Left
Cairns Thursday arvo around 3pm and stayed at friends in
Ayr that night. Woke up at 3am for the big drive all the way to Begonia (very small place with school close to
St George).
We headed inland from Mackay through
Clermont,
Emerald,
Roma and arrived at 6.30 pm, not bad for a 1350 km drive.
The next day was a friends wedding so no more driving until the next day, Sunday. After a short drive back up the
Carnarvon highway we stopped at Hutton creek just north of
Injune for the night.
Monday morning saw us miss the proper turnoff to
Carnarvon Gorge AND the old one further North with the sign pointing to Rewan. A few km past we realised something was up and backtracked to the old route. This road is in good nick and offers people an alternate route (dirt) to
the Gorge (it's around 20 km South of
Rolleston).
We stayed 2 nights at
Carnarvon which was fantastic before having to pack up and head back up to Charters Towers then to Townsville for Lunch before heading to
Cardwell then Kennedy 10 km North. A quick stop in the
shop and the owners had provided us with a map and info on camping and sightseeing at
Blencoe falls (wonderful people). Another 2 hour drive west we arrived at our
camp site. This was another long drive, leaving
Carnarvon around 2.45 am and getting into Blencoe around 6.30 pm.
There are no facilities at Blencoe but it is a great place to
camp, we stayed 2 days and loved it. The falls are excellent but be careful at the lookouts as they are sheer drops and quite dangerous.
From here we continued straight through to Mt Garnet and then back to
Mossman on the Blacktop from there. An alternate route at Garnet can take you on a dirt track North and lead towards
Chillagoe and the
Undara Lava tubes but we left that for another time.
Total driving distance was juat over 3600 km from Thursday arvo to Friday arvo the next week. The Patrol performed absolutely faultlessly and came in just under 15L/100km.
Having a ute with a 2 metre wide tray, the wind resistance was a big factor in fuel economy with speeds 100km/hr and more starting to really chew the juice while 90 to 100 was excellent. Although I didn't get proper figures here, I would not be surprised if we saw around 17-18 L/100km compared to around 13 or perhaps even less at 90km/hr. The proof of wind resistance was in the drive from Townsville where we fueled up and did a fair bit of slow driving up the range from Kennedy followed by some high and low range 4 wding for quite a few kays before fueling again in
Mareeba and still using 15 L/100 km for that period, excellent.
Anyway the trip was great, time to sign off on this Novel....
Cheers, Mark and go Nissan!!!!