4WD 4life

This trip was inspired by Rays stay in Darwin in 1973/74 when that stay had it  ending in Cyclone Tracy evicting him from the city. Kerry, Rays, wife had heard tales of this mythical place but had never seen it. In planning the trip we also decided to ask Kerry’s ageing parents to come along for the ride.

Thus this meant 4 adults on a 5 week trip Melbourne-Darwin-Melbourne. We were determined not to go up and back on the same routes so it was going to be circular trip.

The north bound leg was Melbourne, Dareton, Broken Hill, Hawker, William Creek, Dalhousie Springs, Uluru, Alice Springs, Tenant Creek, Kakadu, Darwin. The southbound trip was Katherine, Tenant creek, Winton, Charlieville, Nyngan, Melbourne. The trip was planned and executed in July/August time frame in 1996.

Some key aspects of the trip were, the trip along the Oodnadatta Track and the stay, on census night at William Creek hotel. The whole trip along the track was wonderful exploration of the early rail track and its constructors and the Afghan cameliers. On the route to Dalhousie Springs were experience very rough road conditions, We were fully laden with adults and camping gear etc but the car performed perfectly. There had been rain in the desert about two weeks before and apparently the police told us that the army had been through there with heavy vehicles in the week before and wrecked a lot of the road that had been damaged by the rainfall itself. So we were fearful of the conditions but went ahead.

The road was wrecked and it took us many hours to get to Dalhousie. Some water containers on the roof rack had moved so much in the trip that they wore holes and became wrecked leaving us with less on board drinking water. The short time at Dalhousie was wonderful and worth the effort. The trip out toward the Sturt Highway was then over hundreds of kilometres of flooded plains. Not deep water but it covered whole areas of desert plain. Several crossroad areas were severe bogs but the Pajero never hesitated and came through hall of these hazards with plenty of capacity to spare.
 

There were many other aspects to trip that are memorable but we do not have any car problem stories, the car was fantastic and didn’t let us down. We didn’t even have to change a tyre.