Gday all. We are new members and also new to caravanning. Kim and I are taking a "gap" year to go exploring after my recent redundancy. We are currently at Hervey bay and will be heading for Alice. As the Donohue highway would save us a lot of k's and time can anyone please give us some information about the road conditions and possible difficulties involved in taking this route. Cheers. K & K.
WOW# new to caravanning and wanting to go via this road. I just googled it and I would rather take the more well travelled road.
But welcome to the forum of knowledge, although I have not give you any knowledge re your question. Safe travels
Jay&Dee
Hello John. We have been leaning towards the safer option but would have considered the Donohue if other members had travelled it safely recently. We have been getting as much info off the internet as possible but there is nothing like first hand knowledge. Thanks for the reply.
Hi K & K. Unless someone here pops up with 1st hand info, the other way to find out if this H/W is suitable for a motorhome or caravan, is to google it for the maps. Then find out all the townships (I assume there are some) and then google them to find out who the Shire is that looks after the road.
Then email the Shire and explain what you want to do and time of year you are thinking of travelling. Ive done this in the past and the Shires are generally very helpful.
The other option is to visit the website for the Main Roads authority for the State. Often they have conditions which are updated regularly on their roads. They also have a contact point. Im WA based and the Main Roads dept there are very helpful. You can phone or email them and they will give you advice and also info on the state of just about any road - often they will inquire with their regional office for the area of interest and get back to you with the good oil
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Cheers Bruce
The amazing things you see when nomading Australia
Kev & Kim, we have done some of the outback dirt roads the last few yrs. with a full offroad caravan, also carry a sat phone in case of emergencies.
The Donohue merges into the Plenty Highway, and is mostly dirt , thus is closed if there is rain about.
If you are new to caravanning I would strongly advise you to stick to the black top for a while, and then maybe get a little adventurous. Having said that, there are some fantastic drives through the outback, BUT you must have the suitable vehicles and be properly prepared.
There are moves at foot to have the Plenty Highway sealed,as part of a diagonal route between Cairns and Perth.
Hope I have not been a wet rag to your new adventures. Oh and welcome to the forum.
I presume you are thinking of taking the Donohue and then the Plenty towards Alice Springs. Its a dirt road, passable with a caravan, if it hasn't recently rained, but it is quite corrugated in sections and some spots have quite a lot of bulldust. You don't say what you are driving/towing, but if you haven't got a dedicated off road van and a bit of experience in gravel roads then it may end up being quite a slow 'short cut', as we found many places that 50k an hour was as fast as we would want to go. For a first trip the main highway may end up actually being quicker.
thanks for the info guys it has been helpful, we are driving a VW Amarock towing a Lotus Sprint 21 foot long and heavy, going well so far and looking forward to the rest of our adventure
K and K
we did this track a few years back with a nissan patrol 4.2 turbo inter cooled and a trublu camper had a great trip across there we had 2 day on the track got fuel at jervois station cash only I utake my van across there you may need to carry fuel work out the KM and what you use its about 800-900 across
