I had to go to see a doctor in Gunnedah today. He's a really nice guy and we got on really well. I'm going to visit him again next week, but he's threatened to put me to sleep- we'll see.

On the way home there had been an accident on the Newell Highway. Traffic wan't moving in either direction, and the truck driver just ahead of me told us that the word was that the road was going to stay closed until they could get a truck load of sand in.

The guy in the ute ahead of me said we could go down the road on the other side of the railway line. I knew the road, and it is pretty good. As we were talking, a couple of cars were going along there, so it seemed a good option.

So we turned around and I followed the ute back to the railway crossing a couple of hundred metres away. We crossed over, and there was a track through the paddocks. I drove confidently thinking it would soon give way to the wide, graded dirt road I remembered. It turns out the wide road is severla kilometres further north than where we were.

As we drove the track closed in, and we got to a muddy dip with a pile of branches across. The ute zig-zagged around the obstacle but I thought it looked too boggy and risky for the i20. I stopped and got out. The other driver noticed I had stopped so he pulled over too. I walked to him and he encouraged me to keep going. We checked out the road ahead and it looked like it wasn't too bad. So as I walked back to the car, I pulled some old wire back off the track- I really didn't want to slash a tyre- and got back into the car.

Less than a kilometre further and we came to a sealed road and then to the entrance road of the Narrabri mine. We crossed the railway and re-joined the highway.

It turns out the i20 is a pretty good off-road vehicle- who'd have thought it?