Category Archives: 4×4

Holland Track

Spent 3 Days driving the Holland Track.  This track was originally cut by John Holland a Gold prospector in the early 1900’s.  We headed off from Hyden after checking out Wave rock and drove for the next 3 days through the Bush.  We had mud, water and sand in equal measures along the way.

Two awesome camp sites with decent camp fires and the odd beer.  No one got stuck, no one broke any thing.  A very enjoyable weekend, Jim i think is still scared from picking up stuff he shouldn’t have.  Now all i have to do is clean the car…. it may take some time.

 

Clever people build small walls around the rock all slowly leading to a reservoir to collect water
On top of Mount Holland, 360 degree views, a whole lot of nothing!
climbing the trig point and drinking beer, seemed an amazing idea at 11pm
Nearly flattened this little fella, to his dues, he stood his ground and won the game of chicken!
The plaque at the start showing Props to John Holland who pioneered this track in the early 1900’s
my chafing skills. baked potatoes with cheese in the coals, steak, corn on the cob and corguette
Coming towards Gnomma Hole
Jim coming down from Mount Holland
Pete leading the way
the three cars
gives you a sense of how big this country is!
Pleasant to wake up to
us at the start
View from the Top of Wave Rock in Hyden
i was squealling inside

Julimar State forest exploring and Learning expensive Lessons

Met up with Will a mate from work and he had a couple of friends along as well, we went to Julimar state forest for an explore with the 4×4.  It had been raining a bit during the week and we were expecting it to be wet

the drive in and the start of puddles.....

One of the guys along with us who I had never met, was hell bent in driving through any water he could find.  Looked fun, but potentially very expensive.  Normal protocol is that you leave water alone unless you have a snorkel on the car which raises the air intake to roof height so that if you go through water the engine doesn’t suck water into the engine.  Unfortunately he didn’t have one.

whoops

after about 5 seconds his engine cut out, and the car was stuck and just taking on water everywhere.

dead car

Ryan had to jump into the puddle and fish around under water until he found where the recovery point was ( wasn’t pleasant as there was a dead rotting Kangaroo next to it that stunk). We pulled the car out of the hole and assessed the damage.

one written off car

The end result was that the engine had sucked water right through the engine and was dead as a door nob. We had to tow the car back out 15km to the road where it was picked up the next day on a low loader.  the car was a right off.  A very expensive mistake.  I have now learnt that water and cars don’t mix and might put a snorkel on my car just in case!