Day 32 – The Plenty Highway

Today is going to a big day, we are up reasonably early. I’d like to get going between 8-9am. By the time we have breakfast, showers and packup, we head into town to fill up with fuel it is 9am when we head out of Isa

I’ve been thinking about this part of the trip for ages, but with a slight deal of greater reality over the last few days.

If you ask google maps how to get from Mt Isa to Alice springs, it sends you via the tar to the Stuart highway and then south about 700km to Alice about 1150km all up. The Plenty is a diagonal “shortcut” (about 830km) between Mt Isa and Alice.

Today we are trying to get to a cattle station called Tobermorey. There are two ways to get to Tobermorey from Isa, google suggests going down to Boulia and then across to the Plenty, a distance of about 540km, the other option is turning off before a spot on the map called Dajarra, then via another spot called Urandangi (U-Ran-Dan-gee).

This is meant to be about 275km, about half the distance, but a lot more dirt, google has this a 9hrs, I don’t believe this, but of course I’ve never seen the road. A week ago I would jump at it, but today I’m a little more risk adverse. As we leave I’m still not 100% which route we’ll take. 540km is a long way on these roads.

Justine kicks off the driving while we are on tar. We are probably less than 10km out of Isa, when the road turns to single lane. We still make good time and after about 80km approach the turnoff around 10am. I’ve seen on aerial maps on the shorter road via Urandangi that there is a large dry river crossing about 10km in from the turnoff, I can’t see if there is a bridge or not. I figure we’ll get to here, check the condition of the road and the river crossing, if it is rubbish we can double back and go via Boulia.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

We turn off expecting dirt, but we’re still on tar. We make the river crossing and it is a dry concrete causeway, so no problem here either. After the river we finally hit dirt. We pull over to let down pressure in the car tyres, and to put in some measures to help reduce the amount of dust entering the van.

I take over driving, the road is great, in some cases it is better than the single lane rubbish we went over from Isa. I’ve adjusted the bottom wide angle mirrors of the “dumbo” mirrors so I can see that the rear tyres are still inflated.

We make great time and the car is happy cruising along at 80-90km/h. We start seeing the “signs” that the Urandangi pub owner, Pam has put out. These are both amusing, but in a strange way reassuring that we are on the right track. About 80km later we drive into the township of Urandangi. We stop at the pub to get some fuel, $2.20/l, while expensive, I don’t mind paying, even though I’ve got full jerry cans, I’d prefer to buy the fuel here and support these businesses. If it was not for places like this, we would not have been able to take this road, that and it would be easy to get stuck out here.

At the pub, Pam treats the kids (and Justine) to a tour of the orphaned Joeys she has. The park across the road has a folded up large jumping castle (which seems somewhat out of place), and the park shows the signs of a rather large party. Pam informs us that yesterday was the annual cricket match. Apparently one of the biggest days on the Urandangi calendar. I bet there are a few sore heads around this morning..

• 

• 

• 

• 

We head on to Tobermorey, Pam tells us we can take the back entrance into the station and that will save about 12km. She also tells us about the “Welcome to NT” sign that we will pass head over the border. The sign apparently has a mistake.

We’ve got about 80km more to go, about 40 to the NT border and then 40 onto Tobermorey. Looking easy.

As we’re on this road, I’m thinking we’ve got practically full tanks so maybe we can bypass Tobermorey and make on for the next station call Jervois. It’s an extra 300km up the road. Just within the range of our 65/l tank on these roads, but we have an extra 40/l in the jerrys in any case.

We arrive at the border. I wasn’t expecting a large sign on this road, so we have to pull up for the obligatory photo op. Can you spot the mistake?

Anyway we’re just about to head off and I take one last look around. Damn. We’ve got a flat on one of the van tyres. It’s 41° outside. We get the van jack out, the jack must take 100+ winds to raise the wheel, and the 16” light truck tyres are anything but light. After about 20mins we’re back on the road. The road to Tobermorey, They fix punctures at Tobermorey, I guess we won’t be bypassing them any more anymore.

• 

• 

• 

We find the back entrance and drive in. At the “store” I ask about a tyre repair, and the lady points me to the “tyre shop” and her husband comes over a few minutes later. Even though the puncture is one of the smallest he’s seen, a tyre plug doesn’t cut it and we need the tyre patched. The tyre is a PIA to get off the rim, but eventually it is patched, we top up with fuel and we are on our way, an hour later.

• 

• 

We’ve been told that we can look forward to another 50km or so of good road and then about 50km of bad bulldust and rough corrugations. After this the road should improve a bit.

We drive about 70odd km, about 20km into the rough stuff, it’s not too bad, and so far there has only been one patch that I thought for a moment we might just be bogged, but most of the bulldust is ok. It’s starting to get late and we find a rocky hill that we can drive up. We park on top of this hill had have a magnificent 360° view of the landscape. It’s still hot, about 42°, We run the generator for a bit so we can have the air con going, but in this heat it really doesn’t do much. We enjoy a great sunset, but soon the gennie has to be turned off, it’s not cooling great, and the noise is really killing the experience of the place.

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

After dinner, we’re treated to an amazing light show from a thunder storm way off to the south west, probably generally in the direction of Alice, although maybe not that far, maybe 50-100km off. We watch it for over an hour. Then it’s time for bed. It’s hot. There is a breeze, but it’s hot too.

That is until about 2am….but that’s for tomorrows post.

Postscript. In April 2019, about six months later. A flood hit this area, above you can see the van beside the tyre shop at Tobermorey station, well in this photo there is a helicopter on top of the same building! That would put the water level up just under the wonderland logo on the rear of the van…

•