Overnight at Cue and finally clear of the persistent rain, although there was a sprinkle and a few gusts of wind at about 0200h. A pint of 150 Lashes went down nicely at the Cue pub after the drive, followed by the famous Cue-burger and some Far-Cue red. The Cue-burger is truly excellent, while the Far-Cue red was quite reasonable.
(Edit: Apologies for some duplication here. I had forgotten that I had posted here on the fly; thought it was in the Office View thread.)
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Next day, departing Cue and pressing on to Newman. Constant light drizzle much of the way from very low cloud, but nothing showing on the radar. Cleared just prior to a lunch stop at Kumarina Roadhouse.
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One thing that characterises Great Northern Highway is the constant road train traffic and regular movement of oversize loads on trucks. The usual preceding and following pilot vehicles apply to wide loads, but once they become super-wide a Main Roads Department escort joins the convoy between the first pilot and the first truck.
The MRD escort vehicle and driver superficially look like police. Blue/red/white lights flashing and they tend to drive down the centre of the road or even in the right lane, to force oncoming traffic off the road. They are really needed only for vehicles without CB radios or not on UHF Channel 40 listening to the comms.
The normal pattern goes like this: the front pilot drives well ahead, and notifies oncoming trucks particularly, and caravans hopefully, that there are, say “2 at 7.5”. In other words, two semis with loads 7.5 m wide are coming. At that width, it’s a large part of the whole road. Oncoming trucks and vehicles on channel will pull over; any that aren’t on channel and fully aware of what is coming at them are forced off by the MRD officer.
As I munched my apple at Kumarina, a convoy of three semis carrying Haulpak chassis, re-entered the road and continued their way S.
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