Sad and sorry Sodwalls Road

October 10, 2024

When Jenolan Caves Road at Hampton is closed for repairs, one alternative for getting out of Oberon is to go via Tarana and Sodwalls Road towards Lithgow.

Nobody who has driven along Sodwalls Road will be unaware of the condition of the road surface. There's an old joke that the organisers of the Dakar Rally and Finke Desert Race were offered Sodwalls Road to test vehicle suspensions but they both refused because it's too rough.

A picture is said to be better than a thousand words, and a video can be better still. Oberon Matters accepted the challenge.

Some notes about the video:

• The recording goes from Tarana to Sodwalls.
• The camera was firmly mounted in the car and has quite good image stabilisation capability. The vibration you see was felt by the driver.
• Vehicle preservation meant that attempts were made to avoid the biggest potholes where possible.
• The car is a Commodore with reasonably compliant suspension. Things could have been worse.
• For the first 2 minutes and 40 seconds of the video the road had been "repaired" the day before by spray patching. (Thank you. Lithgow Council.) This is where a machine squirts hotmix into potholes. The real advantage of this is that it removes the danger of sharp edges on potholes damaging wheels and tyres. It does not guarantee a smooth ride.

Oh, and if you think that nothing could be worse than Sodwalls Road, Hampton Road from Hampton to the intersection with the Lithgow end of Sodwalls Road is worse! Hard to believe, but true.

Setts and cobblestones. Still a smoother ride than Sodwalls Road.
Photos found by a Bing search.

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