Articles

2002 Off Centre Rally - The Big U
Submitted by David Drummond, 3:640/305

Day 12 - Thursday 14th August (Hughenden to Burdekin Falls Dam)

The couple camped near us, told us they were going to Porcupine Gorge. They only had a two wheel drive car and were towing a camper trailer. Apparently they knew of others who had gone in the caravans, so we thought the road surely can't be too bad. I had a hankering to go there, so we decided to trip in for a look.

Indeed, the road wasn't too bad. There was road works with a detour, but it wasn't too difficult. The road had a few loose bits, but each didn't last long and most of it had definite hard wheel tracks to follow. We went into the Gorge lookout. It is quite a steep gorge and very rocky. Quite interesting, but not breathtaking. The camping ground at "Pyramid Rock" was another 10 km up the road. It apparently only had pit toilets - no showers or any other amenities. We didn't investigate it - just headed back to Hughenden for me to gas up again (150km round trip), then we continued on our journey east.

The road follows the railway line and is pretty straight for the most part. There is an interesting change at White Mountains National Park where it gets rocky and the road climbs a little. A train we passed on the way tooted "Hello" to us!

We stopped for a toasted cheese sandwich at Pentland. It was a nice little pub with a very friendly barman. Unfortunately the toasted cheese sandwich turned out to be two pieces of toast with a cold slice of cheese between. I haven't had one like that before! After a brief visit to the Art Gallery, we mounted up and rode to Charters Towers. Fuelled up, then headed 50km towards Townsville, then turned south for Burdekin Falls Dam. It seemed to take forever along that nice sealed road, stopping occasionally for Brahmans to let us past, but eventually we got there.

There definitely was a caravan park there - to my relief, as I was quite tired. It was once really nice and well laid out, but didn't seem to be well maintained. It was only $10 a night for two adults on a non-powered site. One of the campers told us a man would be around either this evening or in the morning to collect the money. We could camp where we liked. The facilities were very nice, but not everything worked. It was set up originally for the dam construction team.

We spoke to a man in one of the houses. There was only him and a married couple who were permanent residents. He had only lived there two weeks, but knew the area.

We walked down to the picnic area a lookout. All very impressive. There were some wallabies and peacock and hens wandering around the place. Peaceful.

We had our tinned lamb stew with four bean mix and cous cous for dinner. Nothing to rave about, but very filling.