According to Google Maps, the Thredbo to Lakes Entrance leg (yes 'Lakes Entrance' is the place name) travelling south back to the coast (initially trough the Kosciuszko National Park) was 340km and almost 6 hours. With such a long run, we started early at 8am. Even so, with a few photo stops, this leg ended up taking nearly 10 hours! The main issue was that the route passed through another national park along the way and we only discovered on arrival that the road was a gravel track wit steep inclines where speeds much above 30km/hr were impossible. This part of the route was 135km long. 

To add to the tension, although we had planned to refuel at a town on the other side of the park, the 2 petrol stations there were a) closed at 1pm and b) broken. The next nearest fuel was 30km away but arriving there we discovered that it too closed at midday on a Saturday. The next nearest station was another 75km away and we arrived there with the car fuel gauge announcing only 30km remaining. Very much a lesson in not making assumptions.

The highlight of the day however was encountering 2 kangaroo families in the wild, one crossing the road directly in front of us. They are timid creatures but the second group stayed around at a distance long enough to get a few photographs.

Images from this leg can be found here.