Friday, Jan 08, 2010 at 00:42
Certainly all subjective Inland Sailor, and can change by the day; smooth the day the
grader goes across and terrible one week later.
Some years ago when my city born and bred nephew got his first 4wd, and was looking for 4wd adventures as he followed the coastline in progressive holidays. His 4wd guide showed some dirt roads as hard 4wd tracks. He commented to me "They would probably assess my driveway as difficult and yours as severe". Maybe the author went across these after a lot of rain when they could be rather different, or maybe he thought he was talking to city drivers with less experience than my then teenage nephew.
We have met campers that have been on a dirt road saying it was terrible and the worst road of their trip, on a road that we found good. One of these my husband had particularly enjoyed as he could look at the scenery instead of all eyes on the road for ruts and bull dust holes. We can only compare when their trip was made at a similar time to ours - although the few days gap could have made quite a difference. Another of these was the GRR - our assessment was mostly good, because we were early in the season and the graders were still working in some
places. A week later with seven days of the July rush out there, another caravaner told us it was the worst road he had ever been on. Certainly the conditions had changed due to volume and speed of traffic, but the other person also admitted not having done a lot of dirt road travel.
So to answer your question - a few examples of the more
well known ones we went on and as we found them 'on the day':
GRR good.
Kalumburu road good where graded, but slow; where not graded - extremely slow (stone base not corrugations).
Tanami WA side; Nearest top
Halls Creek very good because they were re-aligning the road and it was mostly new or freshly cut detours. However someone who went through through 12 months after us found that section the worse of the whole road. Track into Wolf Creek Crater; corrugated. Rest of WA Tanami to NT border with the exception of a few kms at a
mine site - terrible. NT side of Tanami pretty good, but underlying corrugations most of the way which adds up to a lot of corrugations. The area around the mines were good as they had graded - whereas a couple of months earlier someone rolled their caravan along this same stretch after hitting a rut hidden in bull dust in a badly corrugated patch.
Mereenie Loop, annoyingly corrugated although graded a week or so prior.
Road to Chamber Pillar; South road good, road to the Pillar after Maryvale the worst of the trip (sandy patches and corrugated patches).
Great Central Road NT side good - the grade had just been through. The WA side; variable from good to badly corrugated.
Gary Junction Road; Quite good, although corrugated in patches, nothing severe.
Road from Stuart Highway (near
Wauchope) to Davenport Ranges - good; hard and stony. Section (part of Binns Track) south from Epenarra Station to the
Old Police Station Waterhole turnoff - sandy and not the easiest for towing.
As were are towing, we will assess roads more harshly than if we weren't.
Most inland roads are corrugated, and as the
grader skims and leaves the base corrugations, it is only days before it changes back to the corrugated road.
Most of the others we have been on fall somewhere in between - nothing really nasty, just a road to take it easy on. We have been on far worse corrugations, but when on shorter sections it is not so significant.
Some of the hardest to tow on (with our long tow vehicle) were roads including highways in north central Qld - bitumised but with subsidence causing the rig to '
rock' - worse than driving on corrugations.
Motherhen
AnswerID:
398189
Follow Up By: Member - Min (NSW) - Friday, Jan 08, 2010 at 11:41
Friday, Jan 08, 2010 at 11:41
Motherhen,
I was very interested in your assessment which seemed to me spot-on. And I agree wholeheartedly with your last paragraph - just because a road is bitumen doesn't mean it's a good to drive on.
As for
well used roads such as GCR and GRR etc. you just have to wait and see when you get there. All depends on when the
grader last went through.
Min
FollowupID:
667125