The Old Telegraph Track without a 4wd

 2 options: the Bypass Road or the Old Telegraph Track (Overland Telegraph Track)

There's 2 ways of getting to the top of Australia. There's the notorious Old Telegraph Track and there's the Bypass Roads. The official guides, maps and printed books for Cape York only mention going by 4 wheel drive no matter which route you take. The Old Telegraph Track deserves its rating of 4wd only, and is labelled 'experience needed', 'Adventure 4wd'. The Bypass road is labelled as 4wd needed too, but as a precaution. 

 From the Cultural Centre in Weipa. 

Occasionally a non-4wd does do the Tele, but not a bus, I spoke to the driver of a  4wd tour bus and he told me they can't fit on the track anymore. 

We could, however, take a look in a couple of places. 

First, and easiest for us to access was Scrubby Creek crossing. It's not far from the fantastic Fruit Bat Falls (where we had a swim), and the road to it is gravel, quite wide, and easy. At Scrubby Creek there's plenty of room to park and go and watch vehicles crossing. In a short period of time we'd seen 8 vehicles cross: 6 through the deep part and 2 via the shallow with steep entrance crossing. 

 Scrubby Creek crossing. This driver really checked out his options first by walking the crossing and made the most successful crossing we saw here.

Next, from the Bypass Road, we took the 11km 'North Jardine River Bypass track' to the Old Telegraph Track, parked at the intersection and walked a kilometre or so to Nolans crossing for a look. It's considered the most difficult part of the Northern Section. H saw 7 vehicles cross, but I'd already headed back to Blu before they arrived. 

 Nolans is a deep crossing that apparently causes a few problems. 

The most notorious of all the crossings is 'Gunshot'. It's on the Southern section and we drove in for a look at it when we were returning from the tip. The track from the Bypass Road goes in past the Heathlands Ranger Station, 25 kilometres of bad corrugations, to meet with the Old Telegraph Track where it's another 7 kilometres South to get to 'Gunshot'. We'd been told it would be possible for us to go in for a look, but when we got to the Old Telegraph Road and saw how closed in the trees were, we decided it looked too dubious (for our roof height), so we turned around there. Since then we've had advice anyway that most traffic is bypassing Gunshot and doing what is called the 'chicken track', so maybe we didn't miss much. 

For us, having a look at some of the Telegraph Track action but driving up on the Bypass Roads gave us the best of both worlds.