Saturday, Oct 13, 2007 at 09:39
Seems that the single lane bitumen is encountered variously all over the inland - saves road building and maintenance $ I guess - vast distances for the authorities to cover out there. My info and experience is:
Single lane comes and goes in sections usually - on a trip between towns, you will often be swapping from single to dual and back again.
Be extra aware of road curves - some drivers will advance on you very quickly and you might need to exit the single lane el pronto !
The done thing is to get off to the side when trucks approach and let them have all of the bitumen (and there is no way to argue with their extra tonnes anyway :-o).
With cars, you can both slow down and pass while each uses half of the single lane. NOTE: It is wise to exit the road even for oncoming cars in my view, because many don't slow down and as they drop their left side into the gravel, your car gets showered with gravel - we've done in a headlamp on this basis - a lesson learned - buy headlamp protectors for the next trip Darian !
That said, the single lane surfaces are mostly good and will present no progress issues for any type of car.
The last word seems to be that of rain - this could be hell - much of that inland is made from the famous reactive clay soils - when wet, they are like a super adhesive and very boggy indeed. I'm told that even running one set of wheels off the bitumen will be bad news in proper rain periods (rare I know but it doesn't take a lot out there) - there are small full width bitumen sections at intervals that I'm told are to allow for passing in the wet - I can imagine people backing up for quite a way to access them.
Without the rain, a few precautions can make it a winner out there - we loved it.
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