West Coast Beer RunAuthor: jawapro
Date: Sat 03/12/2011 10:46 AM
Ok - as promised here is the run-down.
Thursday and Friday were awesome weather in Tasmania - but I was in Melbourne. So come Saturday Chris and I headed down the West Coast to catch up with the guys from the Devonport 4WD Club. And sure enough - the weather was wet and miserable. Ah well - could have been worse - could have been hot.
Before I got back from Melbourne I got an emergency phone call asking if we could bring some more beer when we went down for the club boys. Apparently this was now a mission of mercy - they’d run dry!
Chris and I sorted our permits and camping fees with the Rangers at Arthur River, and then headed down the tracks. We’d almost reached the beach when a couple of club boys on quads arrived to escort us (and the beer) into camp.
And yes Emma, we were driving below the high tide mark (too low in one occasion - see the video) except for where the tracks came in and out.
The way in wasn’t very challenging - Chris got stuck once because he was in two-wheel drive. I still can’t work out why he was doing that.
While we were in at the cape it kept drizzling, and the rivers and puddles started to swell.
On the way back the first obstacle was the Pedder River. On the video you can see us crossing a little creek at 1:24. That was on the way in.
On the way out it had grown to be much wider, deeper, and faster. This is at 2:38 on the video.
Until the first car went through you couldn’t accurately tell the depth - so if it had just been Chris and I, we would have set up camp for a day or two until it had dropped down again. But with so many modified 4wds around to rescue us, we were game to give it a go. As my car has had a tendency to stall when wet sometimes, I hooked up a snatch strap and followed another car through just in case. Didn’t need it - but if you stop in fast flowing river, you can lose vehicles down here. The current eats away at the sand around your wheels, and before you know it your car is on it’s side and sinking.
The video and photos really don’t do it justice.
We made it through ok, and scooted up the beach.
Now it was back to the actual track - and this was far more interesting this time around too. There was one puddle where I thought Oscar had stalled, but it may have just bogged down and I jumped to the wrong conclusion. Either way, it came good and I drove out.
Near the end of the track we were warned of a deep puddle, so I did the right thing and ‘braed up’ by putting a tarp over the grill and attached a snatch strap (again, just in case). It was deep, but not a problem. Once through I took everything off again, and then discovered a few minutes later there was another deep one - whoops! Still, no issue for me. Chris sucked in a little water, but that didn’t seem to do any damage once he’d cleared it out (was backfiring badly for a while though).
And before we knew it, it was time to air up our tyres and head back to real life. At least - it was for the club boys. Chris and I both had Monday off as well - so we could take our time. We headed into ‘The Bowl’ which is an area of dunes that have been set aside for ‘recreational use’. In other words, this is where you can mess around and climb dunes etc. So of course Chris had to have a go at it.
If you don’t understand the "Leeroy Jenkins" quote in video, you’re not enough of a geek.
So anyway - that’s the write-up. Check out the video on Youtube to get the real idea.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Nva6tw2zS8&feature=channel_video_title----------Update----------------
Forgot to explain the camera. I recently picked up a In-Car camera from Autobarn. Records to an SD card. I'm quite impressed, apart from an annoying whining noise it records all the time. I'd been trying to mess with the audio to fix the noise, and had forgotten to unmute it on the way in - so there is no car noise etc on the first half of the video. On the way out I turned it back on - but the whine is there too. I contacted the camera company who said it wasn't normal and to swap it for a new one. I did that, but it's exactly the same, so I don't know what to try next.
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