"Halfway Around The World in 80 Days ..

.. and Back Again"

A catchy title for a book maybe?

Well, that's the total amount of time I've set aside for this little expedition up the right-hand coast to the top end of this Great Southern Land - The Counterweight Continent .. often referred to in the native vernacular as, "Straya .. mate"

My travel insurance policy is right on time and the money too, at a premium cost of just over GB£1 per day. Although I do hope this particular investment turns-out to be a complete waste of money.

When Jules Verne's character - Phileas Fogg - undertook his extraordinary challenge in 1872 to voyage around the world in 80 days, he could only do so by means of a frantic series of interconnecting rides on steamships and steam-driven trains. The age of steam truly rocked and ruled back then. In those days long-distance travellers were completely unaware of the innovations and advancements in the field of energy production that lay ahead; just around the corner of time .. a mere generation away.

And now here I am, 129 years later, on the other side of the globe, back in the Antipodes for the fifth time in as many years, courtesy of diesel and electric powered vehicles (car & locomotives) .. and a not inconsiderable amount of Airbus A380 aviation fuel, all in the unimaginable time frame - to Victorian Verne and Fogg - of around 30 hours.

And just in case you're wondering, I got here this time around, almost entirely sat on my pommie arse, aboard one of those new and quite astonishing double-decker Airbus A380-800s; the largest passenger airliner in the world .. and Strewth! .. it really is a bloody awesome piece of tackle!

Goodonya Qantas Airways - 'Spirit of Australia'

Eat yer goddamn heart out, British Shiteways! .. 'ya dags'

Looking forward, I wonder how similar trips will be undertaken 129 years from now? I'll bet, with some confidence, that such futuristic journeys will no longer be powered by our finite and diminishing subterranean store of fossil fuels? .. 'Peak Oil' and the whole expensive Petro-carbon age ('our age') will surely have been consigned to history by the year 2140, just like steam power is today. This is progress. The evolution of science & technology is indeed unstoppable .. and one of the very few exponential concepts I can think of.

BUT enough of my pondering and yakkin-on about all this philosophical stuff.

Quite simply, today, we are where we are, back in Oz .. and therefore the time has once again arrived for me to fill-up my trusty little Honda's 20-litre petrol tank more than a few times with ULP91 (plus the occasional treat of PULP95) from the forecourts of more than a few upside-down filling stations - colloquially known as "servos" down here - and move onwards and upwards, indeed backwards towards the Equator .. in the general direction of home.

So let's get on with it then, eh?

Only 78½ days to go!

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