Said good-bye to this little fella, a frog mouth owl, one of 4 in trees around our camp at Loyalty. There were 3 grey and 1 golden, the golden one flew in from PNG - we want to see his papers! They said you might see horses roaming through too... they were out by the road side and around town, looks like they have the run of the place. Horses scavanging in garbage bins, no dogs in sight... Road kill is different up here, bush pigs, eagles. AND big mother giant bull green ants, we carried a few back down the track with us as we couldn't shake them all off the tent.
This shot of the infamous Bamaga pub as we were leaving town, the one where all the colorful locals head for a quiet ale or two. My Darl takes me to all the good places... We braced ourselves for the trek ahead. Surprisingly the road didn't seem as bad as what it was on the trip up, after all we are going down hill aren't we.
We made it to the Jardine ferry, making good time and we thought we might be in for a continued better run all the way, WRONG!! The road turned to shite after the ferry and continued that way for quite some way. Actually it was bad up to about 30kms before Bramwell Junction.
We had a little relief from bouncing around, when we stopped, undid the trailer got the bike out and rode down about 3kms to Fruit Fly falls (or is that Fruit Bat??) Yeah Fruit Bat. We ran into a couple we dubbed Mr and Mrs Immaculate, as their camp site at Weipa was immaculate, no dirt, dust, every panel was straight as and they had an all round verandah (tarp cover over the lot). It was nice to see that others had had enough of the corros and they were cutting for it, as far as they could get today..and they probably would get far as they were in 4WD.
Us? We were cutting for it too, however our wheels go a bit slower than others on the road, or should I say heaps! slower. My Darl has done an awesome job to keep us going and getting us there. We have driven on right side, left sides of road, in the gutters anywhere we could avoid the corros. Pic at left, yep in the gutter. Anyone following us would see our fish tail tracks.
Travel 70 - 80 kph - GOOD
Travel 40kph - BAD
Travel 5kph - UGLY
I have left one rating for the Kimberleys where we have been told the corros are huge and wide and deep, I'll give them the rating of MOTHER OF ALL MOTHERS I think.
We were debating whether to pull up at Bramwell Junction or 40kms further down track to Moreton. We actually did make better time today, only taking 5 hrs to Bramwell (230kms) instead of the 7 it took on the way up. It is still a long day, so we opted for Bramwell and also in the hope that we would get to see some 4WD negotiating Palm Creek. We jumped on the Suzi - Palm Creek is only 4kms from the camp ground. We have to take pot luck if we get to see any travellers or not.
Guess what, we were in luck, we arrived just as two young couples (Luke and Jenna, just moved to Mackay and their friends from Sydney) were about to cross. The first 4WD had to be winched up and the 2nd one, well see for yourself. It was awesome to watch, Darl was darting all over the place, I could just see him ready to jump down into the quagmire and get dirty with them. His heart rate was racing! Luckily the only damage to Luke and Jenna's self made trailer was the mud guard, everthing else in the trailer survived.
Got chatting to Luke and Jenna later, they are keen to do the whole Tele track again next year. Jenna is going to ride her motorbike (all of 22) with her dad and brother, Luke will stick to the 4WD. From Bramwell we made our way to Musgrave Station, only a couple hundred k's left before we hit never ending bitumen at Lakeland. People will tell you it is all bitumen to Laura, however the road is a work in progress and not far off being completed. At Musgrave still pretty much in the midway point, Cairns to the Top.
Not far out of Musgrave they are in the middle of grading the road, they were also grading between Coen and Musgrave. It's been a few weeks since we have travelled the road and it's hard to remember the good, bad and ugly stretches, but it's looking pretty good at the moment. We have heard of quite a few fatalities over the last 10 days, 2 at Weipa, 2 bike riders Captain Billys Landing road, 1 at Coen, 1 at Archer River, then someone said there was a triple fatality. We would know that 3 are for sure, but when you don't see or hear the news we're not getting
confirmed reports. Even so, it is still very sobering and scary to think there could've been so many deaths in a short time. These roads are no doubt dangerous to travel, they show no mercy to any driver whether you are in 2wd or 4wd, everyone has to drive to the conditions, just like everywhere else.
Here's the old car that made it up to the Cape way back when.. I am so glad we didn't go searching for this at Coen where my darl thought it was, cause it was at Laura....
One for the boys, yes this is us in transit somewhere back along the track and the speedo is working. You know what they say, slow and steady wins the race. When we left Musgrave the roads were in a lot better condition and I could sense my little Possum Borne was coming out of his shell again - yep we got up to 100k's on some stretches (VERY GOOD rating), less corros but more rocky. Oh yeah somewhere along the track we had a little moment when Darl got a bit eager for the gutters, it was deep, soft sand....we got out just.
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