Gibb River Road
Western Australia’s Kimberly region is for very good reason a destination that is prominent on the radars of many caravanners, and for many of us the Gibb River Road (GRR) is high on our bucket list.
The GRR is one of a handful of doable epic Aussie outback adventures, and one that we all want to be able to casually drop into the conversation at a suburban backyard BBQ, “yeah, I’ve done the Gibb”. The question is it doable for us, because it can be difficult to access, or make an informed decision when we’ve never experienced that kind of environment and might not have any real idea what to expect. Any information will be always subjective having been pitched from the someones personal tilt, from someone very experienced compared to someone never having been off the blacktop.
The difficulty or challenge can be described by fellow travellers as “no worries” to “horrendous” and these from different people travelling the road at exactly the same time. We’ve experienced that first hand, we didnt think it was too bad and heard others camped in the same place describe it much differently. There are plenty of horror stories people are always happy to offer up, and for many of us our caravaning experiences may be limited to the urban blacktop and a well-appointed caravan park for our annual holidays over the Christmas break.
A side story, the day before we headed out of Kings Creek to take the Mereenie Loop into the West MacDonald ranges we had one party call the road the worst in Australia and a death trap that should be permanantly closed. In stark contrast the passenger of another party just continued to read her book hardly noticing anything. Personally, I found it a pretty good track
On the couch at home down south, far away from the GRR both in time and distance, the temptation of tackle the likes of that far away GRR can be quite alluring and a easy decision to make. When you suddenly find yourself sitting at the start of the GRR’s gravel at the business end of your earlier decision and being confronted with the reality the bravado born in the suburbs can quickly present an overwelming and somewhat ominous feeling of maybe we’re biting off a little more than we can chew.
Just to add another level to that feeling of trepidation, at the start of the western end of the GRR out of Derby before you even leave the bitumen there’s a sign that reads “towing of caravans is not recommended”.
The GRR is truly a wonderful adventure, and venturing into the unknown along with even a mild sense of impending doom will only add spice to the adventure. There’s no denying that the GRR is an epic and challenging undertaking, but it’s no longer the struggle it would have been many years ago. Regardless of its press release, or remote location when that’s all said and done at it’s core the GRR is a major outback arterial which has been purposely built and is regularly maintained by local Govt Authorities from both ends, and using the same heavy roadwork and earth moving machinery that is routinely used on any of the more populated roads or highways around Australia. The GRR is far from a goat track.
The GRR does cross through a very remote part of our country and despite its modern tourist disposition, you’d still be wise not to attempt it under-prepared both in terms of vehicles and mindset, but with a little adequate preparation and armed with some basic information it’s a truly wonderful, relatively easy, unforgettable and very doable experience which 1000s upon 1000s of people have done without incident. Trip ending failures make up a very small percentage of those 1000s and 1000s of incident free trips.
This article is about what to visually expect from traveling the actual road itself, basically what the hell does the GRR and its surrounds actually look like and what should you expect to see and experience in terms of the travel aspect. When we can see something even in a photo it helps immensley to paint the concept far better than mere words alone can convey, and when we combine words with photos or video it will help to make a lot more sense and help all the dots to join up much more easily.
Just to add a little sobering perspective to any plan to tackle the GRR, we’ve seen many very expensive, heavily modified and very capable off road vehicles traveling on the GRR. Many of those vehicles were also towing some equally expensive and very robust trailers and caravans. We’ve see some fatigue damaged vehicles and trailers, a few crippled cars and trailers awaiting recovery, and a few vehicles and trailer heading out on the back of trucks ….. but we’ve also seen a few family sedans including a less than impressive older Ford Falcon station wagon mooch’in along the road as well as it passed by us. We never seen that Falcon station wagon again so Ill conclude it succesfully kept going and got to its intended destination
I’m the first to admit I tend to dismiss the images of the suburban sedan from my mind, and I certainly don’t offer up their existence when I’m bragging to the uninitiated about my own personal “conquests” of the GRR. To be honest its a little embarrassing being passed by a ordinary Ford Falcon station wagon, considering the trepidation and anxiety I harboured before my first adventure along the GRR,
There is a YouTube video showing a European tourist named Bram Burggraaf successfully crossing the GRR from end to end in 2015. Bram was driving a (diffrernt) factory standard 2nd hand 2003 Ford Falcon station wagon, typical of your average budget orientated backapcker. That is probably not the recommended or ideal way to tackle the Gibb but I think you can appreciate the point here. The GRR certainly isnt a car or van killer, but it can indentify or highlight existing weaknesses in inappropriate, poorly and under prepared vehicles.
The GRR itself is a 660km mostly un-made road of varying quality, varying surfaces and varying conditions from Derby in the west to just short of Kununurra in the east across a very remote northern corner of the north west of Australia. The road surface, condition and construction style changes constantly sometimes in as little as 100mtr segments, and includes almost every surface type and surface condition imaginable. There are section of bitumen, dirt, gravel, gibber, sand, mud and rock, along with a handful of creek and river crossings.
The road is often corrugated, and just as often it’s not. The road is often rough, and just as often it’s not. In some places the GRR could be walking pace and other places easily 80+kph. One things for absolutely sure, you’ll definitely find corrugations somewhere along it’s 660km length.
Corrugations are difficult to describe, and difficult to scale in terms of severity. What some people will dismiss as hardly noticable others will swear almost caused a brain bleed. Personally Ive never ever seen those often decribed feet deep corrugations.
Travellers on the road at the same time will often contradict each other claiming one end was much better than the other.
In the event of a mishap or breakdown you’ll never be left alone to fend for yourself for very long at all. The traffic on the GRR in tourist season is constant, and the average Australian adventurer is an incredibly friendly, helpful and caring individual. If you stop for lunch on the side of the road you will inevitably be fending off offers of assistance from passers by, so display that big smile and hold that sandwich and coffee up high. The GRR might be remote in location, but it is usually quite a busy place with plenty of folk from the populated parts of Oz all heading there at the same time.
That of course shouldn’t be exchanged for proper preparation, because although recovery is only ever 330km away it will come at significant monetary cost, inconveience and concern that none of us what to interupt our holiday.
Tyre pressure on any road surface is a much discussed, debated and confusing topic. On roads such as the GRR lower then recommended highway tyre pressures can help to reduce the impact of corrugations by providing a softer balloon tyre shape which will better absorb some of the road surface impact. Lowering tyre pressures and lowering speed will help the tyre to roll over stones, rocks and sticks, and also absorb some of the corrugations. There’s no free lunch here, and the trade off of the lower pressure will cause the tyre sidewall to bulge which then exposes more of that less protected area of the tyre to those very same stones, rocks and also sticks. Lowwering tyre pressure will also increase tyre flex and heat build up which is the biggest cause of catasrophic tyre failure.
So lowering your tyre pressure might provide benefits, but it also presents very real problems that need to be considered.
Heat build up in a tyre is a significant cause of tyre failure such as tread separation and more often than not tyre desintergration is caused by low tyre pressures. Tyres always look bulge’ier at the bottom, and its this constant flexing at the bottom while the tyre is rolling that creates the heat build up in the tyre. Heres to formula; excessive flex leads to excessive heat build up which leads to sidewall fatigue, delamination, blowouts and roll overs.
Excess heat build up is a direct result of that under inflation, and we are now consciously choosing to reduce our pressures in favour of ride comfort so we need (read NEED) to do something to keep the heat build up to a managable level and thankfully thats relatively easy, heat build up in under inflated tyres is mitigated simply by a reduction in travel speed. The lower the pressure, the lower the speed.
Another potential casualty of significantly under inflated tyres is rolling out of the rim off the tyre bead; this happens when cornering and is where the tread moves sideways away from directly under the rim and the rim simply rolls straight out of the tyre bead, in effect driving out of the tyre. Again the remedy for this is the same lowering of the speed.
The aim of lowering tyre pressure is to find a pressure which combines ride comfort with safety, along with minimising heat buildup to maintain tyre integrity. It’s impossible to have a set and forget tyre pressure which will work for all road surfaces, particularly road surfaces which are constantly changing like that of the GRR. What we’re aiming for is a happy and safe medium; a better than nothing kind of deal. Mud and beach style sand driving also require lower tyre pressures, but for completely different reasons and that worthy of their own article, so we’ll stick to corrugations and ride comfort here.
Under inflation pressure with the tow vehicle tyres will also be very different to that of the trailer tyres. Firstly we can feel the differences in changes to the car tyre pressure because we’re riding in the car. In regards to the caravan or trailer its impossible to know what that tyre pressure sweet spot is, simply because you’d need to riding in it to know that and while that’s illegal, more importantly its pretty dangerous. Often caravan tyres are very different to car tyres, car axles are significantly further apart than van axles, suspension systems are much more sophisticated on a car, and the vehicle weights are likely different …. so all in all the ride and impact, and tyre pressure reduction will be significantly different.
Its worth getting our heads around proper tyre pressures, and how we find what that is. The only method to establish proper tyre pressure is the one that commences with a calculation using figures from the vehicle axle weights and individual tyre load specifications. If you’re running factory tyres, the vehicles tyre placard offers a starting point. No-one can really advise with any degree of certainty correct under inflation levels and everyone’s personal preferences are just that, a personal preference.
Disclaimer. The figures I quote are suitable for my vehicle and caravan. Everyone needs to take responsibility for the tyre pressures that best suit them. If in any doubt stick to the manufacturers recommendations, or get industry advice.
My go-to starting point in deflation on rough roads is 2/3 of the correct road pressures, and I apply this to the car as well as the caravan. I can be adjusted from there, but Ive never bothered to go down that path. An important point with the car is the rear tyre pressures are generally higher than the front, so its best to keep that ration when underinflating
My vehicle GVM is 3215kg and my trailers ATM is 3000kg.
My calculated highway pressures fully loaded, and towing are
Vehicle is 42psi rear and 36psi front, off road I under inflate to 27psi and 24psi
Caravan is 50psi on all 4 tyres, off road I under inflate all 4 tyres to 33psi
These pressure give me some relief in regards to ride comfort and keeping my speeds down help to limit any heat build up in the tyres.
No suspension modification or amount of tyre under inflation will eliminate the uncomfortable and destructive nature of driving on corrugations, it will only ever take it down a couple of notches. For the uninitiated, the first exposure to decent corrugations can be quite confronting, concerning and in some cases frightening. I wise and experienced outback personality once said that whatever falls off you car will be the stuff that you screwed on after it left the factory; roofracks, driving lights, side steps etc etc
The following zoom-able Google Earth Map shows images of the road surface along the length of the GRR at various GPS locations as we drove along its length. The various images show the diverse surfaces that will be encountered along the length of the GRR. Whilst the road base and make up of the road surface remains constant, remember that the condition of that surface changes constantly
Click the pins to open each of the thumbnails, each image is plotted on the map from the gps data captured when the photo was taken. Click the fragmented square at the top right of the map to open the map in a full-page