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Saturday,
May 12, was forecast with early morning fog, clearing to a fine and
sunny day, with top temperature of 21 degrees—and they weren’t
wrong. The drive up to The Great Divide truck stop and resting
place was a foggy one, but it soon cleared and turned into a
perfect day for 4WDing, but what day isn’t perfect for
that?
The
participants on this day’s trip were;
- Chris
‘Brumby’ Klenkowski (Trip Leader) in an 80 Series
‘Cruiser.
- Jim Mizzi
(Tail End Charlie) and mate Darren in a 100 series Cruiser (with
kids Bianca & Kimberley)
- Andrew
Willard in a 80 series Cruiser
- Henk Piper
and mate Brad in a GQ Patrol
- Daniel
‘Shorty’ Boujean in a 70 series short wheel base
‘Cruiser
- Stefan
Gabas and mate Jim in a Hi-Lux Ute.
Today Chris
“Brumby” Klenkowski was leading a medium to hard trip, the second
in as many weeks. I arrived at the rest stop at around 7.30
AM, so I had a bit of a snooze in the back seat. Brumby
arrived about 10 minutes later and was kind enough to let me have
my snooze which was needed. The trip participants were to
meet at 8.00 AM for inspection of recovery gear, hand over
emergency envelope, and tune in to the first trip
briefing.
We were to
leave at 8.30 AM for the air-down point at Flat Rock Camp, but as
the doughnut van was to open around then, and Chris needed his
brekky, he made the call to wait for that, and breakfast and
doughnuts were bought by a few.
We then
headed off to the air-down point at around 8.45 AM. Brumby
highly advises that you get an egg and bacon sandwich from there if
you get the chance, but I am sure his family were glad they were
not in the truck with him, in fact I think he wishes he wasn’t in
his truck with himself (from what we hear!)
We arrived
at Flat Rock Camp, aired down and had our final trip briefing on
what to expect on our day’s adventure. The first track
tackled was Flat Rock Track that had a decent rock ledge step down
that had us wanting more. It was then off to Innes Dam Track,
Wheeler Track and then on to Hefferen Track which had us stopping
for morning tea at the old hut at around 10.30 AM. So far,
the driving had been great, and it was only to get better.
After morning tea we continued along Hefferen track to Falls Creek
Track which is where “Brumby’s Hump” lays hidden. As we came upon
it, Brumby reckoned the mound wasn’t as high and as steep as it was
the other week. Going over the hump saw us then head through a
rocky, rutting side sloping track leaning the vehicle over to the
right—this always gives me the heeby-jeebies.
Then we hit
Reservoir Track South, which has a steep climb with a rock ledge
which I did not hit at the right angle, or give it enough right
boot—and, so, got myself stuck. I then had to reverse down
and try again. Jim also suffered the same fate as me. It’s
harder than it looks. We then headed down Unnamed Link from Brandy
Track down to Brandy Corner Road. The Unnamed Link track is a very
steep and deeply rutted descent that is very slippery, indeed, with
lots of loose rock its entire length. This was to be the first of
our three quite hard tracks for the day. This is the track
that had Mark Andrews on a very precarious side angle on the last
trip (see last issue of OTBT—Ed.). We headed down one at a time
waiting for the vehicle in front to complete the descent before the
next made its way down and, when at the bottom, and looking up at
where we had come from, the track looked even steeper! You have to
see it to believe it. Brumbys guidance and words of
encouragement saw us all down with out any mishap. So far, so
good.
Once we
were all down we headed off along to Unnamed Link from Teehans No.
4 Track to Teehans No. 3 track where we were to also stop for
lunch, which some of us did manage to. This is a fairly steep
and rutted track, with loose rock, and this is where we had our
first problem as Jim Mizzi’s 100 series just died on him half-way
up. He tried to kick her over a few times, but no luck.
Not the best place to try and work out a vehicle’s problems, so we
launched into a pretty exhausting recovery first trying to winch
him up on his own cable, but had no luck as his winch without the
engine running would flatten his batteries in a matter of minutes,
and then he still would not have been at the top of the hill; so it
was suggested that he be recovered by another vehicle lowering him
down under engine braking and brakes via a snatch strap, so Brumby
recovered him by hooking up a snatch strap to the front of his
vehicle and the front of Jim’s which allowed him to rest his truck
on the strap and allow Brumby to bring him down in reverse with his
truck doing the braking. Thanks to Daniel Boujean, Henk, Andrew and
Stefan Gabas, and his mate Jim, for their assistance. It turned out
to be a burned out engine management fuse in the engine bay which
was replaced with the stereo fuse, which gave instant ignition.
After this repair had been completed, those who had not managed to
have lunch could now do so, and for entertainment, along come a few
guys on
motorbikes,
and watching them trying to go up the hill bouncing around like rag
dolls on the back of these bikes gave us all a laugh.
As we had
lost some time, Brumby revised the rest of the day’s tracks and we
missed out on the second hard track for the day and few others so
we could tackle Phone Track. This is the one I was waiting
for. Once we got moving after lunch, we headed off to Teehans No. 5
Track which was a climb up a very steep track, but we all made this
with no troubles. Stefan was the second last to go up this
and he called over the radio that he thought he may have blown his
front diff. He completed the climb, I think in 2wd, and we
stopped on a flat section of track for a quick look. But nothing
could be determined as to what was making the noise, so we moved on
so he could see if it would return. He wasn’t sure it it was
the diff, wheel bearing, or a shocker.
We got to a
place where Stefan could make a departure, but he opted to stay and
continued in 2WD as the truck was OK in this mode. We then
headed up Rocky Track, which lives up to its name with tyre
puncturing, diff breaking rocks, but we all made this with out
incident—and for those wishing to, a nice little bog hole to get
some mud on the truck. The next track was to be our last, and this
was the highlight of the day for me, Phone Track. On a trip a
couple of years ago with Milton, Mark and Shunt, I opted not to go
down Phone Track, and ever since then I have been kicking myself.
Now, finally, I could do it. The section of phone track that
puts this one in the hard category is a short, fairly steep, highly
bouldered section of track where you need to have very careful
wheel placement and guidance to get down because you could easily
end up doing some major damage or rolling over and over to the
bottom of the track as some have done in the past. The debris at
the end of his track is ample evidence. We all made it down
without incident. Daniel driving a leaf sprung shorty did
almost lay his truck on its side, but Brumby managed to push him
upright again. Stefan did not go down this section of track
as we were not certain what was wrong with his truck, so for safety
reasons, he backtracked and met us at Flat Rock Camp to air up,
have a debrief, a chat and then make the trip home. It was a great
way to spend a sunny warm Saturday, and once again, special thanks
to Brumby for leading us on this great trip and making it a
memorable day.
- Andrew
Willard
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