Article Comment: Anne Beadell Highway

We towed a trailer from Coober Pedy to Volkes at Easter and found it a pleasant drive with only mild corrugation but the sand sections did slow us down especially as we got nearer to Volkes Corner. We never dropped our tyres below what we run on dirt.

not recent but that section was graded early 2016...reports were excellent drive...2 years on who knows but judging by the previous poster it's still good.

19-23 June, I drove from CP out to and around Emu, then back to CP.

I found that, unlike other things in life, the AB corrugations lived up to the hype. :)

Here are the comments I added to the AB Hwy EO Trek:

"Successfully completed my jaunt from CP to Emu and return. As expected, AB is moderately to severely corrugated from Mabel Creek HS to Emu. Except for rare, odd patches of smooth dirt that only last a few meters. Forget about running faster to glide over the corrugations: Rarely can you see more than 100 metres ahead, and usually a lot less. Vegetation is encroaching on the track, so it limits your visibility. And plan on "pin-striping." Track was 100% dry when I was on it (19-22 June). There were isolated spots with some loose sand, but I never needed 4WD for it. I was running 25 psi cold all around. BTW, made the trip in a 4WD Mercedes Sprinter campervan, hired from Britz."

Was on it a few weeks ago, yes it is corrogated but, I let my tyre pressures down to about 26 / 30 and comfortably sat on 40 KPH.

It is a very pleasant place and very interesting,

Lots of nice places to camp with Water available in the West

Good fuel & Optus coverage at Ilkurlka

cheers

Thankyou all very much for the info. Much appreciated. I also had a good long chat with Shane the Sharkcaver about the track.

From everything I can find out, provided tyres are set properly and the track is driven with due care and respect, it should be no real problem.

Hmmm...maybe I shouldn't have said that out loud...

Just a quick follow up re permits - All applied for on Monday morning, all online, and all received back approved by 10am Wednesday. Total cost of $49 for one vehicle. Pretty happy with that.

So, just to get a bit back on track here...remember I said at the start "...if the universe doesn't throw things in the way..."

Well, of course it did. Put my car into the local suspension place on Saturday morning for a last minute check of everything underneath. Thinking everything's fine, I'm being overly cautious. Rear leaf springs all but shot and very likely to break at the worst possible time. I had already replaced the front struts and rear shocks a while back and thought all would be good. I hadn't noticed anything different about the ride but these things develop slowly and creep up on you. So, just the lazy $1350 on Monday for all new rear springs, bushes, bolts etc. A bit cheesed off because this 2016 Triton has only got just over 70 ks on it and has never done any real hard work. But as the guy pointed out, manufacturers have changed things so much to get the ride comfort everybody wants. He has done a few Tritons and he had a lot of horror stories about a lot of other brands. Especially Rangers!

Totally blown the budget for this trip but at least I'm going into the desert on suspension that is 100%. Money well (but very grudgingly) spent I suppose. And considering I'm towing a trailer, it's probably the best thing to do.

Departure has gone back a day but at least I won't have to worry about being maybe six or seven hundred ks from CP and having to call for help.

Let's hope the universe is done with me for the time being...

Well I'm back from the trip and for me, the ABH was.....a big fail. I went in from the Coober Pedy end and only got about 50 k's in from the start point near Mabel Creek. A little past the dog fence. The corrugations were catastrophic. My main problem was the trailer (leaf sprung, with caravan shockies, but basically home made) If I got up to a speed where the ute was starting to skip nicely, the trailer developed a mind of its own. Which meant slowing down and soon as I did that, the ute felt like it would fall apart before too long. So I ended back in 1st gear at a little over idle. The 50ks took me close on 4 hours to do.

I met two separate parties coming the other way who both said the same thing. It was like this all the way to the border, another 500 ks or so. So some quick arithmetic proved it could take 5 days of misery just to get there. Fornicate that, I'm on holiday and don't want that stress, particularly since I was on my own. So I turned around.

So instead I went up to Alice Springs, west out of there along the Macdonnell Ranges, up to Papunya and the Gary Junction Rd, to Kintore and then down the Sandy Blight Junction Rd.

The Norther Territory part of the SBJ was pretty good but almost as soon as I crossed the border into WA, it deteriorated pretty badly with significant stretches of sandy corrugations. Nowhere near as bad as the ABH though, and the trailer handled it nicely. Some lovely landscapes along the track and overall, not a bad little trip. I attempted the climb up the Sir Frederick Range but the second big hill had been very badly chopped out by vehicles with much more ground clearance than my little Triton. And I'd hazard a guess, with tyres way too hard.....grrrrr... But, I still got some glorious views.

Then down the Gt Central Rd to Laverton, over to Mt Magnet, then the back roads through to Murchison Roadhouse. And from there out to Tamala Station and a couple of days on the beach. The drive through the stations from Magnet to Murchison was especially nice. Mostly perfectly smooth roads, lots of green grass and it looks like the wildflowers will be huge this year. Hope to go back there very soon, in fact, for a longer look.

So - I'm a bit disappointed about the ABH, but since I was travelling solo, I thought it cleverer to err on the side of caution. I'll go and have another crack at it some time, but either without the current trailer, or with one with way better suspension. Although, it still did an awful lot of corrugations anyway and not a single thing broke or fell off. For my first attempt at building a camper, I was very happy with it in the end.

As soon as I get a chance, I'll go through all my videos and get something up on Youtube for you to have a better look. Am I allowed to post a link for that here?

That's it for now. And thanks again to everyone who responded prior to the trip.