Wednesday, Jul 06, 2011 at 23:44
Well, we survived the
Gibb River Road, having spent nearly 9 days (a couple without travelling) doing it. The road condition is like the parson's egg - good in
places, not so good in others. However, there is a lot of traffic on it, probably increasing by the day as school holidays commence, and there are many lengths of bone-jarring corrugations to contend with, as
well as many stony and rough sections and numerous dips, many with water (shallow) and often very rough - extra care required if towing a heavy
caravan like ours. It is certainly passable, but there are sections where the corrugations were so bad we had to slow to walking pace to avoid being shaken to bits. Mind you, there were many single vehicles and those towing camper trailers who roared past us on these sections at a much faster pace, obviously trying to skate across the corrugations. In our recent experience, you can't count on the same road condition for more than a few kilometres at a time, and often much less than this. It changes rapidly and requires constant vigilance. The dust from passing and overtaking vehicles can be horrendous in still conditions, requiring frequent stops (or major slowing) until it clears. The run from the
Derby end through the King Leopold Ranges was good to OK, with some road works under way. The road conditions aren't bad to the
Silent Grove turn off into Bells
Gorge, but the 8kms from the turn-off to the
Imintji roadhouse was acknowledged by even the locals as some of the worst corrugations on the whole GRR (I have to agree, but there were some equally bad sections to the Mt Barnett roadhouse and after the turn-off to
Kalumburu and on the more travelled sections between
Home Valley and
El Questro). Apart from major rebuilding works by Main Roads WA north of Mt Barnett for about 20km (with a good temporary deviation), we came across only a single
grader working on the remainder of the road to the Victoria Highway and many long stretches that appeared not to have been graded in a long time - certainly not since the last 'wet'.
The Durack and
Pentecost River crossings are not a problem (water only about 40cm deep), but very rocky underneath.
We ran tyre pressures between 28 and 30 psi cold, the latter over the more stony sections which are strewn with rocks of all sizes and shapes. We took the general advice of 'slow and low' and did not have any punctures or significant damage (although the jolting and the dust seems to have made the
caravan Coolmatic inverter fridge somewhat temperamental).
I'm glad we did it, as the scenery is magnificent, but I wouldn't hurry back to do it towing a 3 tonne
caravan. Having said that, we did come across several Kedrons, Bushtrackers, and Lotus vans - and even the odd Jayco and Coromal - it's all in the driving style, I guess. There is every make and style of off-road vehicle doing the trip, but camper trailers dominate the numbers, followed by Britz type pop-top 4WDs and camper units mounted on traybacks.
We found that travelling a distance of 110-150km in a day under these conditions was sufficient to warrant an early 'beer o'clock' at a
camp site, if you can find one that suits your needs. We only enjoyed 2 freebies along the way, with the other 6 nights at either DEC or private station.
El Questro is by far the most expensive, because of its $18/person wilderness park fee (lasts for a week, however), on top of the camping fee of $16/person. But, once in a lifetime...
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