Plenty Highway
Submitted: Thursday, Jul 26, 2018 at 20:27
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Member - Peter56
Has anyone got current info on the state of the
Plenty highway- including the Donohue highway east of the Queensland border. Thanks.
Reply By: rumpig - Thursday, Jul 26, 2018 at 21:59
Thursday, Jul 26, 2018 at 21:59
Drove it 2 weeks ago....first 70klms of Donohue is bitumin, rest to the border is in pretty good condition with the odd short bitumin stretch thrown in sporadically. Cross the border and the road immediately deteriorated, from there to Jervious is the worst part of the run...large bull dust holes / longish stretches of bulldust you need to pick a line through and just commit to, and some ordinary corrugated sections (standard Plenty Hwy type stuff)...that section constantly changes from less then average to pretty good, the minute you get used to the good bits it turns corrugated, get used to the corrugated bits and it becomes good again. Towing a caravan wouldn’t be great through there, not towing anything with tyres deflate sufficiently it would be not that bad really.
From Jervois to Hart’s Range was in pretty good condition...there’s maybe 5 or so klms of roadworks as you leave Hart’s Range, they’ve dozed a track parallel with the roadworks through the scrub that is 60kph speed limit, after that it’s bitumin to Stuart Hwy.
AnswerID:
620350
Reply By: Les - PK Ranger - Thursday, Jul 26, 2018 at 23:10
Thursday, Jul 26, 2018 at 23:10
Also did it recently, Gemtree to
Winton on July 4th . . . the bulldust sections were sometimes rright across the road and perhaps 10 - 15 metres in length.
Making that worse, there were many road trains, and virtually had to slow to a crawl or stop as the dust was just impossible to see through it in early light, and with virtually no wind the dust hung around for a good 10 - 15 mins.
Was a good drive though, left Gemtree 0530 and arr
Winton at 2000.
If doing any night driving,
Boulia to
Winton had plenty of roos and cattle . . . in fact we saw more roos on the Donahue and Hennedy Dev Rd, than the whole previous ~ 9900km from leaving
Adelaide put together.
AnswerID:
620352
Reply By: Member - Peter56 - Friday, Jul 27, 2018 at 09:22
Friday, Jul 27, 2018 at 09:22
Thanks guys. Appreciate the info. Heading out there tomorrow.
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Follow Up By: Les - PK Ranger - Friday, Jul 27, 2018 at 10:04
Friday, Jul 27, 2018 at 10:04
Enjoy the drive, it really is varied and very picturesque.
Try and drive the Plenty in daylight and not into the sun, watch out for road trains both ways and others driving into the sun, it is almost impossible to make forward progress safely when the dust and sun are against you.
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Reply By: rumpig - Friday, Jul 27, 2018 at 11:26
Friday, Jul 27, 2018 at 11:26
Just watch out comming over a few cattle grids...one in particular 2 weeks back had a big nasty bulldust hole on the Eastern side of it, you wouldn’t see it until way to late as it was on a downhill slope. This was back towards Jervious end of the Plenty somewhere
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620360
Reply By: Member - Peter56 - Sunday, Jul 29, 2018 at 20:49
Sunday, Jul 29, 2018 at 20:49
We crossed the
Plenty highway without incident. Coming from west to east, from Harts Range to the Queensland border was ordinary at best. But it was nowhere near as bad as some of the reports we had been given from travelers at various caravan parks. The reports provided here were much more accurate. There were corrugations, patches of bulldust and lots of rocks but all were manageable by driving steady and common sense when passing oncoming traffic. Thanks for the advice guys.
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Follow Up By: rumpig - Monday, Jul 30, 2018 at 17:17
Monday, Jul 30, 2018 at 17:17
Good to read you had no issues.
Yep, one persons not bad is anothers atrocious....i spoke to one guy before we drove it and he reckoned it was atrocious, then the next guy I spoke to about an hour later whilst fueling up at
Boulia, pretty much told me exactly what i told you....was pretty obvious to me after driving it myself, which one of those 2 people has been driving outback roads the longest...lol. I expected the road to be much worse then it was actually.
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