So far the Savannah Way has been a mixture of normal 2-lane bitumen and single lane bitumen but that is to change today but not really for the worst.
We left Normanton with its Gulflander Train and annual rodeo and headed further west towards Burketown. The original plan was to camp for the night at Burketown but due to the amount of bitumen we encountered, we arrived around lunchtime, so we continued on to Hells Gate Roadhouse, another 178 kilometres.
The road conditions were great with only around 80 kilometres of very good graded dirt with a average speed around 80kph being possible for most of it. Once again there was a lot of road kill wallabies and are lot more Wedge Tailed Eagles feeding on them. The wingspan on some of them was wider than the car.
Not far out of Normanton was the most northern camp (Camp 119) of the Burke and Wills Expedition of 1861. Not much here but a dam and a sign. Further on and there were termite mounds that seemed to go on for ever.
Even though the wet season has long gone, a couple of the river crossings, Leichhardt and Gregory Rivers, still had water in them that required driving through it but it was not deep.
Upon arriving in Burketown, the sign boasted the best “Barra Burgers on Trip Advisor” at the caravan park. Unfortunately they have shut down their food shack. Next best option was the Bakery and Butchery for buffalo and barramundi pies. They were not too bad either.
From Burketown, I was expecting it to be dirt but the bitumen went all the way past Doomadgee Community. Ten kilometres past the community and the dirt began with corrugations that were rough at low speeds but once you got up to around 80kph they were OK.
15 kilometres from Hells Gate and all I could see was dust due to a lack of wind at this time. There was no way to see what was causing it as we continued at 40kph to stay in clear air. Eventually there was some more bitumen around 5 kilometres out from Hells Gate and we found the source, a 3-trailer road train.
Digs for tonight is the Hells Gate Roadhouse, which provided shady grassed sites as well as an “International” airport but it only had one helicopter taking off and landing today.
Tomorrow we have been told that we can expect 300 kilometres of dirt with differing conditions including wet river crossings.
