FollowupID: 456457 Submitted:
Thursday, Oct 05, 2006 at 06:30
CoopersRed posted:
Darryl,
I agree with John. I did the whole trip (in the other direction) and also the road to
Roper Bar and
Mataranka, not recently but last year in July.
Although we had quite good
road conditions at that time of the year (almost all creek beds have been dry and corrugations not that bad except for the
Roper Bar Road) I wouldn't regard it as a "short cut" as such. Especially at the time of the year you are talking about. It reckon it might even be impassable. You have 30ks of bitumen north of
Normanton and the rest is dirt. Supplies are scarce. There is a quite big supermarket in Doomadgee, but it's bloody expensive. As John said Wollogorang is closed. I wouldn't expect much traffic. Two spare tires are almost mandatory. It's definitely a wonderful trip anyway, just not if you only want to save time. When we drove it, in general the road was better in
Queensland than in the Territory.This might have changed completely. But one advise is to drive slowly over the grids in QLD!
good luck Wolf
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