Cape York Day 10

Day 10

 Woo hoo, Take 2 on Old Tele Track day.  Breakfast done, we hit the road at 8:30ish, destination Bramwell Juction Roadhouse and the start of the OTT.  Bramwell is only about 1/2 hour from Morteon and the drive is pretty easy, we go past the turn off for Bramwell Station and soon enough arrive at the Roadhouse.  The station is another stop altogether, it has accomodation and a bar with entertainment etc. It is on our list to stop at on our way home.

At the roadhouse we top up with fuel and take some photos. Across from the road house are some massive termite mounds, so I park the car next to them and get some photos.

We wonder over to take a photo next to the roadhouse sign, and some people in a group offer to take a pic of us together. We accept and after a quick chat, we discover they are heading up the tele also, and invite us to tag with them as we are by ourselves, and this track is known to be tough.

So off we go, tagging along with our new friends, and the vehicles. A twin cab ute, not towing, 2 other wagons towing off road campers and a gu towing a caravan, approx 16 foot.

About 4kms up the track comes the first crossing, Palm Creek. It is notorious for its entry and exits, and is probably now the hardest crossing on the Tele. So when we Pull up, I get out and walk over to take it all in, that I may have to drive my car and trailer down this steep drop.

As we are late in the season, August, Palm creek is basically dry, which will help with the exit,  as we won’t drag mud and water up the track. Anyway while I am having a look at the exit, the group that we followed have said they will look at other crossings first, so the guy in the ute heads of down a track to the right of us. 15mins later he returns saying there is another crossing, but it is really soft sand and looks just as bad as the main one. He heads off on another track, about 20 mins later returns to say, yep all good this way we can get through easier. He asked his mate with the van if he wanted to have a look at the track which he declined, after it was decided that nowhere on the track had trees closer then the 2 in front of him????

So off we all go, we decided to follow as we didn’t want to damage car and trailer on our first crossing if it could be avoided. Barely even put it in gear before the van is wedged on a tree, so this bloke reverses up and goes bush around the tree.  Any way long story short, the track didn’t actually go anywhere and the bloke leading tells everyone to turn around, by this stage, the bloke with the van has knocked down 2 or 3  trees with his van and has now ripped off his awning. We turned around and went back to the original crossing. I jumped out and said to Lyndall that I will run down and have a look at the other crossing. A quick jog down , 2 min,and 2 min back, I told Lyndall we can cross this way, a little sandy in but all good.

So in this time, the rest of the group have turned up, and now there is big holes in this van. The owner was not happy at all. They all decided to go back to Bramwell and head up the development road.

We say goodbye and hit our first crossing of the Tele, although now we have wasted about 2 hours.

So I line the car up for the steep drop into palm creek, on what is “the chicken track”. Lyndall grabs the hand held UHF and heads down to guide me in. She does an awesome job and I just follow her directions. Soon enough we share down.  Was a bit worried about the exit, but Lyndall assured me that I could do it, and as all good wives are, she was right. I got out no problem, apart from the fact she was still down the bottom of the hill, oops, better go get her.

As we were doing this another group of 4 veichles came and we’re doing the normal crossing.

We took off in front of them, and soon enough we reached the next crossing, ducie creek.  It was an easy entry with about top of wheel depth with a rutted exit.  I jumped out for a look, and by the time I had got back to the car to go through the other group caught up. We crossed over, no dramas at all, but we were a bit hungry by this stage so lunch was called.  While having lunch I had a chat with the group that was coming through. Nice bunch of people. It’s pretty warm and dry up here at the moment and the flys are a pain, so lunch was quick. We have about 20km to the dulhunty river with some small crossings in between, these turned out to be all dry anyhow and I hardly even new I had done them.

Some Random Pics

The track here is tight and twisty in a lot of spots, not quite the straight line it shows on the map, and the pace is pretty slow, partly as that is just me, 1 talking care with the trailer and 2 just taking it all in.  As we approach the dulhunty we can here the chit chat on the UHF that most people around us are planning to camp at this crossing. So knowing that there is a group of 4 in front and a group of 9 behind, we make the desicion to turn off just before the river itself, a little track that a friend told us about before we left.

The track goes down to a water gauging station and the goss is that another campsite is down here and we will have it to ourselves. It 7km on the hema to our destination but after about 1/2 hour of driving I am hoping it it worth it. Finally we get there at about 2:30pm, 40mins, 7km but we are there, and Rod has done well. Not another soul in sight.

So we find a spot to set up, I collect some firewood, and Lyndall decides to have a swim, then the rain hit.  Heavy. But it only lasted about 30min and was to just make it nice and steamy.

I got the fire going and Lyndall hides in the camper untill, the flies and midgees go to bed. She joins me about 7pm lol.