To Hell and Back

Hi all
The trip away last weekend was EPIC.....but not in the normal epic sort of way..........more like watching every episode of Neighbours produced, while wrestling Crocodiles. It was torturous and never ending.

Once again it was through Indigenous Land (with permission) , so no details or place names will be mentioned.

Saturday started innocently enough with a cruise down the Highway to point A, there has been an Exploration Drilling crew in the area recently, so the track had been Graded.

With just a few thunderstorms pretending to be a Wet Season this year, it was as dry as a bag of Smiths Crisps.

Now, let me say at this point I did try to research this track, but being on Indigenous Land not a lot of Information could be sourced. I spoke to one of the Elders and a guy that does a few tours into the area but information remained sketchy at best.

Saturday Night we pushed on to camp at a large swimming hole......well it was before it dried up.
An enjoyable evening around the campfire under a moonlit night was had. About 3.00am I got up to "water the horse" and the sky was amazing, billions of stars to be seen.

Sunday began Innocently enough also, 19km to our destination, and after a Bacon and Eggs Breakfast we headed off.

At this point things turned to shit.

After a 500 metre run up a very soft river bed and we confronted our first challenge.

At this point the track was disappearing faster than fruit pickers when Immigration Officers pull up out the front.

Onwards we pressed using the GPS to plot our position when the track disappeared.

The track, when we could find it, just continued to get rougher.

It was approaching the point where we were making our own track, I am sure no one has been through here in a long time.

We got to the point of considering our options..........do we turn back? We were rapidly running out of daylight, do we camp overnight and come back monday?
Surely 19km isn't that far............it took us 9 hours of bulldozing our way through scrub that was thicker than a Greens Voter.

Rocks the size of basketballs, washouts, scrub bulls, to pick out way slowly through, never ending and unforgiving. It was brutal

As the sun was setting we reached the saddle above the road out but the track just kept on giving until the very end.

At this point, Col was suffering badly with Tourist Flu and was struggling.

A broken Col......we could see the main road but a thousand monster rocks and washouts stood between us.
tally for the weekend..........

100 Series Cruiser
2 x staked tyres and one slow leak
trailer plug ripped off.
mudflap ripped off
graze on wheel arch from tree
nasty gouge on alloy wheel from rocks

Hilux
Exhaust squashed flat
some nasty gouges on long range tank
both side steps damaged
one sidewall cut on tyre

Facts and figures
without the Gps we would still be out there trying to find our way back
approx 120k of track............19km of that took us 9 hours
I didnt count but I estimate four or five recoveries
It was hard 
It was brutal
It was unforgiving

I am hoping for something a little easier next trip in a few weeks, a run down the Duncan Road before it starts getting too hot.

Bye for now