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Greetings All.
Destination
My wife and I have recently returned from a month away up north, most of which was spent on the Cape, so now that some of the more immediate chores are out of the way I thought I’d share some of our experience with other Pradopointers. Sorry, no pictures, but Pradopoint and other sites on the net have lots of Cape York pictures if you want to see the places and things I’m talking about. And Google will find you web sites for any of the places or products mentioned.
In summary, we had a fantastic time and are keen to do it again someday once some of our other travel priorities are addressed.
We went in convoy with friends who had done some exploring on the Cape before and who were giving their old Hilux 4X4 one more big trip before trading it in. We were more focussed on touring than heavy duty 4X4ing, which I guess would be the intention of many others who might be planning to head up there one day. So we used the bypass track rather than the Overland Telegraph Track. Overall, the roads weren’t too bad, though with lots of dust and corrugations. (I now have a sign courtesy of the Croc Tent which says ‘Only 164,000,000 corrugations’ but I think that’s somewhat of an underestimate.) Our aim was to spend as much time at the top as possible, so we left most of the side tracks and destinations for another time.
Vehicle
The Prado GXL D4D auto was 18 mths old and had 25500km on it at the start of the trip. I talked with a Brisbane dealership Toyota service manager familiar with the Cape before we departed. He said that, as we were not planning anything too hairy chested, giving it an extra service before we left was unnecessary. So we had the 30000 service (at 31000 km) done at Mackay on the way home. I kept a check on all of the vitals under the bonnet and, other than the windscreen washers, nothing needed topping up, although we carried extra oil and water at all times.
Modifications/Extras
The vehicle was already fitted with Toyota cargo barrier, bull and towbars, reversing sensors, front tint, rustproofing, Fatboy bulbs and roof bars. Following ideas I’ve gathered from Pradopoint, I added a dual battery system, an Engel 40 litre fridge/freezer (with protective/insulating cover), a Uniden UHF/CB, Scanguage 2, Trektable on the back door (indispensible –used it every time we stopped for a cuppa, for lunch, to unpack,….), aluminium flyscreen zip-tied in front of the radiator and also screwed on top of the intercooler to keep bugs/leaves/grass out (worked a treat, and much cheaper and better coverage that a Toyota insect screen), $6.00 Clark Rubber foam cabin air filter (incredible the amount of dust it stopped coming in when the recirculate button on the A/C was turned off to pressurise the cabin, and easily cleaned by washing out in a a bowl with a little detergent), $10.00 Supercheap Auto canvas seat covers, Hilux windscreen washer jets (very good and got lots of use), Aero rubber cargo mat.
But I kept the standard suspension and did not fit a snorkel. (I figured if I was going to wreck the standard shocks I would probably wreck expensive after-market ones, but at the end of the day Mr Toyota’s products held up fine, despite lots of rough roads, some done at reasonable speeds.)
Fridge
For at least half the trip, we ran the Engel as a freezer and used an EvaCool 25 litre ice box (from BCF) as our daily fridge, rotating our freezer blocks progressively through the Engel to keep frozen ones at all times in the EvaCool. The latter was just the right size for more than our daily needs and sat neatly on top of the Engel.Despite a fair bashing around, the Engel was great. Froze quickly, no rattles, just great.
Packing
We carried our food in several milk crates (I found I could stack 3 on top of one another in the middle of the cargo area next to the Engel). Most of our camping gear was also in the back in the cargo area. We folded the rear seats forward and strapped our stretchers and tent poles to the seat brackets in the rear floor. Our clothes, pillows, etc then filled the rest of the space on top. The tent we took was a Primus Extended Tourer – Oztrail market something similar called a Tourer Plus, they’re both on their respective web sites – and got our set up and pack up times down to around 30 minutes after a bit of experience. It was plenty roomy enough for the two of us and very simple to erect or to pack away.
Tyres
I was concerned the original Dunlop Grandtreks, although still in very good condition, mightn’t be up to the task, so bought 5 new Bridgestone 694s (got a great deal at Jax) and purchased a Speedy Prado mag wheel copy for a second spare and had one of the old Grandtreks fitted to it. (In hindsight, the Grandtreks would probably have been OK with some extra caution on some of the rockier sections of road.) I carried the extra spare and a long handled shovel in an old Supercheap roof basket on the roof bars. I ran 40 psi in the tyres on the bitumen and dropped them to 32 psi once we were on the gravel. For peace of mind, I also fitted a TPMS tyre monitoring system (just over $300 at Repco) when the new tyres went on. (The sensors are part of the valve stems inside the tyres so can’t be pinched by kids in car parks, unlike some others currently on the market.)
Route
We met up with our friends at Atherton and spent our first night under canvas at the public camping grounds at Laura. (Flushing toilets, hot showers, washing machine - $5.00 pp, and power if you wanted it).An easy day’s drive on bitumen and gravel, with the Quinkan Aboriginal paintings at Split Rock and the Quinikan and Regional Cultural Centre just outside Laura were great highlights not to be missed by anyone heading up that way. (On our next trip we hope to book into the Jowalbinna Rock Safari Camp and visit some of the galleries nearby, which we were told are even better than those at Split Rock.)
The next day was a long haul and we stayed at the wonderful camping grounds at the Archer River Roadhouse. (Lawns, good amentities block, and the Archer River Burger would have to be the biggest and best burger you can buy anywhere. Definitely no need to cook dinner.) Tossing bread to the fish in the river at Coen and walking in the bed of the Archer River just as the sun was going down are special memories.
On day three we stopped for morning tea at the Moreton Telegraph Station, had lunch and a photo stop at the huge termite nests at Bramwell Junction and then followed the bypass road from there to the National Parks camping ground at Twin Falls/Eliot Falls. The road in was interesting, deeply rutted and slippery – part of the OTT – and the camping ground was well set up. Good toilets, no showers, but that didn’t matter. Everyone in the camping ground had at least one swim per day in the creek and under the waterfall. We camped there for two nights and, despite some rain, were very comfortable.
We then set off over the Jardine River for Seisia, and the Seisia Holiday Park Camping Ground which was to be our base for a week. This is a first rate set up right on the water, just along from the main wharf. Once again, a good amenities block, laundry, shop, etc. Our tent was a few metres back from the waters of Torres Strait, looking out at the islands and the boating and shipping activity associated with the wharf. We had a shed next to us with running water, a sink, benches and 240 power. (There are many of these sheds located around the camping ground.) So we ran the Engel from the power point, and our friends had also been wise enough to pack a jug, toaster and frypan which made catering very easy.
Seisia has nearly all the mod cons anyone could need when camping, including a well stocked supermarket selling the full range of things you can buy at an IGA-type supermarket in the suburbs. Ditto Bamaga a few ks down the road. Fruit and veg were very reasonable (subsidised by the State Govt I think) but other essentials like XXXX Gold were $48.00 a carton.
We had a busy week with trips to the plane wrecks, the Tip, Sommerset, the lakes and eastern beaches, the old radar station, as well as the usual walks, shopping, general driving around and fishing (no catching, but quite a bit of fishing.) We took a one-day trip to, and tour of, Thursday Island, and that’s something I would recommend to anyone heading for the Cape. The high speed catamaran leaves from the Seisa wharf about 8:00 in the morning and is back by 4:00 in the afternoon. We could have added on a boat trip over to Horn Island to look at the old WW2 fortifications but decided to spend all of our day on TI.
After a great week and very pleasant weather at Seisia (ignoring the south east trades which belted us every day we went anywhere near the east coast and decided us against camping for a few days at Chilli Beach on the way back), it was time to try to cram everything back into the Prado and face the corrugations again. Heading south, we refueled at the bowser at the Jardine River ferry (diesel there was $2.15/litre as opposed to $2.30/litre at the BP at Seisia), called for a look at Fruit Bat Falls and that evening set up camp once again at Archer River. (Yes, the burgers!)
Our friends left us at Lakeland to head back to Mareeba for a few days whilst we headed east for Cooktown, where we spent three nights. What was good about Cooktown? Well just about everything. The museums, the botanic gardens, the beaches, the huge groper that swim out in front of the Cook’s Landing Café just after dusk, seeing Qld clean up NSW in the State Of Origin,…. But a special highlight was going on a tour of aboriginal land with a local traditional owner, Willie Gordon. He runs Guurrbi Tours, described by Australian Traveller magazine as ‘One of Australia’s great hidden experiences,’ and listed by American Express as one of its fifty suggested ‘must do’ experiences. It was a four hour walk with visits to painting galleries and sacred sites, discussions on bush tucker, dreamtime stories and inspirational, spiritual explanations. Put it on your ‘must do’ list too.
From Cooktown, and after stopping off at the Lions Den Hotel, it was a very interesting drive over rutted dirt roads and steep ranges, through creeks, past magnificent scenery and through the wonderful Cape Tribulation and Daintree country. We felt a little depressed to strike nothing but bitumen again, and felt like going in search of a gravel road with at least a few kilometres of corrugations and dust.
How did the Prado go?
I’ve been searching for a one word description of how the Prado handled the trip. I could say Very Comfortably, but that’s two words. So I’m left with a choice of Fantastically, Magnificently, Superbly, Safely, Competently,….. You get the picture? A wonderful motor vehicle.
Fuel consumption varied, but was in the range 10 – 12.5 litres per hundred kilometres, which I thought good considering the full load, the basket/wheel and tyre/shovel on the roof and some of the road conditions we encountered, some of it (eg the road into Twin Falls, the tracks in and around Sommerset) very slow going.
Problems?
Did we have any problems? Well, the spare stayed on the back door and the extra spare and shovel rode 6540 km on the roof and weren’t touched. The 694s have no marks or chips and appear to have almost as much tread as when they were installed.There were no rattles or squeaks. The standard shocks still seem to be doing their job just fine. There’s now hardly any red dust staining out from nooks and crannies onto the paintwork when it rains (it’s amazing what an hour with a Karcher can achieve) although there’s still a little dirt on the underbelly, but nothing a run up the front beach of Fraser won’t shift. But I have to admit we did lose one screw from the front number plate, the top half of the thin wire UHF/CB aerial evenually gave in to metal fatigue and disappeared into the bush somewhere on the way back near Hann River from too much vibration, and two bolts on the bull bar needed retightening slightly at the 30000 service. I guess that’s not too bad for reliability!
Where to from here?
Returning home, it’s been an adjustment to go back into a house with more than two plates, two cups, two sets of cutlery, a kettle, billy and frying pan. And the demands of normal life, television, news of all that’s wrong in the world, email, bills to pay,…
We’re already starting to think of our next trip, whenever time and finances allow. The Gulf country, the Territory, the Victorian High Country (in summer!), Tasmania are all currently competing for attention. But a return to the Cape in the next few years is also definitely well up on the list too.
So the suggestion to all those who think they might like to make the trip sometime is to grab a chance and just go. It’ll be no use at 85 years of age saying ‘I wish we had,’ though at that age I may have forgotten I’ve been up there anyway. And although some folks will enjoy taking a heavily modified vehicle up and really stretching themselves and their 4X4s to the limit, out experience showed that you can have a great adventure with a fairly standard 4X4 providing it’s in decent mechanical condition – especially if it’s a Prado.
Cheers
Travelman
Destination
My wife and I have recently returned from a month away up north, most of which was spent on the Cape, so now that some of the more immediate chores are out of the way I thought I’d share some of our experience with other Pradopointers. Sorry, no pictures, but Pradopoint and other sites on the net have lots of Cape York pictures if you want to see the places and things I’m talking about. And Google will find you web sites for any of the places or products mentioned.
In summary, we had a fantastic time and are keen to do it again someday once some of our other travel priorities are addressed.
We went in convoy with friends who had done some exploring on the Cape before and who were giving their old Hilux 4X4 one more big trip before trading it in. We were more focussed on touring than heavy duty 4X4ing, which I guess would be the intention of many others who might be planning to head up there one day. So we used the bypass track rather than the Overland Telegraph Track. Overall, the roads weren’t too bad, though with lots of dust and corrugations. (I now have a sign courtesy of the Croc Tent which says ‘Only 164,000,000 corrugations’ but I think that’s somewhat of an underestimate.) Our aim was to spend as much time at the top as possible, so we left most of the side tracks and destinations for another time.
Vehicle
The Prado GXL D4D auto was 18 mths old and had 25500km on it at the start of the trip. I talked with a Brisbane dealership Toyota service manager familiar with the Cape before we departed. He said that, as we were not planning anything too hairy chested, giving it an extra service before we left was unnecessary. So we had the 30000 service (at 31000 km) done at Mackay on the way home. I kept a check on all of the vitals under the bonnet and, other than the windscreen washers, nothing needed topping up, although we carried extra oil and water at all times.
Modifications/Extras
The vehicle was already fitted with Toyota cargo barrier, bull and towbars, reversing sensors, front tint, rustproofing, Fatboy bulbs and roof bars. Following ideas I’ve gathered from Pradopoint, I added a dual battery system, an Engel 40 litre fridge/freezer (with protective/insulating cover), a Uniden UHF/CB, Scanguage 2, Trektable on the back door (indispensible –used it every time we stopped for a cuppa, for lunch, to unpack,….), aluminium flyscreen zip-tied in front of the radiator and also screwed on top of the intercooler to keep bugs/leaves/grass out (worked a treat, and much cheaper and better coverage that a Toyota insect screen), $6.00 Clark Rubber foam cabin air filter (incredible the amount of dust it stopped coming in when the recirculate button on the A/C was turned off to pressurise the cabin, and easily cleaned by washing out in a a bowl with a little detergent), $10.00 Supercheap Auto canvas seat covers, Hilux windscreen washer jets (very good and got lots of use), Aero rubber cargo mat.
But I kept the standard suspension and did not fit a snorkel. (I figured if I was going to wreck the standard shocks I would probably wreck expensive after-market ones, but at the end of the day Mr Toyota’s products held up fine, despite lots of rough roads, some done at reasonable speeds.)
Fridge
For at least half the trip, we ran the Engel as a freezer and used an EvaCool 25 litre ice box (from BCF) as our daily fridge, rotating our freezer blocks progressively through the Engel to keep frozen ones at all times in the EvaCool. The latter was just the right size for more than our daily needs and sat neatly on top of the Engel.Despite a fair bashing around, the Engel was great. Froze quickly, no rattles, just great.
Packing
We carried our food in several milk crates (I found I could stack 3 on top of one another in the middle of the cargo area next to the Engel). Most of our camping gear was also in the back in the cargo area. We folded the rear seats forward and strapped our stretchers and tent poles to the seat brackets in the rear floor. Our clothes, pillows, etc then filled the rest of the space on top. The tent we took was a Primus Extended Tourer – Oztrail market something similar called a Tourer Plus, they’re both on their respective web sites – and got our set up and pack up times down to around 30 minutes after a bit of experience. It was plenty roomy enough for the two of us and very simple to erect or to pack away.
Tyres
I was concerned the original Dunlop Grandtreks, although still in very good condition, mightn’t be up to the task, so bought 5 new Bridgestone 694s (got a great deal at Jax) and purchased a Speedy Prado mag wheel copy for a second spare and had one of the old Grandtreks fitted to it. (In hindsight, the Grandtreks would probably have been OK with some extra caution on some of the rockier sections of road.) I carried the extra spare and a long handled shovel in an old Supercheap roof basket on the roof bars. I ran 40 psi in the tyres on the bitumen and dropped them to 32 psi once we were on the gravel. For peace of mind, I also fitted a TPMS tyre monitoring system (just over $300 at Repco) when the new tyres went on. (The sensors are part of the valve stems inside the tyres so can’t be pinched by kids in car parks, unlike some others currently on the market.)
Route
We met up with our friends at Atherton and spent our first night under canvas at the public camping grounds at Laura. (Flushing toilets, hot showers, washing machine - $5.00 pp, and power if you wanted it).An easy day’s drive on bitumen and gravel, with the Quinkan Aboriginal paintings at Split Rock and the Quinikan and Regional Cultural Centre just outside Laura were great highlights not to be missed by anyone heading up that way. (On our next trip we hope to book into the Jowalbinna Rock Safari Camp and visit some of the galleries nearby, which we were told are even better than those at Split Rock.)
The next day was a long haul and we stayed at the wonderful camping grounds at the Archer River Roadhouse. (Lawns, good amentities block, and the Archer River Burger would have to be the biggest and best burger you can buy anywhere. Definitely no need to cook dinner.) Tossing bread to the fish in the river at Coen and walking in the bed of the Archer River just as the sun was going down are special memories.
On day three we stopped for morning tea at the Moreton Telegraph Station, had lunch and a photo stop at the huge termite nests at Bramwell Junction and then followed the bypass road from there to the National Parks camping ground at Twin Falls/Eliot Falls. The road in was interesting, deeply rutted and slippery – part of the OTT – and the camping ground was well set up. Good toilets, no showers, but that didn’t matter. Everyone in the camping ground had at least one swim per day in the creek and under the waterfall. We camped there for two nights and, despite some rain, were very comfortable.
We then set off over the Jardine River for Seisia, and the Seisia Holiday Park Camping Ground which was to be our base for a week. This is a first rate set up right on the water, just along from the main wharf. Once again, a good amenities block, laundry, shop, etc. Our tent was a few metres back from the waters of Torres Strait, looking out at the islands and the boating and shipping activity associated with the wharf. We had a shed next to us with running water, a sink, benches and 240 power. (There are many of these sheds located around the camping ground.) So we ran the Engel from the power point, and our friends had also been wise enough to pack a jug, toaster and frypan which made catering very easy.
Seisia has nearly all the mod cons anyone could need when camping, including a well stocked supermarket selling the full range of things you can buy at an IGA-type supermarket in the suburbs. Ditto Bamaga a few ks down the road. Fruit and veg were very reasonable (subsidised by the State Govt I think) but other essentials like XXXX Gold were $48.00 a carton.
We had a busy week with trips to the plane wrecks, the Tip, Sommerset, the lakes and eastern beaches, the old radar station, as well as the usual walks, shopping, general driving around and fishing (no catching, but quite a bit of fishing.) We took a one-day trip to, and tour of, Thursday Island, and that’s something I would recommend to anyone heading for the Cape. The high speed catamaran leaves from the Seisa wharf about 8:00 in the morning and is back by 4:00 in the afternoon. We could have added on a boat trip over to Horn Island to look at the old WW2 fortifications but decided to spend all of our day on TI.
After a great week and very pleasant weather at Seisia (ignoring the south east trades which belted us every day we went anywhere near the east coast and decided us against camping for a few days at Chilli Beach on the way back), it was time to try to cram everything back into the Prado and face the corrugations again. Heading south, we refueled at the bowser at the Jardine River ferry (diesel there was $2.15/litre as opposed to $2.30/litre at the BP at Seisia), called for a look at Fruit Bat Falls and that evening set up camp once again at Archer River. (Yes, the burgers!)
Our friends left us at Lakeland to head back to Mareeba for a few days whilst we headed east for Cooktown, where we spent three nights. What was good about Cooktown? Well just about everything. The museums, the botanic gardens, the beaches, the huge groper that swim out in front of the Cook’s Landing Café just after dusk, seeing Qld clean up NSW in the State Of Origin,…. But a special highlight was going on a tour of aboriginal land with a local traditional owner, Willie Gordon. He runs Guurrbi Tours, described by Australian Traveller magazine as ‘One of Australia’s great hidden experiences,’ and listed by American Express as one of its fifty suggested ‘must do’ experiences. It was a four hour walk with visits to painting galleries and sacred sites, discussions on bush tucker, dreamtime stories and inspirational, spiritual explanations. Put it on your ‘must do’ list too.
From Cooktown, and after stopping off at the Lions Den Hotel, it was a very interesting drive over rutted dirt roads and steep ranges, through creeks, past magnificent scenery and through the wonderful Cape Tribulation and Daintree country. We felt a little depressed to strike nothing but bitumen again, and felt like going in search of a gravel road with at least a few kilometres of corrugations and dust.
How did the Prado go?
I’ve been searching for a one word description of how the Prado handled the trip. I could say Very Comfortably, but that’s two words. So I’m left with a choice of Fantastically, Magnificently, Superbly, Safely, Competently,….. You get the picture? A wonderful motor vehicle.
Fuel consumption varied, but was in the range 10 – 12.5 litres per hundred kilometres, which I thought good considering the full load, the basket/wheel and tyre/shovel on the roof and some of the road conditions we encountered, some of it (eg the road into Twin Falls, the tracks in and around Sommerset) very slow going.
Problems?
Did we have any problems? Well, the spare stayed on the back door and the extra spare and shovel rode 6540 km on the roof and weren’t touched. The 694s have no marks or chips and appear to have almost as much tread as when they were installed.There were no rattles or squeaks. The standard shocks still seem to be doing their job just fine. There’s now hardly any red dust staining out from nooks and crannies onto the paintwork when it rains (it’s amazing what an hour with a Karcher can achieve) although there’s still a little dirt on the underbelly, but nothing a run up the front beach of Fraser won’t shift. But I have to admit we did lose one screw from the front number plate, the top half of the thin wire UHF/CB aerial evenually gave in to metal fatigue and disappeared into the bush somewhere on the way back near Hann River from too much vibration, and two bolts on the bull bar needed retightening slightly at the 30000 service. I guess that’s not too bad for reliability!
Where to from here?
Returning home, it’s been an adjustment to go back into a house with more than two plates, two cups, two sets of cutlery, a kettle, billy and frying pan. And the demands of normal life, television, news of all that’s wrong in the world, email, bills to pay,…
We’re already starting to think of our next trip, whenever time and finances allow. The Gulf country, the Territory, the Victorian High Country (in summer!), Tasmania are all currently competing for attention. But a return to the Cape in the next few years is also definitely well up on the list too.
So the suggestion to all those who think they might like to make the trip sometime is to grab a chance and just go. It’ll be no use at 85 years of age saying ‘I wish we had,’ though at that age I may have forgotten I’ve been up there anyway. And although some folks will enjoy taking a heavily modified vehicle up and really stretching themselves and their 4X4s to the limit, out experience showed that you can have a great adventure with a fairly standard 4X4 providing it’s in decent mechanical condition – especially if it’s a Prado.
Cheers
Travelman
. Comprehensive trip report, piccies would've been nice 
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