Never getting lost again...

A few weekends back we went on a road trip down to Townsville. The Journey is 349km which roughly works out to be 217 miles and it should normally take about 4 hours.

I remember driving down to Bridgend from Brighton which normally took us about 3 1/2 hours, so the drives are pretty similar time-wise but one humongous difference is the directions needed to drive the journey.

For example, driving Brighton to Bridgend these are the directions:

- Start out at Brighton, East Sussex
- Travel 11 miles on the A23 to Hickstead
- Take M23 for 8 miles until you get to the M25
- Head West on the M25 for 14 miles
- Leave the M25 when you see signs for the M4
- Follow the M4 for 167 miles
- Take the A4061 to Bridgend for 16 Miles
- Arrive Bridgend

That journey as most of you will know is straight forward enough. It's not the most testing driver ever. Now for the 4 hour Cairns to Townsville trip directions:

- Start out at Cairns, North Queensland
- Take the A1 for 349kms
- Arrive Townsville

Yes, that's it. Nothing more, nothing less! It has to be the easiest drive ever - I couldn't believe it! The drive was so easy I think I only turned the steering wheel past 25 degrees once and that was to turn into KFC.

There is certainly no need for Sat Nav over here as getting around is easy. It reminds me of a time when I was backpacking in Australia back in 2001. A group of friends and I had hired a car and we were heading up the centre of Oz on our way to Darwin when we stopped a place called Three Ways. No prizes for guessing why it's called that... At Three Ways you can go North to Darwin, East to Townsville and South to Alice Springs. So, there we are pulled up on the side of the road at Three Ways when a Truck pulls up next to us and an Aussie bloke leans out of the window and says "You lost mate?"

I'm not sure if they were being overly helpful or taking the piss seeing as there were only 3 possible ways we could go, North, East or South! We decided they were taking the piss!

Back to the drive last weekend, and like I said I only turned the steering wheel a few times because the roads are very long and very straight.

As you can see there's not much to driving over here

Not like this...

And definitely not like this!