CAMPSITE # 153 - The Old Telegraph Track

Time for the good stuff. We had endured the boring old gravel highway all of the way up to Bramwell Junction, where the road forks off to either the Old Telegraph Track or the upgraded bypass route. The Old Telegraph Track is renowned for writing off 4WDs from rolling mainly at the creek crossing points. 


The creek crossings had claimed as many as 10 vehicles within the last two weeks. If you write your car off, you have the privelege of being allowed to mount it's number plate on their RIP tree. If you roll your car and you want to keep it, you can expect to pay around $5000 for it to be shipped to Cairns. 

There was no negotiating, we had to get back to Brisbane in one piece - preferably in the Troopie and not via plane flight with a $5000 debt weighing us down. It may not have been the most blogging friendly route to have chosen, but we were all set to chicken out and drive the bypass. But, we had to at least drive down a little to check it out, see if it was all that it was cracked up to be.

Palm Creek crossing was only 3kms down the track from the start of the Old Telegraph Track. Once we arrived at the crossing, it was difficult to believe that any car could come out in one piece after driving down something so steep. We thought we had to just use our imagination, but lucky for us three vehicles turned up ready & roaring to give it a shot...

This is the first car that went down. I loved the bit where the son stood infront of the car giving directions via their hand held two-way to his dad who was driving and said "Stop there cause if you go an inch further you will definitely roll" and then he proceeded to the side it would have rolled to to... hold it up?!? As his other brother hung off the other side as ballast...

All three cars made it through but there was a lot of rather unfriendly banging and clanging going on that I'm sure Charlie the Troopcarrier really wouldn't have appreciated.


We setup camp and the makeshift camping ground right near the Palm Creek crossing with our new on the road friends, The Morgans.

Site : Palm Creek Camping Area
Rating : 8 / 20
Facilities : Free Bush Camping with zero facilities. Camp fires allowed, I assume. 

Have a look at the distance between the "Wenlock River" sign and the little white sign in the tree above...

This is what that little white sign says...

Step # 1 of learning how to drive a Troopie... to learn how it all functions & how to start her up...