I slept wonderfully. However, the warm and windless night resulted in thick dew all over the tent. I have to wrap it wet, and after that my hands are all covered in red sand. Still, I'm quite happy and excited. Even despite these little shortcomings and occasional panic attacks, it's still very beautiful around, and my journey is going exactly as planned.

Sleeping amongst the dunes turned out to be a lousy idea. It's quite chilly, and the moisture gets condensed on the inner walls of the tent; with each gust of the cold wind the tent shakes, and the water drips on my face. Once again I wake up before dawn and spend the rest of the night sitting in the car and shaking in cold. No more camping next to the sea!

I went to sleep quite early yesterday, so I wake up at 4 a.m., no less. After having my breakfast (instant noodles) I decide, for the lack of anything else to do, to pack up my camp, but the decision proves to be wrong. Too dark yet, and too cold, and the light of the torch attracts too many moths. Humans weren't meant to be nocturnal, after all. It's not very pleasant to realize that in the darkness that surrounds you there can be anything at all, and that all your observable Universe is limited by the circle of the pale light from your torch.

At 6:20 am I drive out of my garage in Elizabeth Park. The sun is not fully up yet, but I'm not sleepy at all. Finally! My journey is happening at last! The familiar suburbs roll past my window, changed by the suburbs not too familiar; then it's only farms and greenhouses; and then it's finally Port Wakefield Road, the first country road of my journey. Port Wakefield, a small coastal town, is soon left behind as well, and now I'm on Stuart Highway. This highway stretches all the way from Adelaide to Darwin, but Darwin is the place that I'm aiming for just yet.

A car trip around Australia? I can't remember how exactly I came up up with this particular idea, but it's very easy to find out when it happened: August 2015. According to Google Docs, this was exactly when I had created a spreadsheet where I began to outline the itinerary in full detail. Soon it became clear that a month would be more than enough to achieve this. The question was: when?