Weipa trip..

[Plastic_Magic]

Hi fellas heading off to Weipa in Oct for 3 weeks fishing with a mate. Just after some information on the Dirt road from cairns to Weipa. Whats the conditon of this road like? I have a Holden Rodeo and will be towing a 4.35 Hornet.

Any info or tips would be muchly appriciated.

Cheers Lachlan

[Moffy]

Hi Lachlan,

My brother drove out 2 weeks ago (his first trip out by car in a couple of years) and he reckoned it was pretty bad compared to most recent trips - that said - they usually give it a good grade around the school holidays - so you might be lucky by the time you head up. There's more and more bitumen sections every time i head up there - and they've smoothed a lot of the bad culverts out - corrigations and stoney sections are your biggest worry nowadays (and the odd dust hole).

Bloke I know who works one of the cape road maintenance gangs out of Cooktown will be in town in the next couple of weeks - Will see if i can get an update from him.

Moffy.

[Richard]

PM sent Lachlan,

give me a call tomorrow, just got back from 11 hours driving from Weipa to Cairns today so can tell you all about it. Still got all the details of the whole track fresh in my head..

cheers

Richard

[Richard]

Also forgot to say that there's plenty of spots to fuel up along the way as well so no need to carry extra jerries unless you have the room and want to save a little bit of cash as the fuel prices are a bit rich in places (Musgrave - 160c, Weipa 150.9).

Lucky your not going to Bamaga where it is 196 cents per litre at the moment !

[Bill D]

Hi Lachlan we have just arrived back from Weipa and the roads not too bad except for the corrugations either side of Coen.Their is plenty of road works going on so it can only improve.Just make sure your boat trailer mudguards and boat roller supports are up to it.We tack welded the boat roller support rods in their tubes so they dont drop plus beefed up the mudguard support brackets .Have seen plenty of boat trailers loose mudguards on the way.And also if you can protect the front of your boat with greenhouse mesh to prevent stone damage

[Chooksy]

Just did a quick trip from Weipa to Cairns and back last weekend, needed to get car serivced, and the road is hard and rough, but in the 4 days out, the road works crew have been grading away meerily. It also help that it poured over the period. One area to watch out for is from Artimis to Musgrave, as its not too bad for corrogations but very bad for hard to see woop-de-doo's (the up and down swell of the road) and if your not too careful, both car and boat will fly.

Still managed to do the trip in 9 hours, but not towing anything and had tyres down to 31.5 psi cold, with a full load of shopping on board.