Thursday 9th August - Drive to Borroloola along Carpentaria Highway

Wild Carol does Australia
John and Fiona Fraser
Thu 9 Aug 2018 07:48
16 04.161S
136 18.517S

The Carpentaria Highway is a bit of a misnomer. Long stretches of it are single track with gravel at the sides so you have to keep a sharp lookout for road trains coming the other way as they stay in the middle! Our drive today was 390 km which we did in about 4 1/2 hours. We’ve now done 7758 km since Perth.

There was one section of the road with a lot of bush fires. It was a bit eery driving along the road with fires at both sides.

Borroloola is a sleepy wee place with a lot of history from the early pioneering cattlemen. There’s a nice new school and 3 petrol stations competing for business. We swung by the police station seeking information about the road conditions. They were very helpful, telling us some bits have been graded in the past week but some sections are quite rough. I asked what speed was possible on it and the answer was 100! We’ve rarely done 100 on the unsealed roads. We’re happy with 80. Anyway, we were reassured that the he road is manageable so we are heading towards the Hell’s Gate roadhouse tomorrow. Hope it’s not as bad as it sounds!

We had a look at the old police station museum then checked into the McArthur River campground for the night. Just had a cup of tea and discussing what’s for dinner. We’re on to the cans now to try using some up so I think we’ve decided on chunky chicken soup with a few extras added. Yum...

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