Sunday, Jul 12, 2015 at 11:05
Oh boy.
The short version...
We came to grief a few weeks ago, about 50km west of the Qld border.
When we limped the 140km back to
Borroloola (at 20km/hr with a log supporting the axel etc!!) and booked into the caravan park to await the new leaf spring on the trailer, the nice bloke at the caravan park told me that the Savannah hasn't been graded this season.
The contract was apparently with an indigenous company who went bust and it was preferred to leave it ungraded than to possibly put noses out of joint by reallocating the contract.
That means it was probably last graded after the 2014 wet season...perhaps about 15 months ago?
To sum up the
Savannah Way, west of the border...very corrugated. VERY.
Horrible.
Now this verdict is after doing the Plenty, the Tanami, the
Gibb River Road and the Kulumburu Rd. They were pieces of cake in comparison.
On the Savannah there were some washouts that stretched 2/3 across the road, with little warning triangles in them (sometimes!). The washouts could be up to 1' across and 1' deep and that'd bring grief to anyone not watching really closely...you'd sometimes not see them til the last moment (even when doing only 50km/hr!) and then suddenly realise that, what looked like a bump or corrugation, was in fact a sizeable washout!
We were warned about it before we left King Ash Bay (by a guy who'd busted the axel on his boat trailer) but it still left us amazed at how bad it was.
When we turned around to limp back to town, we were stunned at how far we'd persisted with the shocking corrugations and washouts!
It was a road hubby had wanted to do for ages and it was a bit sad having to give up.
You're right, it's a heck of a lot shorter to do the dirt road. But it's in a shocker of a condition and your speed will be very much lower than doing the tar, and if you come to grief like us (and apparently many others over the last year, by the sounds of it!) it turns into a much, much slower trip!!
Your choice of course.
:)
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