One flat tyre.....

One flat tyre, one dingo, one cat, one way, one steep dip, more than one corrugation and one Hell’s Gate….

Just out of Cape Crawford, opposite the local community camp we dropped our  tyre pressure to 35psi. I couldn’t get over the amount of rubbish on the road – wish I could have taken a photo of the rest of the rubbish – but it would have been too invading….

The Savannah Way – according to a brochure is a series of highways linking Cairns to Broome. Hardly a highway as we would know it-most roads are single lane, many are gravel, red dirt with 100’s of corrugations. We met people who had broken windscreens, broken leaf springs in their camper trailer, broken water tank taps, broken jars of strawberry jam throughout their fridge – and us – well we suffered our first flat tyre.

Previously we did the Savannah Way from Cape Crawford to Roper Bar, but now we picked it up at Cape Crawford and headed to Normanton.

Our first camp  was Robinson River – an apt name – some of you may recognise…

Driving along we never saw anyone else-yet when we got a flat tyre-4 campers driving in the opposite direction stopped to help us-we were fine.

Along this very dusty road we saw very little wildlife-actually we only saw a dingo and cattle. There were plenty of burnoffs-one at Lawn Hill National Park was out of control and the road to Kingfisher Camp closed.

At long last we arrived in Queensland – but what a welcome – the road was extremely corrugated – the worst we have travelled – far worse than the Giles Laverton Road – not the same ruts, but endless – about 50kms of corrugation on the Queensland side.

 When we arrived at Hells Gate that afternoon-1^st here, by 4pm 5 other campers had arrived. This is often the case-we are the first to a campsite and will often have it to ourselves for the evening. That evening we had a communal campfire-sharing stories-where were you going etc….

Burketown provided us with hokey pokey icecreams – the first for months-we had 3!! And we met a lady who makes artificial flowers from barramundi scales. I left a flower for her.

Filling out a survey about the Savannah way at the Info centre and we were given a book on Savannah Way Landscapes.

the steepest dip we have encounted on our trip

We made good time and arrived at our next camp-Leichaardt River Falls. A year ago this area was under 4 metres of sand-we camped beside the river-not really a good idea as there are crocs in the area-but we secured a prime spot-sunset and river views. We had a huge area to explore – rocky crops – lovely flat surfaces, the water to watch, the falls to explore – bearing in mind that we had to keep away from the water…..

On our first night we shared the area with 9 other campers. The 2^nd night 5 campers stayed. Murray cooked 2 lovely loaves of bread and a chicken roast in the camp oven that night.

Onto Normanton – this leg of 150kms – we had been told was rough and we expected to share it with the many road trains.

However it was a ‘piece of cake’ – not rough to us and we were very lucky – we didn’t see any road trains. We stopped at the Burke Wills camp memorial, arriving in Normanton -ready to explore...