On road again! Have tyres will travel!! These corros we rate 6/10 on a scale that 10 are the worse. Travel from Weipa to Bramwell Junction today, we were going to stop Moreton Telegraph Station but decided to plod along extra 40 odd kms to Bramwell. About 190kms all up took about 5 hrs! Yep my little Possum Borne has had his wings clipped.... Travelled from Weipa through Batavia Downs property (short cut) road not too bad in comparison to the "major dirt roads".
Bramwell Junction is just that, the junction of the start of the infamous Old Telegraph Track or the supposedly more subdued bypass road. We jumped on the treddlies and took a cruise down the telegraph track for a little ways, Mel come unstuck at the first wash out, I took the "bypass" track. We can now say we travelled the Old Telegraph track enroute to the Tip. We don't know where all the travellers are, there is not that much traffic on the roads and the camps are next to empty, at Bramwell there was only 6 camps set up for the night. 
We are now in bloody big ant hill country (alright termite hill) pic taken on the corner at Bramwell Junction before we set off on our epic drive to the top. We'd like to stay here on the way back, get on the Suzi and ride about 6kms down the Telegraph is the Palmer River, and watch the 4wd'ers go across. The birdlife up here is unreal, need to get on the binoculars and a bird book to go birdwatching. Mel thought he was helping the manager out here and broke the sprinkler, caught on a root, he superglued it up and then had to fess up, pleased to report no penalties incurred.
Here is a few pics of "changing landscapes" from Bramwell J to the top. It took us 7 hours to go 230kms, thought we were doing okay first 55kms took 1 hour, cruisin we thought, we be there in 4 - 4 1/2 hours, but then the roads turned worse than what they already were.... I can handle doing 100kms a day over these roads, that takes on average 3 hours (in a 2wd) after that I start getting a bit testy.. that makes the next 4 hours a little bit tense in the cab, long day!
8 out of 10 for these corros, yes they get worse but I haven't managed to capture those yet as I am generally hanging on! They go from little ripples to huge waves, is best I can describe. Cruising along, the gravel next thing road turned sandy, that didn't make the corros any better. Have I mentioned previously they do a lot of burning off up here, great idea to avoid those out of control bush fires, we come across a burn off in full flight, a bit smokey - this was near Fruit Bat falls which we will have a look at on the way back down the track.
Look at this, a 15 second cruise across the tranquil Jardine River, BLISS! For some reason I had the wobbly boots on when I got out of car here.... Not far back on the track we come across a couple bikers, one of the bikes had just seized up at 130kph put a hole through the crank case, that's one for Mel's mates, scary stuff I believe! Only 42 kms to go to Bamaga, another 14 after that to Loyalty Beach where we staying for a few days. The road has gotta get better we thought but nah!
Yes that is bitumen ahead finally and we got excited! Forgot to mention out there in the middle of nowhere, we actually stumbled across 8 long glorious kms of BITUMEN! We like two kids in a candy shop when we hit bitumen. This is the start of the bitumen for the Bamaga region and we thought we were in heaven, it was soooooo good. Then we took the turn off to Loyalty Beach, yep 7 kms far out dirt/corros again! We feel we always get lulled into a false sense of security when we hit a good patch, but before too long those dreaded corros appear and jolt us back to reality.......
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