Well today was slow going with 300 kilometres of dirt in 4.5 hours from Hells Gate Roadhouse (Queensland) to Booroloola (Northern Territory). And there wasn’t any geocaches to stop for either. We did stop for the obligatory border photo.
The road conditions varied widely from some well graded sections, some sections that were being graded, some sections that had large corrugations, some sections that had small corrugations and everything in between.
One thing though, when there was a dip sign, you slowed down to walking pace as they were very steep in and out and brutal at the bottom where the water normally ran through in the wet.
There was also a number of creek and river crossings with the main ones being Branch Creek, Settlement Creek, Iranindjina Creek, Calvert River, Surprise Creek, Kangaroo Creek, Robinson River, Wearyan River and finally The Fletcher. The deepest crossing was around 350mm but most were around 150mm, but we didn’t spot any crocodiles although the signs were up.
Given the huge amounts of dust we were putting up with the car and caravan, there was little evidence of any getting into the caravan. That is good news. We faired very well it appears, as the our neighbours both sides did a tyre each on the same section of road, one on their caravan and one on their car.
We arrived into Booroloola unscathed apart from dirt over the car and caravan and headed into the Caravan Park. For a small town there is four fuel outlets, four supermarkets but only one pub. It appears that the supermarkets are doing most of the alcohol trade with most of the locals walking out today with their quota after having to blow into the breathalyser before purchase.
There wasn’t much to see in town and our town tour took about 10 minutes from one end to the other and down to the McArthur River.
Tomorrow we head out to the Stuart Highway and Daly Waters before heading north to Darwin.
