There are a great many road trips people embark on in Australia that look quite breezy on a map, but turn out to be just slightly longer than was anticipated.

Sydney to Brisbane is one of those kinds of excursions, which, if you were keen on sticky-taping a brick to your accelerator, you'd probably make in 12 hours or so. It's more than likely, however, that you'd end up having fairly robust conversations with drivers of semi-trailers. And those men are large and possess many tattoos.

The other, more road-safe option is to meander your way up the Pacific Highway, and stop off at your leisure. There's all sorts of nooks and crannies dotted up the coast - sublime fishing spots in the seclusion of scrubland, hustle and bustle beach towns, national parks, hippies in the hillsides, and just plainly odd little villages (like Mooball, which nestles in the Burringbar ranges near the NSW/QLD border).