Dubbo was the first stay of our three day drive from Forster, NSW to Clare, SA – a total distance of 1700km. This journey became known to us as ‘the great escape from NSW’.

At the time, it was an escape from torrential rain and flooding. A bit further down the track, it was also an escape from the COVID-19 pandemic – we remained in COVID-19 free parts of Australia until the state and territory border restrictions were lifted.

When we left Forster, South Australia was a COVID-19 free area – and they had closed their borders to any other State or Territory with COVID-19 cases. At the time that we made this journey, NSW was also COVID-19 free – so all we had to do was fill in a declaration form and get a border-crossing approval notice from SA police.

We also had to keep our fingers crossed that there wasn’t a COVID-19 outbreak in NSW before we arrived at the SA border – which we would reach on the last day of our three day drive.

The first part of our ‘escape’ was from Forster to Dubbo, and it was a 510km drive. When we left Forster it was pouring with rain. It continued raining heavily for the entire day and only stopped when we got to Dubbo at around 5pm. We later found out that the Pacific Highway had to be closed due to flooding just after we left. Yes, it truly was an ‘escape from NSW’.

By the time that we left Dubbo the next day, the weather was much better – and on our way to Broken Hill (the next stay of our ‘escape’) we stopped briefly in Nyngan and Cobar.