Danny Rosner Blay - Drive Around the World: One Family, One Car, One Year, One Planet

DRIVE
AROUND THE
WORLD

ONE FAMILY, ONE CAR, ONE YEAR,
ONE PLANET

Danny Rosner Blay and Sandra Khazam

Maddy Blay and Raffy Blay

Published by Hybrid Publishers

Melbourne Victoria Australia

Danny Blay 2013

This publication is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted
under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by
any process without prior written permission from the publisher.
Requests and inquiries concerning reproduction should be addressed
to the Publisher, Hybrid Publishers, PO Box 52, Ormond 3204.
www.hybridpublishers.com.au

First published 2013

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Author: Blay, Danny (1968).

Title: Drive around the world: one family, one car, one year,
one planet / by Danny Blay & Sandra Khazam.

ISBN: 9781921665448 (pbk.)

ISBN: 9781742982885 (ebook)

Subjects: Blay, Danny Travel.

Khazam, Sandra Travel.

Voyages around the world.

Voyages and travels.

Automobile travel.

Four-wheel driving.

Other Authors/Contributors:

Khazam, Sandra (1968).

Dewey Number: 910.41

Cover: Rita Reuter

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you to Peter Davis and Greg Bolack at HEMA Maps for providing us with supreme maps for our entire trip and, with MAIRDUMONT, for granting permission to reproduce them for this book. We are grateful to Paul Saultry at ARB for helping us out with some of the extra equipment for the truck, Steve Vickers at Cooper Tyres, and St John Ambulance for first aid kits and training.

Thanks to Dale Ross at Rex Service Station for help, advice and being on the end of the phone at the strangest times.

Thank you to Margaret Bearman and Vanessa Eckhaus for reviewing the draft text and making suggestions, Nicki Levy for proofreading par excellence, Anna Rosner Blay and Louis de Vries for editing and patiently accommodating neurotic writers, and Rita Reuter for her beautiful design. Thanks also to Danny Khazam for some of the photographic sorcery.

And, of course, thanks to all of you who came along for the ride through our original blog and now this book.

SOUNDTRACKS

If you would like to hear the music listed at the start of each chapter in this book, a free audio service can be found at www.youtube.com/datwbook

LINKS

www.youtube.com/DatwBook
http://drivearoundtheworld.wordpress.com

INTRODUCTION

DANNY This is it. Todays the day! All done, all finished, all silent, no further bidding. Weve planned, discussed, finalised, made lists, made lists of lists, created spreadsheets, developed work-plans, cross-referenced spreadsheets with work-plans, and ticked them off. Weve modified the truck and purchased some new equipment. Weve got the iPod and DVD player hooked up to the car stereo, the laptop synched with the PDA, the digital cameras talking to the hard-drive and, subsequently, an entire box filled with various power chargers, cables, plugs, disks and sundry digital paraphernalia. It never used to be this hard.

Weve practise-packed, and practised again. Weve tested equipment, refined need versus want and, generally speaking, moved from quiet panic to subdued confidence.

Were ready to go.

And then Sandy gets sick.

Its been brewing for a while, but in her reserved and stoic way she chose to ignore the sore throat and sore muscles, the need for extra sleep. Being sick was a mild distraction compared with the gravity of the impending voyage.

Still, the lurgy has a mind of its own and, coupled with the realisation that we are leaving family and friends behind, as well as the almost physical letting-go, Sandy basically needs to be in bed. For quite some time. But theres no time.

We have a world trip to start.

***

It began several years before

Only the radio broke the conspicuous silence inside the car. Having crawled through Melbourne peakhour traffic, along Flemington Road and left into Elliott Drive, the four of us were ensconced in a flotilla of immobile mobiles: cars, vans and trucks all lined up, all in a hurry, and getting nowhere fast.

This was a far cry from the wide, open roads in the west and south of the country. We had gone for hours driving in straight lines through desert without seeing a soul. We felt a palpable sense of freedom and adventure, of accomplishment and difference. On the road, a smug awareness crept up on us almost a sense of superiority. While our friends and family were yet again going through the motions of the daily grind, we were like seeds in the breeze, deciding on a whim where to head, where to stop, and when to go again.

Now, the ending was becoming drawn out and tedious. Instead of a triumphant return in a blaze of glory from circumnavigating Australia, it had come to inching past Melbourne Zoo, gazing at other faces either too defeated to care or dazzled by our dusty and muddy truck with a large roof pack and Northern Territory number plates. Some children in the back of a Commodore pointed, wide-eyed, no doubt regaling each other with ideas about who we were and what we were doing.

Truth is, though, it was what we had done. It was now over. Wed spent five weeks travelling up the east coast of Australia, two years living in Darwin, and six weeks hugging the west and south coasts back down.

Now here we were, perhaps fittingly, edging alongside Carlton cemetery.

Sandy, ever the one to keep our spirits up, reminded our two young children and me about the enormity of what we had done, as if it had just occurred to her. Well, at the time we thought it pretty cool. Suggesting the glass is always at least half full, we became a bit more chatty about what a great couple of years it had been, and about so many of the extraordinary things wed seen on our travels.

Then it was silent again.

So whats next? Sandy asked, knowing full well that the power of imagination had been the key ingredient to getting us round the island in the first place.

Well, I struggled, weve driven around Australia. I scratched my chin. What could beat that? Then, somewhat facetiously, How about we drive around the world?

OK, Sandy quickly answered, seeming to agree to something quite realistic, feasible and sensible. Even ordinary.

I instantly had a big, goofy grin on my face. By the time we rolled into Sandys parents driveway I had forgotten about the end of a lifelong dream, and instead was already scheming the beginning of another.

We were going to drive around the world.

SANDY The war room in our house was a hive of activity: maps were laid out, a white-board was full of a growing list of things to do and suspension files bulged with all sorts of information that might or might not help. We visited embassies and consulates, car dealers and after-market retailers, camping stores and shops full of the latest electronic wizardry. We got frustrated with bureaucrats and representatives of commercial organisations who, it seemed, were entirely uninterested in our bizarre scheme or who simply didnt get it; on the other hand, we were encouraged by others who supported our idea and provided helpful suggestions and contacts.

DANNY We began telling anyone willing to listen of our grand yet undefined plans, if only to put pressure on ourselves to make it happen. The amateur comedians amongst us quipped howlers along the lines of I hate to tell you, but theres water between the big bits of land. But we found most people either recoiled in horror or drifted off into dream world.