Friday 19 May 2017
Today was the start of the adventure proper. Up and away at about 7:00am
We had planned to head back to the OTT via Frenchman’s Track, however this was closed, although we were told that someone did try and get through and needed help and assistance from others with winching.
So rather then head north and then north west, we headed back west the way we had come in. Back to Bamaga Development Road, then north towards the OTT.
At Bramwell Junction, we once again fueled up. This is where the non maintained section of the OTT starts. In fact it is only about 50 metres north of the Bramwell Junction Roadhouse
We only made it a few KMs to Palm Creek, this has changed quite considerably since we were last here. The banks were very steep and heavily eroded with a long 30 metres of mud after the eroded banks before getting to the creek itself. There was no one there who had attempted the crossing from either direction that we could talk to, to get an idea of the difficulties that we were likely to come across.
After assessing the situation, we decided to go around Palm Creek via the Bamaga Bypass Road, and come back into the OTT via the Southern Gunshot Bypass, and then headed south to Dulcie Creek, crossing Bertie Creek, Dulhunty Creek, North Alice Creek and Dulcie Creek. The next one south of Dulcie was Palm, so no point in going any further south.
We had noticed some good camping spots at North Alice so headed back there to set up our campsite for the night.
At last some action, although a little disappointing not to have crossed Palm Creek