Cape York et al. - August

[Keeper Member Find all posts View Profile Close Keeper]

Brett1979

The main dirt roads are varying but they really are not that bad (for me the worst bit was the 40kms south of the Jardine Ferry), some roads are better than others too and grading is occuring constantly after the wet. I wouldn't be too worried about it.

Driving with lower pressure really helps as well; just watch your speed. You can definitely travel faster than 20km/h. (The PDR is about 800kms from Lakeland to Bamaga) Heaps of places to visit on the way up too, like Chili Beach. Make sure you pencil in the Frenchmans as well, a great track.

You will travel slower on the OTT due to the track conditions, corrugations aren't really an issue here, you will be too excited waiting for the next water crossing to come up.

Happy Planning, nothing like being prepared.

[kav Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close kav]

let your tyres down to about 30 psi and sit on 80 -100kph . some times you'll find stretches of road where you can drive outside the road markers there are no corrugations out there . oh yeah there is only about 800 ks of them so you wont miss them . having said that the road through lakefield is better than the developement rd . the rd out to chilli beach is billiard table smooth and you get perfect phone reception with telstra at chilli beach . where ever there are our oppressed indiginous brothers the rds are perfect and you get good phone coverage .

[Brett1979 Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close Brett1979]

Thanks for your feedback Keeper & Kav, it's really good information to know. We were tossing up whether to go to Kakadu or The Cape for quite a while, first leaning towrds Kakadu then it swung heavily into The Cape's favour. But not taking anything away from Kakadu, we'll do that one the year after the Cape trip. Then the Simpson Desert at some stage after. We've got plenty of 4wding experience under our sleeves as we use our cars off-road often and have done many recoveries to help people out of sticky situations over the years, but just haven't done a big 4wd trip over this kind of distance this far from home before. I'm that excited it's currently keeping me up at night because it's on my mind so much. With some of the deeper water crossings it'd be interesting walking them because I'd be a tad nervous not knowing what's in the water with me, but that's probably a healthy attitude to have. I've heard of some crocs in the NT that have remained in isolated water holes on the flood plain half way through the dry season. The buggers can end up anywhere.

Sollution..... Send in the Nissan first!

[Madkore Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close Madkore]

I have just sat here absolutely engrossed in your trip report Keeper - definitely one of the best, if not the best, I have read on here - you have a knack for stringing a few words together, mixed with humour, and great pictures as well! Thanks for sharing!

[Brett1979 Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close Brett1979]

I'm with Madkore on this one, there are many very good trip reports on Prado Point, and Keeper's is probably the best I've read. I too was totally engrossed in it for a couple of hours when I first came across it. I showed it to my wife and I've forwarded the URL to my friends who're doing the trip with me next year. Me and a mate had a bit of a talk about it just the other night actually when we caught up for a few Friday night drinks. He's a member of a Patrol forum and commented you'd never get a trip report anywhere near that detailed on there. I've read the whole thing from start to finish about 4 or 5 times now and am so impressed. I even had another read through it today at work from the Creb Track story all the way to the end (in between doing a bit of work here and there) over the period of half the day. The pictures are top notch and like Madkore said, the wording is very cleverly done as it's hard to turn away from it and it's humourous too. The first time I read the part about you feeling overwhelmed by emotion and you felt like you wanted to cry on approach to the tip it made me feel emotional with you.... And I don't cry. But I felt like a tear wasn't too far from leaking from my eye when I read that. Perhaps I regretfully will on approach to the tip myself and my friends will never let it down.... Ever! The jokes will roll off their tongues for years haha.

Thankyou so much for sharing that adventure and experience with us.

[ntp Addicted PP Member Find all posts View Profile Close ntp]

A great trip report indeed.... but there are many other good trip reports in the thread too... so make sure you search all the threads and read them all, you might surprise yourself.

And I strongly encourage others to share their experiences and pics... that's the beauty of this forum.