Day 53 - Maleny

Well we're home - at least the trailer is home.  We got up early this morning 6.15 (temp 0 degrees) and were on the road by 7.15.  We only made a couple of stops for fuel and food and arrived here at 5pm.  Tomorrow will be busy with cleaning the trailer and gardening, and we will head back to Brisbane early next week.  We have had a fantastic time and feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to explore so much of our wonderful country and visit some very remote areas.  We have covered about 12,500 kms, with almost 4,000 kms on unsealed roads (some good, some bad).  We had no major mishaps, just the trailer tyres which both ended up with slow leaks.  We had put Cooper truck tyres on the car which have been fan tastic and should have put them on the trailer as well.  We will do that for the next trip - Alice Springs, Uluru, MacDonnell Ranges and Birdsville and all the southern bits we missed out on this time because of the rain and closed roads.  We heard this morning that the road from Birdsville to Windorah is still closed so we would have had to do very major detours if we had proceeded with our original itinerary.  This will be the last posting to the blog.  Hope it has been of interest, especially to our friends in the U.S.  We now have 3 1/2   weeks to get ready for the arrival of Jeff and Senya from New York and we are holidaying with them for the 5 weeks they are here.