Friday 10th August - to Hell’s Gate
Wild Carol does Australia
John and Fiona Fraser
Fri 10 Aug 2018 13:00
138 21.342E
So today we start to head seriously east. The Hell’s Gate Roadhouse is our intended overnight stop. We were on the road by 8:30 and soon stopped to drop the tyre pressures. It soon was obvious that all our fears about the potential poor state of this road were unfounded as, although there were a few fairly rough sections in the first 100km there was nothing we hadn’t already experienced and soon the road became quite smooth, better than many tarred roads at home. We made good progress, arriving at Hell’s Gate at 14:15. There was a very big bushfire nearby, so big that we wondered whether the roadhouse’s diesel tank had gone up in smoke. But as we approached it was clearly further away. This was a real outback roadhouse. A small helicopter swooped in and a couple of characters that we’d seen inside stepped towards it. The first guy looked like the guy from ZZ top in shorts. They jumped into the chopper and off it went to drop them off somewhere, presumably on one of the stations.
We ate our sandwiches in the car and decided that, having made such good time, we’d press on to Tirranna roadhouse. Soon after we crossed the Queensland border and the road was all bitumen. I stopped to blow the tyres up. A ‘ute’ pulled up alongside. ‘You blowin’ up or lettin’ down, mate’, the grizzled driver asked. On hearing my response he said, ‘I’d leave ‘em down mate, it’s pretty rough up there’, indicating with his thumb the direction we were heading. So I let out the little air I’d put in and off we went again. 50kms later, At Doomadgee the road did become all bitumen according to the map so we stopped and inflated to a compromise pressure to suit sealed and good unsealed roads.
To be continued.....
Leaving Borroloola
First creek crossing
This one looked worse than it was
Emu crossing the road
Queensland border
Arrived at Hell’s Gate
See the smoke from the bush fire.
A real outback place
Local transportation
