A calculated trip to Canberra

 The basic calculation for this trip was when the Mazda would reach 20,000 km and thus need its second service.  A twist is given to that by wanting to book the service 4 weeks out to ensure I get a courtesy car for the day of the service.  So it was set for 11/7.  It has been annoying that something in the car system has been set so that it gives warnings about service interval and oil change every time the car is started once I passed 10kkm after the last service/  I was able to blot it for a while but that has now come back.  GRRRR.

A second calculation came about with the price of diesel.  Using the petrol spy app (even though the Mazda uses diesel) showed the price on Thursday 6 July to be 209.9 c/l in Mallacoota - ripping the community off? no, no  not us - 178.9 in Cann River, 185.9 in Bombala and 168.9 at Costco in Canberra.  The Mazda suggested we had a range of 450km and it is about 370 km to Canberra.  So the decision was made to head for Canberra, going along Imlay Rd rather than via Cann River.  

However fuel consumption can easily get increased, things get very messy if a turbo diesel runs out of fuel, and 80km is less of a margin than I really liked: to I was monitoring the range (which appears on the dashboard) and estimating the distance to go more or less constantly.  There was some associated entertainment within this stream.  Although Imlay road climbs from 57m AMSL at the Princes Hwy to 488m AMSL when it hits the Monaro Hwy, there are some long downhill stretches.  At one point we hit a 3km long downhill stretch but the range increased by 4 km!  of course in the following climb we covered 2km and the range decreased by 10km!  As a result when we got to Bombala the range was 225km and a sign said Canberra was 201 km away.  That situation more or less continued until we got to the high point, 1100m AMSL just North of Nimmitabel.  From then on, as a result of the basically downhill running, and the high quality road surface,  the "safety margin" grew until it was about 65km as we pulled in to Costco.  On filling up the pump went to 49.5l (with a nominal capacity of 55l) which means I had about 8l of fuel left, probably good for a bit over 100km of easy driving.

The final, normal item of calculation is the temperature at Nimmitabel.  It was 10C when we left Mallacoota at 9:07 and Frances went for 8C while I took 10C.  Things looked ungood when we went through fog at the Wallagraugh rest area and it was already down to 8C.  Although it warned a little along the Imlay after leaving Bombala it was down to 6C already.  Coming into Lake Williams it was down to 5C - so we both lost - and by the Northern end of the village it was 4C.  

Just after that we got views across to the snow-covered Main Range which is just visible in this image 

This image shows the barren countryside between Nimmitabel and Cooma.  As well as the browned grass and incoming cloud some of the small hillocks can be seen in the distance.  These are apparently small volcanic plugs!
For the last couple of years  (at least) we have been amused by a sculpture of a cyclist on the disused railway track alongside the road.  Today we were prepared and Frances took this snap out of her window: an excellent image for something about 100m away and we were doing 100kph.
We did a little shopping en route to the apartment including this can of beer at Plonk.  Described as a bitter, it was actually not that bitter, but very pleasant.  I had expected it to be an import, but it is actually brewed in Stepney in South Australia.  We both expected Stepney to be in the down-market Inner West of Adelaide (probably Thebarton) but it was actually in the very classy St Peters - College Park Inner East!



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