Our GO-MAD Oz Adventure: Day 160

6 July 2013

Well bloody freezing it was last night, we both had long pants and socks and jackets on in bed with our sleeping bag and we both woke up heaps of times during the night because we were sooooo cold! The guy we spoke to yesterday did tell us that it got down to 8 in the morning before we came, just don't think we remembered what it was like to feel cold?!!

Took us a while to get moving this morning but we were heading for Drysdale River Station which was about a 59km drive on the Gibb and then turnoff to Kolumbaru and another 60km drive to the station.

The Gibb has been really easy thus far, it is not what we expected at all and you can see that a lot of work has gone into making the road better. There are a lot of bitumen parts, pretty much anywhere that has a wind or bend or is uphill (or poses a danger I guess) has been bitumened. And a lot of the rest has been covered in blue metal which we think has covered a lot of the corrugations. Don't get me wrong it's not smooth sailing all the way, but It is definately not as rugged and rough as we thought it would be.

Kolumbaru road is less maintained so we were expecting this road to be a bit rougher. However again we were lucky as the grader was ahead of us the whole way to Drysdale station. While there were pretty crazy corrugations in parts on this road that were a lot worse than the Gibb it was not too bad. If the grader hadn't been through it might be a different story.

Stopped in at Drysdale and we were originally thinking we were going to stay here the night but decided after fueling up that we were ready to keep going towards Mitchell Falls. Fuel was $2.32/L at the station! Whosa! We picked up a few groceries here too and decided we would stay here on the way back from the falls.

Back on the Kolumbaru road and there are stark reminders of just how rough these roads are and just how lucky we have been this far - cars pulled up with hazard lights on, tyres shredded to pieces on the side of the road and men under cars with jacks while women are sweating it out watching in the sun. Can't do much to help them but give them the thumbs up question which they respond normally with a thumbs up answer which basically means we are shit but we dont need help!

Another 110km to the King Edward campground which would be our home for the night. It is on the road to the falls but the fall road is 78km and they say to allow 3+ hours to drive it soo it's pretty rough...we needed rest before we were making that journey! It is a pretty poor road coming in too, not maintained at all and little river crossing.