Trip to the tip…. ps still waiting for some videos to upload. should be on by tommorow.

Well the car was packed, full of fuel, and we were off.

Day-1:

We left at about 6.30pm on the Friday June 6th. Leaving Ormeau, we made it to GinGin rest stop near Bundaberg, by 11pm.

Slept in the car….. nice and comfortable…. Not….!

Day-2

We left GinGin rest stop at 5.15 am, and headed north. We stopped for breakfast at McDonalds in Rockhampton, had lunch at the Big Mango… near Bowen…..



We stopped for the night at Bilyana Rest stop at about 7.30pm. We put up the tent and cooked Dinner. Long day…..! 14hrs of driving, and about 1100km’s

Day-3

Up at about 6.15am, and on the road again by 7am.



A few fuel stops later, and we were at Musgrave Road House.





We went via Split Rock (rocky outcrop with aboriginal paintings)

Interestingly, the road from Mossman, to Lakefield, which was tarmac, felt remote.

We hit our first sections of gravel road today, and did a couple of easy creek crossings.



We also met a Dutch guy on a KTM at Musgrave, who had ridden from Holland through Europe, Russia, to Japan, then shipped it to Australia. He had then ridden it through the Simpson Desert on his own, and most of the rest of Australia!! Made us feel very over prepared, and some of the others with large caravans, must have felt even more so!!!

Day-4

Bit more of a leisurely start today. We got up and left Musgrave after breakfast at about 9.15am. Went via Coen, to fill up with Diesel (again – bloody 60 litre tank)

Coen was a bit of a disappointment to be honest.

Today was a short day after the last couple and we stopped at Archer River Road House at about midday.



So far we have covered 2309km….

Day-5

On the road again at about 7.15am, heading for Weipa…. (this wont be the first time)

We had been hoping to get a mine tour, of the huge Bauxite mines, but we had missed today’s, so we decided to carry on.

We headed north again and stopped at Bramwell Junction. We filled up with fuel too… the most expensive place on the cape we found…… $2.38.6per Litre!!

Nice picture of our fire at Bramwell Junction



Day-6

Leaving Bramwell, we head straight onto the Old Telegraph line  the adventure begins….





After about 5km of reasonably straight forward track we arrived at Palm River, the first crossing. The crossing it self was pretty easy, but the entrance bank was reasonably cut up, and could present problems going the other way…

Next was Ducie Creek, I walked this, and it was shallow in the main, and went round 90 degrees to the right. Towards the exit, the crossing got a lot deeper. We ploughed straight through and it went over the bonnet! See video!!



This also had a step descent bank into the crossing, which was very soft sand.

The landscape changes very quickly up here and it’s pretty interesting.

Also spotted an old telegraph pole (who knows if it was one of the original ones or not! Picture below!

We also saw our first snake… not very long, and a shiny black colour on top at least…. A book we bought later suggests that these are red bellied black snakes….

We then came across a tree that was down so we cut it up and moved it out of the way.

Next was the Dulhutty River which was a pretty easy crossing again.

So……next was Gunshot. Bring it on!

Or not….



About 5km south of Gunshot and on the OTL, past the bypass turnoff,, and we were in trouble, I had been watching the gauges, and the water temp gauge was going up… something it had never ever done in the 6 years I have had the car….

The heater was also cold… Oh dear,……. 

We stopped quickly and turned off the engine, opened the bonnet and were greeted to a large hole in the radiator (8 rows smashed) This was bad. We hadn’t seen anyone for a couple of hours, and we were a long way from anywhere…..

I was pretty worried at this point, my (I thought) comprehensive spares and tool kit didn’t include a new radiator….

I looked at trying to reroute the water system to bypass it, and also at trying to crimp off the tubes that were damaged, but in the end Sam suggested trying to use silicone sealant.

We packed about half a tube of it into the core of the Radiator, and left it for an hour or so. We then refilled the car with water and started the engine…. It didn’t leak. I bled the system, and all seemed good…

3 cars then arrived and we had a quick chat. The first couple, in a 100 series with caravan , would scrap their radiator in a couple of days. The next 2 cars were also on a round Australia Trip and we would see them again.

We turned the car round and headed south….. Not hanging about either…. Interestingly we had to have 2 attempts at one of the creek exits heading south, as even with the lockers in it dug 4 holes, we were being fairly gentle however, and rolling it back onto the crest of the 4 sand holes, and nailing it, it hauled itself out pretty nicely. The exit was very sandy and about 45 degrees, and 1.5metres high.

We got back to Bramwell, (about 30km) and went inside…. Outside was a td5 130 .. More about that shortly…. To cut a long story short Bramwell don’t have a phone…. Great. The nearest one was at Moreton Telegraph station. This was about another 40km or so.

When we were heading back to the car, we met the driver of the 130. Rene. It turned out he worked for the Dealership in Cairns. He gave us the name of the parts manager, and said he would look after us.

We blasted back to Moreton, and spoke to the RACQ (doesn’t sound like a breakdown!) and Trinity LR… (Wow they’re bloody expensive was the quote from Steve the parts guy! -$920) luckily they did it for Trade, which was about $760. This was Wednesday; the radiator would be flown to Cairns overnight, and then trucked to Weipa. We were still about 130km from Weipa. The radiator would arrive on Saturday, but we couldn’t get it to Monday (despite trying our hardest to bribe people with cash and beer!) Anyway we made it to Weipa and set up camp.

Anyway in our 5 days in Weipa we played a lot of pool, did a mine tour, and saw a shark.



We must thank our neighbors in the campsite who took us around for a couple of days until they moved on. (We saw them again a number of times) Ken and Jenny, and Annie and Jack.

Weipa Sunsets



Day-11

The radiator arrives

We got a lift to Weipa Auto Electrical where the radiator was awaiting our arrival. We picked it up and took it back to the campsite. I had already removed the broken one. We unpacked it, and it looked like it had been trucked 1000km…. it had a number of dents, but I fitted it and it didn’t leak….





We were off again!

We flew out of Weipa, back onto the Batavia downs road again, and back to Bramwell Junction… We filled up with fuel again…. (remember $2.38.6 per litre!)

And headed onto the bypass this time so we could drop in just south of Gunshot and pick up where we left off. This all went to plan, and a couple of hours later, we were back on the OTL and at Gunshot.

Well after years of intrigue we were at the infamous gunshot creek….. And it was pretty easy really! Walked through it first, but we didn’t really need too….. Drove through without even locking the centre diff…..



We then stopped at Elliot / twin falls for the night. Definitely one of the highlights of the cape for us. Really beautiful and well worth stopping. Some really nice swimming, and you could jump off into one of the deeper spots which was pretty exhilarating!





Day-12

We left Elliot / Twin falls, and headed North again on the second half of the Old Telegraph Line, after another lovely swim, and this half included the infamous and deep Nolans brook, and a few other crossings.



These were all relatively easy some with steep exits and some quite deep.





We came across one that wasn’t even on the map as a creek just before Nolans Brook which was deep enough to make the group we had caught up fit tarps before entering, we didn’t bother however…..



But we would for Nolan’s…

So Next up was Nolan’s… we were at the back of about 6 cars who were faffing about with tarps and so on. We all walked Noland and it was deep. About a metre I suppose at its deepest and you couldn’t avoid it. We watched them through and put a tarp on too…. It wasn’t actually too bad, and we drove straight through.





We then headed back to the bypass, as apparently the crossing of the Jardine isn’t really possible anymore (we would have maybe tried it with some one else)

We made it to the ferry and paid our $88 for the crossing.

Once over the river, we carried on North, and went via Injinoo to the top. We decided to go straight for the top, where we arrived at about lunch time. After a chat to a few people at the car park area, we walked to the top, and we were the only people there. We had lunch and took in the views.







After a few photos we walked back to the car, and headed to Seisa to camp, via the Croc Tent for souvenirs.


We met up with our neighbors from Weipa again here, and had a few beers on the waterfront at Seisa, and said our goodbyes as they were off early in the morning to Thursday Island, and we were off North again to Somerset.

Day-13

Weather this morning was a bit crap, raining and cloudy. We packed up and headed to Somerset on the east coast of cape.



Some of the tracks were very tight and rocky down here. I mean very tight too!

A couple of times I was wondering what we were doing. The surface of the tracks was similar to the OTL again, with washouts and cross axles and so on.

When we made it to the beach, it was again deserted…. We grabbed a couple of pictures and carried on.



We knew that you could follow the beach track about 6 km or so down the coast and then head back inland but the 1k or so that we did in very soft sand made me a bit wary of risking it on our own. We headed back out the way we came.

We then decided to go and see the crashed planes from the 2nd world war. There is a DC3 and a couple of fighters near Jackey Jackey airfield. We found the DC3 easily





But the fighters proved more difficult to find, and we only managed to locate one of them. We must hae also seen about 10000 old fuel drums!





Once we were back on the ‘main’ roads, we made good progress and were soon at the Jardine ferry again.



We tried to fill up with fuel but they had turned the power off for the pumps to make some repairs so we headed off again, and decided to stay at Elliot/twin falls again. We got off the Bypass Road as soon as we could and headed back on to the OTL. This time though we didn’t re do Nolan’s. We did have a bit of time on our hands however so we headed North on the track and crossed all the creeks south of Nolan’s, before turning round and heading back to Elliot falls. This time it was raining and some of the slopes were a bit harder than last time.





Just before we got back to Elliot falls we were flagged down by a group of 5 young Austrians with 2 60 series cruisiers. One of which had a terminal failure of the swivel bearings. I gave them a hand to remove the brakes and a couple of explanations of how it worked and we had to leave them to it. We got a few people to check on them the next day and they were doing ok.

We arrived at Elliot falls and stopped at the same campsite as we did on the way up.Elliot falls is really really lovely. It costs $4.50 per person per night to camp here, and is worth every cent.

This time we met a young English couple, Simon and Charlotte, who were near the end of a 6month tour of Australia, having bought a long wheel base GQ patrol from a guy in Sydney and then driven it everywhere… including the simpson desert, gunbarell highway etc etc!

Very brave! We had a few beers and would spend the next few days with them which was nice.

Day-14

Today we, and Simon and Charlotte were heading for Captain Billy’s Landing. We left first as I wasn’t overly keen in sitting in dust (we had all the windows open for the whole trip – and the car is now a shade of red!)

We made it there fairly quickly, however the corrugations on the section f bypass road just prior to the turn off and the road itself to Captain Billys, were bloody awful. Really really bad. Our CD player started to have issues on this road. With all the shaking and the dust it was, like me, throwing all its toys out of the pram.

Its difficult to explain how bad the corrugations were, but some people we spoke to later said they were the second worst corrugations they had ever seen after the GunBarrell highway…. Either way they were bad!

En route to Captain Billy’s we stopped briefly at Fruit bat falls.



The view at Captain Billys landing made up for it however. It was awesome.



We drove down the slope onto the camping area. It was very windy! And there was no shelter. The others turned up about an hour later, and we collected a faIr bit of driftwood for a fire. About 5pm a couple of other cars arrived, Dave in a 100 series, and Justin in a very well set up Troopy who was on a 18month tour of Australia.

This would be a little group that would stay together for a couple if days in the end, which was a nice change. It was good to have a bit of banter on the UHF!

Anyway after a few beers and stories, we called it a night



Well the wind got worse and worse….. and we got no sleep atall!! It also damaged our roof tent slightly, pulling off one of the clips that was sewn on.

Oh well!

Day-15

Today we were planning to head to Moreton Telegraph station, as we hadn’t stopped there at all yet beyond using the phone outside. We headed out of CBL and back onto the bypass road. Thankfully this was being graded as we arrived, and it was great. We flew along which was such a nice change.

We stopped at Bramwell again for Fuel and had a chat with the lady who runs it as she remembered us from the radiator issue a bit earlier.

We then got back on the road and did the 40km or so to Moreton where we set up camp again.

Simon and Charlotte, and Justin and Dave arrived a bit later, and Dave headed off again, planning to go to Chilli beach straight away, where we were planning on heading that way in the morning. We set up a fire and about 2hrs later Dave returned looking a bit shaken. He had driven over a snake on the road which had managed to get its self up and wrap its self under the landcruiser. He had spent the best part of an hour trying to get it out and when he finally managed he decided it was too late to attempt the Frenchman’s track and the Pascoe so came back.

A few more beers and stories around the camp fire, and then bed.

Day-16

Today we were going to attempt the Frenchman’s track over towards Chilli Beach, which meant crossing the Pascoe River. We had one more addition to our little convoy in the shape of a GU Patrol driven by a couple from Tasmania, who had not fancied doing it on their own.

The track was quite slow going, a bit like the OTL, but it wasn’t especially difficult at any point. There were a couple of crossings including the Wenlock before we reached the Pascoe.



The track was relatively easy to follow except for one section where it got fairly muddy. We ploughed straight through the mud and ruts where as every one else found a bypass. We ended up driving through this 3 times as we couldn’t find the actual track.

Eventually we did and we found ourselves at the top of the descent to the Pascoe.



We all walked about in this for a bit trying to find any big rocks or deep holes and it didn’t seem too bad. I got voted in to go first, so we put a tarp on drove down.

Some people got some great pictures of the crossing, but at the moment we only have a video. (apologies as I still havent got this uploaded yet)

The exit bank is also pretty steep but easy enough.

Once we all got through the river, we said our goodbyes, and headed off (disadvantage of a group is slow progress!) We were soon off the Frenchman’s Road, and to the main track where we could turn off towards Chilli Beach or back towards the Bypass.

At the time the weather had closed in and t was raining so we turned right and headed back out towards the Bypass Road, heading for Musgrave station again.

About 60km before Musgrave, we heard a rattle coming from the front. We stopped and got out but couldn’t see it….. We did a couple more K’s and looked again. It turned out to be the diff guard had come loose, and lost a couple of bolts. I got some more and did it up but it came lose again nearly straight away so I got under the car and removed it.



I refitted it at Musgrave later on using Loctite.

Day-17

We were running out of gas to cook on by now so we decided to treat ourselves to breakfast at Musgrave, and had some excellent toasted sandwiches!

We were then back on the road and heading through the Lakefeild National Park. We had heard mixed reports about this, but you don’t know id you don’t do it. In the end it was a bit of a disappointment and we didn’t really see a great deal of wildlife at all.

We arrived in Laura, and filled up with Diesel. The owner of the shop had a td5 130 and outside was the first car to make it to the Cape. Back in 1928. An Austin 7! Makes us feel over prepared again!!



We had heard that there was a Rodeo on in Laura, and decided that could be a good laugh so headed over. It was quite an experience! Bull riding and so on.



We had intended to camp at Laura Road House, but after paying and heading to the camping area, we didn’t feel overly comfortable. It was a bit dodgy, so we headed back over to Old Laura.



We had a good look around and read up about the old homestead, and also found what looked to be in the old photos the old truck that they had new.



We set up camp in the Laura River for the Night



Day-18

Today after breakfast we were heading to cook town via the Battle Camp road. We arrived there at about midday and started to look around from the car for a camp site. We found one and booked in. We set up the tent, and walked into town.

We looked all round the captain cook statues, and memorials, and had a beer in one of the old hotels. We got harassed in here by a drunk local who wanted Money, which I refused to give him, but Sam kept the peace by giving him the $5 before it got out of hand.

We then walked down to the RSL club and had a really really nice steak and a few beers before walking back to the camp site.

Day-19

Today we spent a bit more time looking round cook town including the museum which was pretty interesting. It started life as a Monastery and had a varied life over the years. There were quite a few interesting exhibits, including the actual anchor and a cannon from HMS Bark Endeavour.







We also went up to the light house, and walked through the Botanic Gardens, where there were a few Kangaroos. (Sorry for the picture I know you will all have seen millions but I haven’t!)



When leaving Cooktown we decided to drive down all the little tracks heading out to the coast from the more major roads. We ended up finding a couple of nice beaches and a nice waterfall. Some of these tracks got pretty narrow and rocky or sandy at times.




We spent the night at the fantastic Lions Den Hotel camp site and had a few beers and games of pool. Definetley worth a stop. We met a group of guys from the Gold Coast on their way North.

Day 20

We left the Lions Den Hotel, and tried to find the Creb track heading south but we couldn't find it. We ended up following the Bloomfield track back south, stopping for a look at cape Tribulation, and then for the night at a camp site in Airlie Beach.

Day 21

Today was a big drive again. We left Airlie Beach and headed South. Nothing paticually exciting but we stopped at Bundaberg leaving just a 4 hour drive home yesterday morning. We arrived home at about 3pm

Some interesting Trip Statistics

3 weeks
4200 miles
6775km
844.72litres of Diesel
Highest price paid Bramwell Junction $2.38.6p/l
Economy –whole trip – 22.577mpg / 12.47l per 100km (I think)
- best single tank – 24.66mpg / (had to much wine to work it out)
Defender 90’s spotted - 2
5 camper trailers broken!! – make sure yours is good!
Oil used…. None… 
Amount of people who came over to talk about the 90 – about 50
Friendliest drivers – Patrols

CC, I will PM you my number so if you want to talk through anything give me a ring. I had a look at loads of camp sites and stuff on the way up and down.

Cheers
Pete.

__________________
Slightly Modified TD5 90

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=LujYs1-a-JM

good report, sounds like it was a great trip!!!

top read mate....gotta go back and watch the vid

__________________
Catch ya
Kelvin

95 defender.....look out high country april 09

I always enjoy a good trip story and it sounds like it was a very good trip for you
Don't worry about getting excited over kangaroos...I love em and still get excited about getting up close to any wildlife

Great pics

__________________
NM


1950 S1 (project)
1955 S1 107in - Thomas
1957 S1 88in - Leon
1964 S2a SWB Ex-mil GS - Castrol
2006 Defender TD5 - Gandalf

Bloody great trip report....Thanks for posting

Thanks everyone! It was a great trip.

Here is the video of the Pascoe crossing.

__________________
Slightly Modified TD5 90

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=LujYs1-a-JM

Excellent report mate. Looks like a bra is on the shopping list.
What was the radiator shredder? Water and fan or debris through the front?
Talk soon

CC

__________________
"Mal" 1956 ser 1 107" trayback
"Mike" 1956 ser 1 109" ute
"Harry" 1969-71? ser 2a 88" ute
"Les" 1982 Series 3 Stage 1 Isuzu 109"
"Steve" 1999 Defender 130"DC HCPU Td5
"Thommo" KFM-Light ARN 46-956

REMLR 275

Thanks for the report Pete - it's fantastic to read & see the pics of people doing trips like this. This & Baz's simpson crossing are top notch, makes me want to just drop everything & do it!

__________________
Disco, TD5 Auto - with some mods.

Hello Pete,

Sounds like a fantastic trip. We did the same last year, and it brought up lots of fantastic memories. (see cape york long with photo's in the Queensland trip report section). It was Rene, from the Cairns Land Rover Dealership, who found my headlight short was a blown main fuse under the drivers seat. He stayed after closing, to fix it for me so I had lights for the night.
Still the best holiday I have ever had.
Great to hear your report!

Cheers,

Ken

what a great trip report.

we did the trip this time last year....very similar to yours

i just want to go again

not being very computer literate it would take me 3 weeks to do a report as good as that

i have about 350 photos & all the fuel & mileage figures somewhere...i will have to dig them out & compare

cheers

__________________
cheers

paul


2004 disco td5 auto , bullbar, cargo barrier, bfg a/t,chipped