High Country trip

[Keith Webb]

Following the Corowa gathering, the Yass and surrounding areas people took the long way home with a trip through the High Country in 3 CMPs and a Forward Control Landrover.

Emma Hedges took most of the pictures and I've just started to make a series of pages on the subject.

Here it is



Stunning country, isn't it?

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally posted by Keith Webb
Stunning country, isn't it?

Stunning indeed - isn't crossing it with Blitzes a great idea for yearly adventure?

"Come to Aussieland, experience Corowa and cross the High Country in a Blitz". Hmm...

If anything, if this EU thing is becoming unbearable, I know where to ship my F15A

Thanks,
H.

[Keith Webb]

Originally posted by Hanno Spoelstra
Stunning indeed - isn't crossing it with Blitzes a great idea for yearly adventure?

"Come to Aussieland, experience Corowa and cross the High Country in a Blitz". Hmm...

If anything, if this EU thing is becoming unbearable, I know where to ship my F15A

Thanks,
H.

Hanno, no need even to ship your F15A - we have plenty!

[Keith Webb]

Negotiating a tricky corner with the aid of a Turfa hand winch.

Page 2 is now online.

[Mark Sierant]

Corowa 2004
The Mountain Run Home

Corowa 2004 started off with a bang or should I say “FLUFF,FLUFF, FLUFF. That’s the sound Rob Farmers Chev Blizt’s was making as we pulled to a halt on the side of the Hume highway only 40km from Yass, our takeoff point. A quick inspection and crank saw no life in the old girl so I jumped back in the Landrover and sped off after Ashley and the Tow Hitch.
About 10 km further down the road Ashley heard me calling him to a halt on the UHF but could not answer back as he owns a one way UHF transceiver, still it was better than chasing all the way to Gundagai.

Back at Robs Chev all sorts of covers were removed and cranking still produced a lovely Fluffing back through the carburetor. A new carburater base gasket was cut from a biscuit box but to no avail, air was still Fluffing out of the carburetor. The next cover off was the rocker top and our problem was immediately evident, no valve gear was moving, a busted timing gear.

Ashley proudly produced his new tow hitch built to ride across the back of a Blitz tray in carved timber blocks. This is a real work of art, a telescopic delight, it even has red paint applied to the inner tube to show maximum allowable extension in the “Tow Position”. Five minutes latter Rob was on his way home firmly tucked in on the tow hitch behind Ashley’s Chev. I was left with some extra baggage and Emma Hedges for company who had formally been riding with Ashley, and a few parting words from the boys see ya Friday at Corowa.

Emma, sooner rather than latter informed me that a Chev Blitz is much more comfortable than a 109 Forward Control Landrover, I really think she has a “thing” for Ashley’s Chev. The Landrover chewed up the miles and the fuel at a steady 50 mph we were soon at Holbrook, stone deaf, and starved. Emma pointed out her favorite bakery and after a good feed I had to agree they did do a good dogs eye. We made Corowa at 3pm and booked into the camp ground. My wife Rowena and son Flynn arrived at the same time having left four hours after us and traveled a 100km further from home at Carwoola.

Soon we had our tent up and the first drifters stopped in for a chat and to look at what we had brought down. At about 8pm we had a call from Rob and Ashley, they were nearly into Corowa, Max Hedges had lent Rob “Tickets” a two wheel drive Chev, Max was with them in the Ford Blitz.
Tales were soon told and before long we had settled into meeting people and talking Old Twuks. Corowa went along and we attended the formal events and chin wagged for the next three days. Sunday is the wind up day for Corowa and our departure day for the mountain trip home. The Yass crowd had been planning to take a scenic route home that I suggested through the Victorian Alps for a couple of months. I had hoped to get away about 10 am but a 12 noon people were still saying farewells and packing away gear. At twelve we looked ready to go when Ashley turned to Rob and said you have got the food? Rob’s reply Na!, Max pipes in spose we better go to the shop then. I went to the servo filled up waited, at about one pm we were off.

We set off to Beachworth, Ashley in front, were we pulled over at a bakery, turns out Ashley has a thing for bakeries just like Emma. Then onto Myrtleford, Bright and Mount Beauty this is were we hit the dirt taking mountain creek road up towards Mount Bogong Australia’s second highest peak at just under 2000 metres. We turned onto Trappers Track and began to climb.

Trappers track is a steep climb for about 800m straight up a spur of Mount Bogong, The Landrover was in first low range as it crested the first woyboy (a drainage ditch across the track with steep sides scooped out by a dozer) my wife was following close behind in her Pajero. When we reached the top we jumped out to snap some photos of the Blitz’s climbing the spur. But the late afternoon bush was quiet there was no growl of engines struggling up the spur. I reached for the UHF

“Hey Rob were are you ?”
“Stuck” came the reply
“Were?”
“The first woyboy” replied Rob.

Leading the trip I had dreaded the fact that we had a two wheel drive going along on these steep mountain trails. Max had assured me that “Tickets” the Chev would have no problems going were a 4 WD Blitz could go. As I grabbed a snatch strap and began backing the Pajero down the spur I was thinking to myself “well the trip home is over on the first hill”.

To Be Continued
:

[Keith Webb]

Keep it coming!
And I'll post your pics shortly.

[Max Hedges]

You are doing good so far Mark. But don't forget about the trouble you had with ya bracks, we will be watching this spot!!

Max

[Mark Sierant]

After a slow reverse in low range I stopped the Pajero at the top of the woyboy that had pulled Rob up. Rob was busy trying to crank over “Tickets” however the battery was fast failing to slow grooowlll, grooowlll. The starter handle was produced and much heaving applied but still no joy. The slope was that steep that fuel was spilling from the tops of the fuel tank and a decision was made to pull the Chev to the top of the woyboy to sort out the problem. A snatch strap was fitted between the Pajero and the Chev after a slow steady pull produced no upward movement, I decided that more acceleration was required. Backing back carefully to the edge of the woyboy I hit the peddle in first gear, a second latter Bang, Twack! As the snatch strap broke and wrapped itself around the Chev brush guard.

Things hotted up at this point a group of 4 x 4 drivers wanted to descend the spur and one grey haired older woman started to hurl abuse down on us from above. I went up to see her and explain what was going on but she was adamant that people with old trucks were not the type to be allowed out in the bush. Other members of her party suggested that a walk down might be nice and off they went. The drivers remained behind and were very apologetic for her behavior, it had been along day for them and they still had to pick up the old bird up from the bottom of the spur.

Back to square one, why wont the Chev start? Max climbed under and two minutes latter produced a small plastic fuel filter the color and weight of a house brick. This filter was probably installed in the seventies and had worked fine up until today. Max produced a new one and a few minutes latter Tickets fired up and crawled up the spur with absolute ease. I was soon to realize that Max only performed preventative maintenance when absolutely essential ie. After a Machine has stopped, no need to look at things before this point in time.

With all the trucks up the first climb things were certainly looking up, the forest in this area had been on the western edge of the extreme blazes that in 2003 had burnt 1000’s of square kilometers of bush. Some trees in Australia are totally adept at re-shooting after a blaze of horrifying magnitude. However in the Snowy Mountains, two species, the Mountain Ash and Snow Gum have to start from scratch. As we headed east with Mount Bogong on our right and the Elksdale range to our left we had magnificent views. A lot of the lower forest scrub plants had not returned and this added to the vista, a forest carpeted in low fresh green ferns. The super tall straight Ash trees that had escaped the intense heat had grown a new canopy that provided a dappled light in the now very late afternoon sunshine.

Young Matt from Canada Max’ farm exchange apprentice was hanging out the roof hatch of tickets and Emma was back sticking her head out of the Hatch of Ashley’s Chev. Matt is going to go home to Canada with a whole different experience of farming, to put it lightly Max is the like the Dalai Llama of farming in the Yass Community. To be a farmer in Australia you have to be able to relax and not worry too much about the weather, money, looking after livestock etc all those responsible farmer things. I am sure Max has spent a lot of time meditating to reach this state of inner tranquility. Every time I ring him at home Emma has to rouse him from his meditating lounge so that we can talk Old Twuks.

Anyway back to the track, Matt was really getting a great experience of the Australian bush when I stopped the Landrover on a steep pinch thinking that I might need to help Rob up that section in Tickets. Tickets proved unstoppable and powered up the steepest slope so far but as I jumped back in the Landrover she would not move off. The brakes had locked on all the way round, this was solved by releasing the bleed valve on the rear wheel cylinder. The brakes locking on were set to be a problem for the rest of the trip on steep hills especially when applied in a roll back.

Dusk was well and truly about over and night was minutes away, Matt enquired a little worried, “were are we camping?” Not here I informed the group, young Flynn was subject to Croup and already had a fever I needed to get a little closer to a main road. This was to be the start of the two hour night drive section, we soon entered an area were logging had been taking place to recover fire damaged timber. Huge clouds of powdered bull dust were thrown up by the lead truck. I watched the lights of the following trucks turn to candle like flames and then disappear into a sea of bull dust. We soon arrived at the Roosty Spur intersection the blitz crews clambered down from their mounts everyone of them covered in a thick coat of brown dust their eyeballs glowing red in the torch light. It certainly would have been a hard dirty job driving trucks in convoy in North Africa with little water to wash up at the end of the day behind the wheel. A clear mountain stream was now less than an hour away at the old lightning creek loggers camp we took off down the spur track toward our night camp.

Roosty Spur track was free of real heavy dust but covered in fallen limbs killed off by the fires but now dropping to the ground every time a wind blew through the mountains. In the lead truck I had plenty of stops to remove branches from the track in the clear night air I could look up and see a flicker of lights through the dead trees as the four other trucks dropped down the spur. The engines sounded clearly in the night as they rolled down in first gear fighting the slope with their compression.

We dropped about 800m metres in 4 km to the old loggers camp and on arrival there was one other family tucked away in the far corner of the loggers camp. It was now 10.30pm and we had not eaten since the bakery at Beachworth, but before food ,camp needed to set up for the night we set out one gas light in the center of our group and got to work on breaking out tents, tables and chairs. Out of the dark I heard Emma call
“Matt were are the tent pegs?”
“Don’t know” replied Matt
“What do mean don’t know you packed the tent” Emma shouted
“Couldn’t find them when we left home” replied Matt.
At this point Max stepped in and offered up his screw driver set as a solution to the tent peg crisis. A minute latter out of the dark Max calls out
“Hey Matt were are all the Barbie legs?”
“Don’t know” replied Matt
“What do mean don’t know you packed the Barbie” Max replied

This led to a really great all new Aussie invention the Barbie Chair before long sausages were sizzling and the group was starting to wind down from the days drive. Soon Max broke a bottle of Canadian whiskey and things really mellowed out. It was now well past midnight and everyone was totally worn out we hit the sack but somewhere in the back of Max’s truck a chain saw started and growled away all night.

To be continued

[Keith Webb]

Mark has taken some great pics too. Have a look

Here's one to "whet" the appetite:



Great stuff, Mark.

Incidentally, I reckon I've heard that same chainsaw too...in Max's bedroom!
Mind you, he'd probably wonder what the brushcutter was doing running all night in my room when I've stayed there.

[Max Hedges]

Hey Russell (Mark)!!!! This is Matt the Canaidan in the story (Who puts up with Max day in and day out on the farm in Yass). You see we had to call him Russell because of your famous Russell off that tv show yous have done here that leads poeple in to the middle of no were , not knowing what they are in for!! Hey it wasn't me that forget the barbie legs that was Kathys fault but I will take the blame for the tent pegs I really couldn't find them! Anyways Russ , when is the documentry coming out? I bet we could make some money on this story! MATT

[Keith Webb]

For those who just HAVE to know...
Here's the official site
Looks a bit like Mark too...

[Geoff Winnington-Ball (RIP)]

Now you're pissing me off. What does it take to get a CMP holiday in the highlands? And can we run the same track in a carrier? I CAN'T die without doing this...

Max, you're insane, and I love you for it! Have a wee nip on me, my friend!

[Mark Sierant]

Just a quirk word on where the pictures are from the top of the page down and some of which we have not yet come to in the story so far.

No 1 shows one of the many crossings of Lightning Creek
No 2 shows the view north from Wombat range
No 3 The Limestone Creek track near disaster
No 4 Ashly and Max crosss the Murray. This river is the longest in Australia with permanent water flow and nearly crosses a third of the continent. The shot of Max in a Ironman pose on the Sargents Mess is about 10km from the soak were the river starts. This shot is say 30 km downstream from the head.

PS to Matt the Canadian, A little advice from an older man to a young man "Never Blame The Hand That Feeds Ya"

[Max Hedges]

Kathy has a chainsaw too ya know, hers is louder than than mine and she works longer hours during the night. Keith's brush cutter must have broke down as we couldn't hear him at all, not even a splutter.
Max

[Mark Sierant]

The next morning dawned and I was awoken by “clank, clank, tap tap, bang”. Looking up the tent was covered in a heavy dew I pulled on a pair of strides unzipped the tent door and stepped outside. About 100 metres away Ashley and Rob were busily digging through their respective tool boxes. Max stood there slowly stroking a gear on a big winch set once used to haul logs out of the steep valleys, Rob shouted out “ hey Mark what is the biggest socket in your tool kit?” I wandered over to investigate
“Hey Max what’s going on?”
“Have at look at this” Max replied “carrier drive sprockets, near new”
Well I felt a little sad that Max actually wanted to pull apart this monument to the logging industry, though the sprockets were in good condition “near new” was a little bit of an over estimate in my mind.
In the end no socket or spanner will ever part these drive sprockets from the winch set and we returned to our camp to cook up some breakfast.

The old logging camp is set in a deep north south running valley between Mount Bogong and the Wombat range right on the banks of lightning creek as we prepared breakfast the sun was just starting to hit the valley walls to the west of us. No one was in that much of a hurry to get going, the camp gear could wait for the sun to dry off the nights dampness.
After breakfast the dishes were quickly handled by a volunteer wash up crew while the rest of the crew packed tents bedding and trucks. My wife Rowena and son Flynn headed home from the camp taking the road north to Corryong at 10.30.
The rest of us jumped into our trucks to warm them up for the days drive, that is all except Max the “Girlfriend” (trucks nickname) refused to start. Max entertained us with a series splutters and BANGS before deciding that this morning would be a good morning to service his Ford. The first job was to replace the distributor he had a new one in a box in the cab. On inspection of the old one the rotor button arm was chewing into the cap because the base plate had not been fully seated evenly by the cir-clip. This was the third time the cap had been replaced in recent times and now the problem was solved or so we thought. A start attempt now produced a very rough idle, Max commented
“She’s short a few cylinders”
A screw drive placed against the block and the plug top soon showed us that we were short four cylinders, not a problem. Max produced a wire brush and a collection of second hand plugs, soon we had a set of seven cylinders running and hit the track.

Today’s drive would take us up along lightning creek to the top of the Wombat range. The morning saw us crossing the creek many times in a deep green valley as we climbed toward its source. Today was the only time that Rob in Tickets came unstuck, a steep red clay bank out of one of the crossings pulled up the Blitz. After a few attempts a tow rope was attached to my Landrover and Rob was out of the water. However after dropping the tow Rob still could not find traction and after a long reverse back to were we left him he was hooked up and pulled to level ground. We climbed for a couple of hours the Blitz’s could only do about 5 mph on this steep climb until we reached the top of the range. The ground levelled of and we rolled along for about 10 km with views for miles blue sky to green hills all around.

We stopped for lunch at about four in the afternoon at an intersection that would drop us to the Mitta Mitta river at the old Gold Township of Wombat Creek. At this point I told our group that we were only a third of the way through our intended trip distance for the day, jaws dropped, everyone was buggered. We worked on an alternative stay, a night of relaxation at the Benambra Pub only about three hours away by Blitz.
Everything that goes up must come down this applies to old trucks especially and for the next hour and a half we crawled down hill to the Mitta Mitta river. By this stage the Ford was performing rather poorly as it crawled across the wide river bed and up onto the well formed dirt farm road on the other side.

The tar road run into Benambra was a real treat, two days of bush tracks wear you down in these old trucks compared to a modern 4x4 they are hard work. At the Benambra general store we filled up our fuel and looked at the now really sick Ford, Max decided it was time to shout the “Girlfriend” a new set of plugs. A few enquiries found a set of 8 x CJ8’s a plug normally used in lawn mowers available at Omeo 30 km away. I was elected to go on with Matt and pick them up, the service station owner would wait for us to arrive. All went well and we were back in one hour, Landrover,s are faster than Blitz’s after all. But Max had fallen asleep in the back of his truck so we left the plugs on the front seat and headed in for a drink and for some dinner.

I did mention that we were staying at a pub I had a couple of drinks with dinner then one with desert. At about 9pm Ashley produced a copy of “The Year Of The Studibaker” video that was plugged into the common room VCR. I headed to the bar for another round this time shouting the boys a Bundie and Coke can each to get them in the swing of things. For those who do not know Bundie is a rum made from sugar cane at Bundaberg in Queensland. It is a funny drink the rum makes you silly quickly and the coke keeps you going so you can have another can and get a little more silly but still keep going. Now that bloody Video was playing and everyone was looking forward to a certain gear change by the author of this story.
Reminder to all.
“Never let Keith Webb film you drive a borrowed truck”
Then there it was GRRR Grrrr Grrrr Clunk with a silly comment by me.
“You wont use that one in your film will ya Keith”
Just as all this happened an old chap who looked very much like Santa Claus walked down the hall in nothing but a poo brown jock strap. The whole room was torn up with laughter, I felt sorry for Santa he must have thought we were just laughing at him.

Going to sleep that night was not easy we were all in a bunk room except Max who was still sound asleep in the back of his truck, pillow fights and all sorts of silly things happened in the next hour. As I dosed off I was looking forward to tomorrow while Max fixed his Ford Rob and I were off to see a chap about some truck parts for my Dodge WC51’s that I had bought nearby. A treasure hunt always a good thing on a road trip.

To be continued

[Rod Diery]

Originally posted by Keith Webb
a trip through the High Country in 3 CMPs and a Forward Control Landrover.

I believe that it is always essential to have at least 3 reliable vehicles for every Landrover.
Rod

[dougiebarder]

Originally posted by rodinkulin
I believe that it is always essential to have at least 3 reliable vehicles for every Landrover.

Heathen!