Newnes-Reckie-March-2004

We all had a brief chat & from there headed for Richmond McDonalds for breakfast, where we met Darrell, with his son Colin & his Fiancé, Leanne.

Unfortunately we will not be using this McDonalds for the club trip in a few weeks, due to the lack of amenities 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 battery 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.

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 car park 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 Black Fellows 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 car park 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 offered 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.

Once at the bottom, we found a new obstacle. The hole I was caught up in a few years ago, due to lack of suspension travel, was now big enough to swallow a car whole & as there was no way around it, we had to go through it. The other challenging part to this was it had a soft muddy bottom & had about a meter of water in it, so by the time we all came out the other side, all vehicles were quite muddy.

From there it was off to the 2 creek crossings, both with logs in them, but due to all vehicles having lifted suspension, we climbed over these with no problem.

From there, it was to the only part of this trip, where I have had problems before, which is the rock face where I often lift a wheel & lose momentum.

First to have a go was Darrell & had a couple of goes at the more difficult lines, including when he thought he had his Maxi Drive Lockers engaged (later finding out they weren't) before deciding to go the normal line with no problems.

Then Julie came up, with plenty of power down & plenty of bouncing, but made it to the top with no problems. Bruce followed in his GQ & barring as bad gear selection & having to change part of the way up (not recommended on a steep climb) made it thru.

I thought oh well, this is it, my turn. To date I had never successfully climbed this on a first attempt, so I picked my line early & used what power I could muster from my little engine. I then hit the bottom of the climb with a little bounce from the passenger front wheel, a chirp from the BFG Muddies as the rear found grip & from there, just kept the power on at about 50% until I reached the top. Wow I made it on my first attempt, no lockers, just straight ability & a good line.

Once we had conquered that climb, it was a small amount of 4 wheel driving to the top of the mountain, where we collected firewood for the evening & changed back to our original order.

From camp, we headed back out of the Newnes Valley to the tip, where we discarded our rubbish. From there we followed the newnes rd to a large silo, where we turned onto a track which leads to the Gardens of Stone national park. It wasn't long before I put the call over the radio that I was selecting low range so we could negotiate some small steps on the way up to a very scenic spot where we usually have morning tea. As this is just a reckie, I did not worry about climbing the rocks for photos this time, but just enjoyed a break before being under way again around 10:00

We followed this track through some easy four wheel driving terrain back onto Black Fellows Hand trail & followed this back to the toilet area on the intersection of the Glow Worm Tunnels Rd & Black Fellows Hand Rd where we said goodbye to Julie, Darryl, Colin & Leanne, as they were going back a different way.

Yet again, we had a very good trip, this being the first time I have lead this trip & I am quite confident that after doing this reckie, that the upcoming club trip (with 12 vehicles) will go pretty smoothly.