On the 2nd April 2016, my husband and I left our home on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, to travel by car along the Nullarbor Plain to Perth in order to promote my autobiography. We travelled south through Armidale to Ballarat and Geelong so we could once again experience the exhilarating drive along the Great Ocean Road and assess those areas of the coastline that had suffered from the devastating fires of the previous year. Along the way we experienced many pleasant, if mundane, attractions but only one event stood out for me during that long and lonely track of the Nullarbor.

By the middle of 1960 our part-time wrought-iron furniture making business had built up to the extent that Neville and I were actually making some money and providing it continued to grow and the army didn't throw a spanner in the works, I envisaged taking my discharge in June 1961 and working at it full time. I think the army was able to read my mind because shortly after my birthday in July, I was called to the C.O.'s office.

When the June long weekend came along in 1962 and a friend offered to give me a ride from Woomera, in the far north of South Australia, to St Arnaud, (between Horsham and Bendigo Victoria), I accepted his kind offer; hoping to hitchhike the remaining two hundred and sixty kilometres to Melbourne. I had became quite fond of this economical but unreliable mode of travel during a nine week Army training course at Wodonga Victoria, where, almost every weekend I had successfully 'ridden my thumb' to Melbourne, so I decided to try my luck again.

My first trip on the Ghan was a long needed holiday, and as a guest of Great Southern Railways I was invited to travel on the Indian Pacific from Sydney to Perth. In the space of two months, I travelled the length and breadth of Australia but you can easily do it in a week or two should you choose to travel by train.