This section we felt was the start of our trip back to WA. From Mt Isa we were heading down to Tobermorey Station and then across to Alice Springs via the Plenty Highway. We weren’t being very lucky with the weather though and the hot weather was definitely staying with us on our departure from Mt Isa and looks like staying with us for a while yet.
Instead of going down the Diamantina Development Road all the way to Boulia then across to Alice Springs we decided on turning off about 90 km’s south of Mt Isa and head across to Urandangie and then down to Tobermorey. The gravel road section from the turn off to Urandangie was excellent and I think spoiled us a bit for what was ahead of us. On the drive to Urandangie there have been a lot of signs put up using old car bonnets that make light hearted jokes of what Urandangie has to offer the weary traveller. Obviously very different when you get there as there is no McDonald’s or Woollies etc.
At Urandangie you can free camp at the back of the hotel and there is some nice green grass for you to pull up on. Pam, the lovely lady who owns the hotel shows you where you can pull up and park and you also have use of the toilets and showers at the hotel. Very friendly and accommodating. The only downside of the stay at the hotel was that they didn’t do meals. We had been looking forward to a pub meal and were disappointed to find out that they weren’t available.
There is about four houses at Urandangie and these are mainly all aboriginal houses. Aboriginals make up nearly all the small population of Urandangie. Pretty lucky as they have a hotel nearly all to themselves. That night it was Pam’s birthday and we were invited over to the hotel for a few drinks and help celebrate. It was good fun and we got to talk to some of the local station owners from around the area. It was also one of those places where trust was relied upon and when you wanted a drink you served yourself and left the money on the bar. We haven’t seen that before in our trips around Australia so far. It was a good night out and we would probably do this part of the trip again to Urandangie if it fit’s in with our travels.
Next day it was onward to Tobermorey Station and our start of the Plenty Highway. We were told that the road to Tobermorey was good until the NT border then a bit ordinary after that. Guess what, they were right. As soon as you cross the cattle grid on the border you were met with a huge dust hole that you couldn’t really drive around or turn sharp enough around to avoid fully with a van on the back. It was the first of several dust holes on the road section to Tobermorey and you didn’t have much choice but to go through them. Even right on the edges were very dusty.
When we arrived at Tobermorey we were a bit undecided whether to keep going on a bit or stay. We ended up staying the night which was OK but in hindsight probably should have driven on a bit further as it was only just getting to midday when we arrived. They have a nice green camping area and fairly new showers and toilets. I think its when you see the nice green camping area that you think “lets just stay here for the night”. We did see a pair of brolga’s that came near the campground which was nice as we were able to get quite close to them.
From Tobermorey it was the start of the Plenty Highway for us and Jervois Station was our next stop. The road for the first 20 odd kilometres was pretty good and then it slowly got worse and was like that all the way to Jervois. We were going over some of the worse corrugations we had been on and were down to about 30 km/h in some sections. I didn’t seem to matter what side of the road you drove on, they were just bad. The few good sections along the way still had a very rough surface. It seemed to be a clay base with large rocks that continuously just shook you.
When stopped for a morning tea break and looked in the van, it was a bit of a site. A plastic bottle of red cordial had split and we had sticky red cordial all over the floor. Also two drawers had come open and Kaye’s spices had spilt everywhere. There were yellows, reds and browns all over. It looked like one of those Indian festivals you see where they throw coloured powder everywhere. Luckily I managed to find a shady tree to park next to, while I waited for Kaye to clean up the mess. After all the inside of the van is her domain and I was keeping well clear.
The day was also turning out to be the hottest day we have had so far, so it was good to get back on the road again after the mess was all cleaned up. When we finally got to Jervois and opened up the van again you can imagine our surprise when most of Kaye’s remaining spices had done the same thing again. What a day this was turning out to be. Some learnings for us both for travelling on rough roads. Luckily there were only a few minor things that had come loose on the van so while Kaye cleaned the inside of the van for a second time, I did my few small repairs on the rest of the van. We both enjoyed a nice cold drink that night after all the “fun” we had had. We were also the only ones camped at Jervois for the night, probably says something about how silly we are for travelling in this heat in remote areas.
Well after a very hot and restless sleep we were on the road again quite early for us the next day. We left Jervois around 8:30 in the morning and Gemtree CP was where we were headed. We were told that the road was a bit better from here so we had our fingers crossed that it was. There were a lot less corrugations but it still had what seemed to be a clay base with large rocks in it that gave a continuous rough ride. In contrast to the previous day, when we did drive over the sandy sections of the road these were not very corrugated at all. We certainly did appreciate the smoother sections of dirt. We also had a lot less dust today as well which was nice for a change.
On our morning tea stop we were wondering what we might find when we opened the door to the van. Luckily for us it all seemed quite good. We had broken some plastic catches to the drawers so we replaced those with some spares we had. Other than that it was all we could see that was wrong. It was a bit different when we got to Gemtree though. After we had set up camp and were having a good look around the inside and outside of the van, we noticed that the top plastic hinge of the freezer door had cracked. The door had stayed shut but this still was a problem for us as were doing quite a bit more gravel on our way home. There wasn’t much we could do about it at Gemtree and decided to wait until we got to Alice Springs and worry about it there.
We had seen Gemtree advertised on the TV over the course of our travels and were looking forward to staying here. After seeing the place we were a bit disappointed with what was there. There wasn’t much shade and the campground was very barren looking. The pool was nice though and we did go for a late afternoon swim once we had sorted the van out again.
From Gemtree it was a nice smooth run on bitumen into Alice Springs. We are only here for two nights hopefully. We have decided that to fix the freezer door we will buy some fibre glass repair kit and try mending it with that. We don’t really want to stay any longer in Alice Springs if we can help it. We also have one tyre on the van that is scrubbing out a bit so have managed to book this in to have an alignment on the morning we leave. We would probably be OK for the trip home but thought if we get it done then its one less thing that can go wrong on the gravel.
We had no trouble getting into the caravan park in Alice Springs. at this time of the year there are not to many travellers on the road. They are forecasting some temperatures in the low 30’s in a couple of days so hopefully they are right.
Well we have done all our repairs that we can see to the van so hopefully it will be good until we get back to WA. There isn’t much west of Alice Springs that you can rely upon for any parts etc.
From Alice Springs we are heading out to Kings Canyon, then Uluru for a look. After Uluru we start our next gravel section back to WA on the Great Central Road. We would really like the weather to stay a bit cooler for us, hopefully it does.