Only minutes after driving my test unit off from the BMW offices in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, I get a call from my aunt who said, “Be careful on your drive up, sweetie, I heard on the local radio that there's some idiot driving up the wrong side of the road.” I said, “There's not just one, there are plenty of them!” Damn these right-hand drive vehicles! To think I had another 4,200 kilometers still to go. Our Father, who art in heaven...

Its not like I really needed to draw anymore extra attention to myself, either, after walking into the BMW Group earlier with a stuffed bright pink pig under my arm. There were squeals of delight coming from even the most starched white collar types as they gathered round to pay homage to this pig. I had picked it up for my daughter, Sarah, while in a mall on the way to the BMW offices and had been carrying it under my arm ever since. Seeing that my plan to take a 320Ci up to Qld and back included five days of lonely highway stretches and winding coastal roads, this pig was to become my 'Wilson' from the Tom Hanks movie, Castaway.

The trick to doing these long distance drives is to allow yourself plenty of time to divert off into the tourist routes. They are very clearly sign posted and it gives you good feel of rural Australia. Nightfall found me in the cheese making town of Eden. It had been an uneventful drive so far with not much inspiration from the scenery. Most of the drive was spent getting out of the greater Melbourne area. There were a couple of winding portions of road, but they were speed limited to a crawling pace, which made it about as much fun as driving through a multi level car park. I checked into the first decent looking roadside motel I could find, where I spent 20 minutes haggling with the motel owner for the best room rate for a humble traveller like myself, only to ask for security parking for my shiny black BMW Coupe.

From Eden, the scenery really starts to come alive. It is not much longer before you hit some coastal villages and the larger cheese making country, Bega. This is where you start reaping the rewards of deviating from the more modern, and substantially quicker, Hume Highway. As soon as you come over the last crest of the mountain passes, you can smell the rich, crusted salt, seasoning the air and you begin revelling in the simplicity of the famous laid back Australian lifestyle. This is what its all about; a land that is girt by sea.

Australians are very protective over their natural resources and environment. It is kept immaculately clean through a self policing policy of mutual interest and good education on the topic. So beautiful is the jagged coastline of Southern New South Wales that it has become home to some of the biggest stars, including Nicole Kidman, who is one of the most recent celebrity homeowners. The Kidman clan now owns just over 3000 square metres of prime beach front land at Rosedale, a community of 220 homes about 20 kilometres south of Batemans Bay on the NSW South Coast.

As soon as I saw the first splash of blue and white coastline, I risked life, limb and deportation to get a photo. I positioned the car on the very edge of the cliff face, tethering on the limit of reason and good sense, only to find that there's another 1,000 km of unrestricted coastline up the road without the grave threat of both the car and I plunging to a firey death. Yet for all my enthusiasm and awe, it doesn't take long before I start taking all this magnificence for granted. It's almost like wearing a virgin white linen shirt that magnifies any imperfections. After a while I would catch myself saying, “Look! That roadkill on the side of the highway looks like its been there for seven minutes! The industry standard is clearly three! Find whoever is responsible and lets have a public stoning!” Such is the curse of beauty and perfection.

By the second day, the journey had started to take on its own unique shape. Much like my stuffed pig. The drive is punctuated by gorgeous fishing villages, large seaside towns and medium sized coastal cities – all designed around the influences of their own distinct flavor of living. I reckon that eighty percent of life out here is conducted outdoors, which has a pleasing effect on the local architecture. Actually, I think it also has everything to do with the pleasant attitude of the locals, too. Its a well known fact that all that vast amounts of sunshine staves away depression.

The drive up to Queensland is pretty much divided by one capital city, Sydney. It is the half way point. It is roughly 850 kilometers from Melbourne to Sydney and 880 from Sydney to Brisbane. Give or take. The link between Sydney and Brisbane is far less sophisticated, though. Whereas eighty percent of the Hume Highway linking Sydney and Melbourne is a four-lane dual carriageway, the Sydney-Brisbane stretch is made up mostly of single lane un divided roads with a lot of sparse real estate in between civilization. On my second night on the road I stayed in one of those really, really rural and backward Bed & Breakfast types of places. This place was so old, they sent me a wake up letter.

The highway is a very lonely place where one can do an awful amount of thinking. One recurring thought that kept sweeping through my mind was “What on earth possessed me to drive up to Queensland.” It seemed like a good idea at the time, but now, locked into a hypnotic 100 km/h, I had enough time to ponder the novelty of that thought to death. Think about it this way, if you pick a word, any word, out of the air and say it out loud 1120 times, it all begins to sound very silly. This would be the motoring equivalent of that. If it weren't because it was a BMW, I would have probably offered myself up to the local fishermen as bait by now. I had no CDs on me, and I was about as far away from a Tower records as I think is humanly possible in any developed country.

Devoid of the spectacular South Pacific backdrop, and for lack of any two-way conversation and a CD collection, I was able to bond with my machine. After almost two thousand kilometers I had managed a very impressive 7.9 liters for every hundred kilometers. Contrary to what the badge suggests, the 320Ci uses a 170hp, 2.2 liter, six cylinder engine rather than the asthmatic 2.0 liter four banger in the 318. Acceleration is still a little hollow if you cane it, but it gives you a decent enough shove in the early stages of the throttle, which is where you need it to be. It builds up speed fluidly and can sustain fairly rapid speeds with ease. Not that it matters out here, where every engine runs out of ideas after 110kmh. Its the law.

I had been surviving on highway food for the last 48 hours and I was ready to kill for a meal that didn't have a Mc prefix. Only 400 kilometers to go. I could swallow up that distance in a couple of hours, but there are more speed cameras than trees out here. There's also a pilot program that photographs you as you enter the highway and then again at certain intervals to work out your average speed. They take their revenue...err road safety very seriously over these parts, just 1 or 2 kilometers over the limit and you're toast. Official figures claim that speed causes around 500 deaths a year nationwide. According to AusStats, almost double that number of Australians die from medication blunders, yet you wont see any undercover Aspirin agents patrolling the local pharmacies.

During the last stretch of the drive I pulled over for a routine rest stop. It was around midnight and I was in the middle of nowhere. I opened my windows about 2 inches for ventilation, reclined my seat and took a 45 minute nap. When I woke up, I wiped the sleep from my eyes and continued on down a very narrow portion of the highway that had one lane either way, no shoulder and no street lamps. I was already at 100km/h when I noticed a shadow on the center of the windscreen. I used my windscreen washers to clear it off, thinking it was a splattered bug. It didn't even smear, so I reached over to try and wipe it off the inside of the glass. Just as I touched it, it moved. This furry thing scampered across the inside of the windshield directly in front of me and stopped at the top corner of of the glass – six inches away from my face! There I was face to face with a hairy spider the size of a one year old's open hand, while doing a hundred kilometers an hour in a place that would give Stephen King the heebie jeebies.

One thing I'll say about this BMW is that it has tremendous brakes. I buried that pedal deep into the firewall and must have pulled 2 g's of negative force. The Spider didn't stand a chance of a getaway as it was pressed up against the glass under twice its own bodyweight of pressure. I was buckled in, although my eyes were popping out of its sockets, partly from the braking force, mostly from fear. For lack of an emergency shoulder, I had to pull over as far as possible to the edge of the road halfway into a ravine. I slid out of the car like jelly, legs first with the door sill scraping my back. I paced up and down around the car trying to regain my composure. Finally, I decided to rip off the back pocket of my shorts and use that cloth to squish it. I only had one chance to get it right, because if the little sucker got away and in behind the dash board or other crevices, there was no way I would be getting back in there and I'm not sure how I would explain to BMW that their car is now a $65,000 love nest for Australian Wildlife.

In one fluid motion, I opened the door, swung my hand into the top corner of the windscreen and squished it. I could feel it squirming underneath the cloth. I threw it on the road and broke the land speed record getting out of there. But then, every noise or slight draft of wind had my imagination spinning the wildest images of this furry thing's relatives seeking retribution. I drove along the highway with every interior light turned on. I must have looked like a rolling aquarium.

I finally reached the Gold Coast in Queensland at 8.30pm after 60 treacherous, unforgiving hours on the road. It was a milestone for long distance haulers and arachnophobs everywhere. To think I had to drive all the way back again. Everyone I spoke to in Queensland said I was crazy and that I would never make it back to Melbourne in time to catch my flight. They were half right. But then again, they also said that pigs can't fly.