Black Mountain Road Kuranda to Julatten

Ben Up North

can only hope to improve
Joined
Oct 1, 2017
Messages
2,115
Location
FNQ
Car Year
2004 | 1992
Car Model
SG Forester X MY05 | 92 SVX
Transmission
5MT D/R | 4EAT
Took Jack for a lttle run today, Up to Kuranda, along Black Mountain road to Julatten, then down the range to Port Doulgas for a coffe with a mate, then back home to the Northern Beaches (of Cairns)
Absolute pearler of a day!
From Kuranda to Quaid Road is very mild used quite a bit by weekenders mostly dirt bikes & quad bikes.
Quaid Road is interesting, It's an ungazetted road tha was built at the end of the Bjelke Petersen Days when development was king and the environment was there to be ripped out and plundered. It goes between SOuthedge on the northern end of the Tablelands down to Wangetti on the Coast. Unfortuantely it's closed at both ends, but Black Mountain road traverses it. so you can get on it and take a leisurly drive west - not sure how far to the gate, but I drove a few K along the road without seeing it before turning around and heading back to finish Black Mountain Road.

Things started getting a bit more interesting from Quaid Road, the road became more track like, rough in bits with a couple of nice little climbs. It would be quite a fun and a little bit of a challenging drive after a bit of rain, Lots of big drains crossing the road to reduce erosion that would fill up nicely with the 'banks' of the drains making it a bit more exciting to get over.
Those drainage channels sure make it slow going though, if you hit one at any sort of speed you'd be cactus.
I've posted a few happy snaps if you're interested here: https://imgur.com/a/Pev3f

Happy days. Next time I go hopefully it will be a bit wetter because I'll have my new tyres by then :ebiggrin:
 
Pretty easy in the dry, a nice afternoon out. only about 150k round trip, took about 4 hours, about an hour on the tarmac. I recorded it on my GPS, but because I dawdled around it's not particularly accurate with regards to a straight through time.
I'll do it proper next time, so I can get an accurate distance of the good bit. :)

It's actually a pretty neat shortcut to a friend's place up on the Tablelands. Probably wouldn't take too much longer than going around the long way.
 
Probably going to do it again today, gotta go up to my mate's place to do a bit of plasma cutting of the mounting bar for the lights.
 
Had an enjoyable time yesterday, a little bit of rain the days before - the road seems to dry up well.
Here's the happy snaps:

Almost at the start of the fun bits.

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Here we are!

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Another farm in the forest. I want one.

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The dumped car has been beaten up and is now "Police Aware" which means it should be gone in another month or two..

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Larger puddles than last time, had a bit of rain in the last week, on the whole still very dry.

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The road less traveled.

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Thank goodness for bridges. No way was I attempting that with Jack, those ruts were enormous, narrow and almost guaranteed to break something.

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How's that for clearance!

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Wait-A-While, right next to the car when I got out for the previous happy snap. This plant has caused at least one recorded death (you can get incredibly stick in it)) Didn't notice until I got back in. Mind you, it is literally everywhere.

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Drop off. Doesn't really show the scale of it. At some stages driving along the ridge it was like this both sides and the track is about a Forester and a half wide, tops.

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Puddles! Lots of them this time.

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More puddles! You can't really see, but they are formed by humps designed to push the running water off the side of the track rather than going down it and completely destroying the track every time it rains (during the wet this is pretty often and almost always heavy). What's under the puddles is an unknown, they're generally not to bad but due to the angles need to be taken slowly. If you hit those humps at speed unless you clear it, you're gonna break something when you land in the puddle. If you do manage to clear it, I doubt you'd make it around the next corner (there's always a next corner!)

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Puddles on bridges even..

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I'm looking forward to going again once we get some decent rain. Get Jack dirty
 
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I think I've found a shorter route to my mates place..
either along the Lemon track, or the Billabong Track..
I think they're old logging tracks which may not be passable by 4 wheeled vehicles any more.
I aim to find out, once I get myself some decent communications.
And possibly an old school portable hand winch, just in case...

I'll start a new trip report for that one.
 
Get an EPIRB
Oh yeah! Completely forgot about that.
Which is pretty dopey of me, the other thing I used to do a lot of was sailing - wouldn't dream of going out on the water without one.


Another thing on the list is a chainsaw. They're pretty essential up here, noisy bloody things. And a new Axe (not as important as a chainsaw but a hell of a lot quieter and more enoyable to use)
 
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Nice and thanks for the pics. We did 75 miles of easy dirt roads yesterday in order to get to some trees. But it is so dry now that the forest looks eerie. Like one spark and it is gone. All around an awkward feeling. So dry and dusty, the patches of forest feel like the desert below.

There are better places to get to trees but traffic on the freeway was crazy.
 
I usually carry a Ryobi cordless reciprocating saw, 2 batteries and a charger for 12V because chain saws are not allowed in some areas.
 

I think I'll start with the Epirb. The curent SPOT Gen3 is relatively cheap to buy, but US$220.00 a year for a basic subscription is a fair chunk.
Might wait on that one until I prepare for a decent length of trip.
I'll probably regret not getting it sooner, the tracks around the Macallister Range aren't that far from civilization (people rarely get lost there for more than a day or two!)
 
Did a run back the other way today as a little birthday present to myself. Had a few storms an hour or two before pass through so was prepared to have to turn around at some stage, but surpsingly not much to show of it.
here's some really wobbly footage if you're interested, for some reason it looks a lot faster than it was:


[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IryiIazQ6BA"]Black Mountain Road after a shower. - YouTube[/ame]
 
Cool! Just a little hint, take the ignition key off your keyring if you're going to video. That way you don't hear the keys jangling ;)
 
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