Took the family to Halls Gap Zoo on Sunday, which is about a 3 hour drive up the Monash and down the Western Highway. The weather was perfect, and it's ages since we got away from the city.

The zoo was great fun - you get to feed the animals and get chased by deer - and they have a good range of animals from the usual Aussie natives to Bison and Monkeys. Well worth the drive if you've got a young family or you are just into nature. Tickets were cheap: $54 for two adults, two kids, and 4 bags of feed.

The freeways are obviously boring, except for a couple of "cuttings" where the road is twisty enough to be fun at the speed limit, hence the 80kph advisory limits.

It gets more interesting on the other side of Ballarat, and particularly on the Ararat-Halls Gap road, which undulates quite a bit and has plenty of corners to keep you awake. And there were plenty of opportunities to stretch the legs while overtaking, when you really appreciate the turbo powarrr of the Megane. In fact, with a family on board, it's about the most fun you can have while driving. A trip down The Great Ocean Road would actually be boring coz I'd have to drive much slower to avoid making the passengers car-sick.

The Megane didn't miss a beat, except for the computer thinking the rear-tyre pressures needing checking. I checked them in Ararat and the fronts were about 43 and the rears were about 39. When cold, they're about 4 PSI less, and I don't get warnings, so I'm guessing it was due to the higher than expected pressures. After resetting them to 40/37 this morning, the computer was still complaining...

Now I'm trying to find another place to go for a day trip. Suggestions?

iPad in car

I recently bought an iPad and decided to mount it in the car for big screen GPS and iTunes for music. My effort is no better than a prototype, but I doubt I'll be able to improve it much - trying not to spend any money, just used parts I already had at home.

I used an aftermarket stereo mounting bracket, a bit of right angled metal, a wall speaker mount, small piece of thin MDF, and velcro (with one side attached to the back of my TPU iPad case). The speaker mount allows me to set the perfect position, and this brings the iPad closer to me, so I don't have to reach to change songs or whatever, but it's a bit in your face, so i may remove it. I've used wingnuts so I can easily remove the bracket if I need to. And as you can see I haven't trimmed any bolts yet or painted any of it to make it blend in.

I've temporarily mounted it in the top slot, and moved the stereo down but the stereo face plate is a different shape to the hole in the dash so it doesn't fit and looks terrible. At least this way I can still access the stereo controls easily, but I don't need to as steering wheel controls will change volume and still switch to radio if I want.

I'd love to do something like what these guys have done but I don't want to completely destroy the dash, and it would probably cost at least $500 (if not $1k including new dash parts) to pay someone else to mount it properly: