baby_troupe
23-03-2004, 11:40 AM
Vehicles, & who attended
Col & Stella, Baby Troupe
Darrell, Colin & Leanne Defender 110 TDi
Julie DX 80 Series
Bruce GQ Patrol
Trip
The morning started out dark, with Bruce, Julie & ourselves meeting at 06:30 at the hawkesbury river rest area
We all had a brief chat & from there headed for Richmond McDonalds for breakfast, where we met Darrell, with his son Colin & his Fiance, Leanne.
Unfortunately we will not be using this McDonalds for the club trip in a few weeks, due to the lack of ammenities available with them currently going through a refurbishment.
As we were about to leave McDonalds, I attempted to take a picture of all of the vehicles, but unfortunately the digital camera did not work. I thought the problem to be a bettery problem, so changed the batteries, but unfortunately it did not fix the problem, so all photos taken on this trip have been taken with my older film type camera & will take a few days to process & then scan.
We left here around 09:00 & headed for Kurmond for Darrell to fill up with fuel before we made our way along Bell's Line of road to the Zig Zag railway turn off. From here, we headed to the toilet area on the intersection of the Glow Worm Tunnels Rd & Black Fellows Hand Rd where we aired down. I dropped my pressures to 20 on the front & 24 in the rear,as I was carrying quite a bit of weight with all our vehicle & the tyres were bagging out nicely.
From here we headed to the Lost City carpark to have a look over the valley & have morning tea.
Once we finished morning tea, we decided to check out a couple of the offshoot tracks from this track to see if they were suitable for the club trip. The first was successfully conquered by both Darrell & Julie (albeit Julie needed a little assistance), where Bruce & I decided to fight another day on that track.
On the way back down, Darrell gave us a demo of what he can do by launching his LR into a very deep rut which had him on the brink of rolling to the left & then the right. It was a great demo
We then found another track, which follows the powerlines. This was a more sedate track & I feel more suitable to the upcoming "C" grade club trip, so we followed this for a short time, through some small ruts & along some loose ground before coming back out onto BlackFellows Hand Rd.
From here we went around to Sunnyside Lookout, where we were joined by a State Forests Ranger for a short time, before he went his own way.
We then took this track back to the intersection, where the Spanish Steps track comes off it & followed this around to the carpark above the steps, where we had lunch.
While having lunch, I decide to walk to the Steps & have a look & noted that in the last year, it has eroded quite a bit & the steps are a bit bigger than my last visit. With that, Darrell offerred to go first, I slotted back to my usual position for this track, of Tail End Charlie, until after we collected firewood.
Darrell went down the steps on his usual line (on the side where the large rock is beside the track), with me as the spotter for all vehicles.
This was pretty exhausting work, running up & down the steps for all vehicles & by the time it was my turn, I was really showing my lack of fitness.
All vehicles managed to get down the steps on this line with no damage, including ours.
Col & Stella, Baby Troupe
Darrell, Colin & Leanne Defender 110 TDi
Julie DX 80 Series
Bruce GQ Patrol
Trip
The morning started out dark, with Bruce, Julie & ourselves meeting at 06:30 at the hawkesbury river rest area
We all had a brief chat & from there headed for Richmond McDonalds for breakfast, where we met Darrell, with his son Colin & his Fiance, Leanne.
Unfortunately we will not be using this McDonalds for the club trip in a few weeks, due to the lack of ammenities available with them currently going through a refurbishment.
As we were about to leave McDonalds, I attempted to take a picture of all of the vehicles, but unfortunately the digital camera did not work. I thought the problem to be a bettery problem, so changed the batteries, but unfortunately it did not fix the problem, so all photos taken on this trip have been taken with my older film type camera & will take a few days to process & then scan.
We left here around 09:00 & headed for Kurmond for Darrell to fill up with fuel before we made our way along Bell's Line of road to the Zig Zag railway turn off. From here, we headed to the toilet area on the intersection of the Glow Worm Tunnels Rd & Black Fellows Hand Rd where we aired down. I dropped my pressures to 20 on the front & 24 in the rear,as I was carrying quite a bit of weight with all our vehicle & the tyres were bagging out nicely.
From here we headed to the Lost City carpark to have a look over the valley & have morning tea.
Once we finished morning tea, we decided to check out a couple of the offshoot tracks from this track to see if they were suitable for the club trip. The first was successfully conquered by both Darrell & Julie (albeit Julie needed a little assistance), where Bruce & I decided to fight another day on that track.
On the way back down, Darrell gave us a demo of what he can do by launching his LR into a very deep rut which had him on the brink of rolling to the left & then the right. It was a great demo
We then found another track, which follows the powerlines. This was a more sedate track & I feel more suitable to the upcoming "C" grade club trip, so we followed this for a short time, through some small ruts & along some loose ground before coming back out onto BlackFellows Hand Rd.
From here we went around to Sunnyside Lookout, where we were joined by a State Forests Ranger for a short time, before he went his own way.
We then took this track back to the intersection, where the Spanish Steps track comes off it & followed this around to the carpark above the steps, where we had lunch.
While having lunch, I decide to walk to the Steps & have a look & noted that in the last year, it has eroded quite a bit & the steps are a bit bigger than my last visit. With that, Darrell offerred to go first, I slotted back to my usual position for this track, of Tail End Charlie, until after we collected firewood.
Darrell went down the steps on his usual line (on the side where the large rock is beside the track), with me as the spotter for all vehicles.
This was pretty exhausting work, running up & down the steps for all vehicles & by the time it was my turn, I was really showing my lack of fitness.
All vehicles managed to get down the steps on this line with no damage, including ours.