Day two: Mitchell to Longreach. Another 500-odd kilometres under our belt. We passed the first thousand kilometre mark without major incident, unless you count the police RBT stopping the entire rally at Tambo and checking 110 shitboxes for defects.

The magic carpet did not escape; we were told to swap the bald rear tire for the spare. Not swapped in Formula 1 time but we were on the road again within 10 minutes and dodging wobbly road trains for the next three hours….