I had been summonsed home. I figured I had had a pretty good time on my Tasmania road trip (follow tag here), so left my overnight stop at Lake Jindabyne intent on getting as far north as possible that day. Once again, rather than detailed planning, I just headed north, following the signs towards Queensland.

As I was trying to get home quickly, I did not stop for the customary photographs of every tourist information centre.

I headed for Canberra, then, thinking it would be nice to follow a more eastern route home, headed through western Sydney.

There comes a junction somewhere to the north west of Newcastle where you can choose to follow the New England Highway to the west, or the Pacific Highway to the east. The New England Highway was slightly longer in distance, but I decided to go that way anyway.

Ten hours after I left Lake Jindabyne (including breaks), I arrived at Tamworth. I was seriously considering driving on into the night, but that would have meant getting home in Brisbane at around 2am.

I stopped at the Tamworth McDonalds for a break and spotted the Golden Guitar Motor Inn right next door. Taking that as a sign, I stopped for the evening.

Golden Guitar Motor Inn

Golden Guitar Motor Inn … welcomes you

The following day, I got up at around 5am and drove up the New England Highway, through Warwick and back to Brisbane, completing a memorable and thoroughly enjoyable road trip to Tasmania and back. Read about my whole trip by following the Tasmania trip tag.

The only damaged sustained to my Toyota Prado in the entire trip was a stone chip to my windscreen flicked up by a passing B-double truck … less than two hours from home. I had safely driven 6,700 kilometres in 23 days.

This article is part of my Tasmania road trip — further stories about this road trip can be found by following the Tasmania trip tag.