You know when we built our 4WD Land Rover camper, we never intended to do hectic, hard driving down crazy bush tracks? Yet somehow we keep getting in situations where that's just what we have to do. If we were on our own, perhaps we wouldn't, but goodness - when you're with other people, it's hard to say no.
So it was that we ended up doing some pretty scary 4WDing last weekend in Victoria's High Country. One of the reasons it is so hard is that there's often a mountainous drop off one side, river crossings, and in winter, a lot of mud, and often snow. The few days before had got some pretty heavy rain, so we did go down some very slidey greasy tracks, with the whole car sliding or drifting sideways and my heart in my mouth! Both of us were kinda anxious but we were in good hands with Murray and Bruce, who were very, very experienced.
The track we were meant to take was fairly short, and should have gotus to an easier track quickly. The first half was very steep and muddy so that was super scary, and we couldn't wait to get on an easier track. However, it started getting a bit more rocky which was a lot easier, until Murray came through on teh walkie up ahead and said: 'wait up guys, there seems to be a landslide'. The wet mud and trees had slid down the hill and onto the track. No worries, the boys said - if the 110 can cut a path through, even if we had to winch it, the other two cars could also go through.
The boys did a bit of shovelling and assessing, and we really didn't like the look of going close to a very soggy, muddy edge where the road dropped off to no where. At this point it was 10.30, and we wouldn't get out of this problem til 1.20 - that's three hours of winching, digging and problem solving!
Basically the County got stuck straight away, and we spend ages trying to winch it forward, but it was a lot muddier than we thought. Murray's whole back end slid sideways too which scared the shit out of me! Our Land Rover is more back heavy and if we drifted sideways it would have been so hard to get out. Bruce was joking about calling the SES and so on until Murray told him off as we were feeling so nervous.
We then had to winch Murray out, but he was stuck really firm! His back end was sliding dangerously close to the edge so we took it really carefully and slowly. I took a kava and some deep breathes and got busy helping by running to get snatch straps, get them round trees, and put rocks under the wheels. We attached Bruce's County to tree but couldn't get Murray out without it sliding dangerously, so we attached our car to Bruce's and kept going for the next hour before the car was finally out.
At this point, even though the road was only 500 metres away, we had to admit defeat and backtrack. We had a late lunch and made our way back up the hill. Now the Countrys with their Isuzu engines and lockers made it up easily, but we don't have diff locks or mud tyres so it was more of a struggle. The first hill had Jamie sliding until we stopped and winched over a mound, then he changed his gears and got up the second half.
By this time we needed to find camp somewhere - where we wanted to go was closed, as the road was washed away, including someone's caravan that was stuck in the middle of the road! By the time we did find camp, a huge free camp on the Howqua River, it was dark, but it was a nice camp, aside from some people playing loud music and kids running around til 11 pm! We had a fire and dinner then went to bed in the nice diesel heated Landie - our heavenly cabin!
The next day we had a long breakfast and headed home - it's a long drive back from the High Country but a lovely one. I can't wait to go back again, though I'd prefer we didn't encounter landslides!
With Love,
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