The Trip to Mildura.

Well it seemed easy except that late Thursday night Cliff
decided to leave at 10.a.m. to avoid the Melbourne traffic.
Kath told me he had been speaking about it in the shop but
he never mentioned it to me.

I made arrangemnets for the delivery of my books to be at
10 a.m. as we were leaving at 11 a.m. and I couln't change
it but I did turn up five minutes early and thank GOD they
were there. I was half way home when the phone rang, Cliff
wanted me to pick up Keith!

I ranted and raved about if he had rung me fifteen minutes
earlier then I could have picked him up when I was down at
McDonalds.

I continued on home grabbed my stuffed and went to Keiths.'
His father had NOT TOLD him about the change of plans and
he still thought we were leaving at 12 p.m.!!

By the time he was ready. He had not showered or packed!
and we got to the shop it was nearly 11 a.m. but Kirsten
was ready and eager to go and it did not take too much
time to say goodbye.

We left at exactly 11 a.m. The trip was not as bad as I
thought it would be. Instead of 12 hours with all the
freeways it is only 9 hours! but that was with three, 15
minute pit stops.

Of course the roadworks held us up going into the city
we were reduced to about 50 kms for half an hour and
then the sings were terribe! We were looking for the
airport sign and did not know we had to take the Todd
Rd exit, huge signs for the airport and little sign for
the Todd Rd exit and nothing about the airport on it,
so we missed it and ended up having to go across the
West Gate Bridge which was also slow!

Ended up on the Western Ring Rd which was pretty good
and got back on track that way. Cliff reckons it
addedd at least half an hour to the trip.

He drove till we reached Caldar and then we swapped over
I thought I was going to drive but Keith did. Cliff was
bad but not as terrible as when we went to Melton. He
keep telling Keith to shut up and repeated it so many
times that HE was more annoying that the rubbish Keith
was talking.

They swapped back at Sea Lake and Cliff drove the rest
of the way to Mildura. We went straight to Audrey's
place and arrived at 8 p.m. exactly.

Grant and terry were already there.

The carport had banners proclaiming Happy Birthday. It
seems that Audrey celebrated with some friends on her
actual birthday which was Thursday.