I am back

A washed up bit of seaweed during sunset at Glenelg, an overrated seaside town in the outskirts of Adelaide. (click to enlarge, 140kb)


After a nine day long break from life, I am back. With two friends, I had travelled from Melbourne to Adelaide, Kangaroo Island, Mount Gambier and back to Melbourne.

We rented a Toyota Camry, a 2.4 litre inline-4 engine with automatic transmission. We had fleetingly considered renting a Mitsubishi Magna instead, since we had never driven that car and its daily rental rate was only $4 more than the Camry. With its 3.4l V6 engine, it would be interestingly overpowered, but consume petrol like there would be no tomorrow.

We travelled 3149km. I’m quite impressed by the figure.

We consumed 295 litres of petrol, averaging 9.3 litres for 100km travelled. I’m also quite impressed by this figure, considering that this car was rated at 10.4l/100km on the highway cycle. I attribute this to gentle throttle application and an optimised speed to run through chains of traffic lights just in time to slip through when they are green, reducing the need to brake and accelerate. The traffic light run requires immense discipline not to go too fast, or you’ll simply catch the red light ahead.

The economy of Adelaide goes into coma every night at about 5pm, and there’s absolutely nothing to do after dark except for the odd bar to sit in. As such, we had lots of time on our hands after dark. Not an early sleeper, I wrote (i.e. blogged) in my note book. Over the next few days, I might transcribe some of the interesting bits and post them.