baking 50 degree days or metres of rain in
an hour. You’ll hear how the place is torn to
shreds while, simultaneously, also nothing but a
bitumen highway with a few tourist destinations
along the way. They’re all right, of course, but
only from their own experiential perspective.
THE TRACKS ARE ALL TRASHED
If you’ve read a guide to Cape York, you’d no
doubt be familiar with the step by step approach
to each and every obstacle: “drive in 0.5m, turn
steering wheel 27 ̊ then apply 15% throttle.” It’s
all nonsense. For months at a time most of the
river crossings are literally metres under water;
over the wet season around 1700mm of rain
falls across the cape, eventually finding its way
into the rivers and tributaries that feed them.
For comparisons sake, Melbourne, Australia’s
wettest city, gets 10 per cent less rain throughout
Winner, winner, chicken dinnerDivets, corrugations and plain old
holes are likely to populate some of
the more off-track roads on the CpaeCape
Ra c e
toThePart 2
the whole year than Cape York sees in just the
wet season alone. The point is, an unfathomable
amount of water courses in and out of each
and every river crossing year in and year out.
A crossing that’s nice and flat one year might
be dug out and eroded the next year you come
through. The year after? It might be half a metre
back and smooth again. The tracks ebb and
flow each and every season and what might see
every 4WD winching their way out in May might
be driveable in 2WD just a few months later.
Over the last few decades plenty of bypass
tracks have been dug in that either offer an
easier line through an obstacle, or completely
avoid it all together. If you come in a jacked-up
monster truck towing a Patriot you’ll find plenty
of stuff to excite you. Head up in a two-inch lifted
Prado towing a forward fold camper and you’ll
have plenty of options too." If you re knee deep in planning your
own adventure to the far northern
reaches of Australia, we ve got a few
parting thoughts divined from years of
our own Cape adventure"