Tour Australia

The next day after a swim we left Adel’s Grove and headed for Lorella Springs. It is a bit over 700km’s drive and is mostly along the Savannah Way. We planned to do this over 2 days of driving.

We headed north from Adel’s Grove along the Riversleigh Doomadgee Road rather than over to Gregory and then north. By heading directly north we saved time and kilometers. The trip along this road is good and the road is mostly smooth. It is narrow and travels through a lot of farm land. It has a river crossing at the Lawn Hill end but it is not overly deep. We saw some amazing Wedged Tail Eagles along the way making a meal of road kill.

We reached the Savannah Way soon enough and headed to Doomadgee for lunch. There is a nice spot to pull up on the western side of the river with shade and river views.

We topped up with a little bit of fuel and kept going on our way. The road was quite good as we left Doomadgee but as we got closer to the Northern Territory border the road got worse. We passed through Hell’s Gate and then made it to the border at around 4pm.

Once we were in the NT the road didn’t improve. We were reminded by a number of wrecked cars on the side of the road of how quickly someones holiday can turn into a nightmare. From this point onwards we also had a number of small river crossings. We eventually had enough of the corrugations and decided to pull up for the night, we didn’t make the campground we were hoping to but needed the rest. It was a hot day and a hot evening so we cooled off with a Milo milkshake (of sorts).

On our second day to reach Lorella Springs we got going early with a fresh hope of better roads. The roads did improve slightly as we made our way towards Borroloola and we were feeling good about the day. Again we encountered numerous river/creek crossings but none were deep.

We had morning tea and filled with fuel in Borroloola. Not far from Borroloola we turned off on the road towards Lorella Springs. It did not seem well travelled and was narrow. We drove through some back burning that was being done on the bush which was interesting to see.

We turned onto the Nathan River Road which was very rough and had a lot of bull dust. We eventually made Lorella Springs and set up camp. We ended the day with a swim in the hot spring adjacent to the camp area.