So that's where things got gnarly so it's raining and it started raining pretty heavily
this is a track where you struggle to drive this in the daytime in the
dry and all of a sudden we had a dead four wheel drive dark and it's pouring down rain
i went through the Brindabellas for a bit of a play as well and i put that thing
almost entirely on its side by driving forward which was about as deep as the Zook last time
it was about to this day they ended up spotting me some cash to fill up the GU
to get to the next town because i had to be at the next town to be able to meet my deadline
hey guys how you going yeah good yeah good brother how are you oh mate hasn't it been a while geez
lockdown's been a bugger camping in the backyard is the only thing i can do at the moment so
i never thought i'd miss going to work what do you mean miss going to work you were supposed to be
going to work the whole point is you're supposed to be working from home mate going yeah going to
work hey boys um i thought i'd get you together and have a little bit of a backyard campfire
yarns here's the topic for today's campfire yarns the topic is my craziest four-wheel drive trip
ever now i've got photos from both of you guys so i've got a bit of an idea about what you're going
to talk about but not really and before i get into it it's probably worth just uh for the viewers at
home sharing a little bit of all three of our back stories because before we were here at adventure
kings we all got our start working for and now defunct magazine called four drive action magazine
Cahn with a tech journal Mitch or the junior journo just come on board and i was the editor
and somehow we managed to put a magazine out every couple of weeks or so so i'm gonna kick it off so
my craziest four wheel drive trip ever i think this was 2013 2014 something like that
i was running a trip for the magazine with a bunch of readers and
we were just hitting the tracks for about i think about four or five days we started
uh in the water guns just north of um Sydney and we ended up we hit every hot spot for full
driving that we could hit on the way up the coast we went to um uh foster went to Port Macquarie
uh ended up at Coffs Harbour and just drove every tough track that we could possibly find
and i know if you guys have ever heard of this track and some viewers at home might have heard
of this before but it's called Daniels Point road in the Wategans it's closed now sadly 0:02:21.120,1193:02:47.295 it's not
it was just available it was like hectic drops down and then just wild winching driving climbs
all the way back up i was in um our project GU our 4.2 gb patrol that we've been building up for
about a year or two that thing was a bit of a rig we put a 4.2 in it all turboed up and had you know
lockers and diff gears 35 bar work all the good stuff that you put on an old patrol
and the adventure kind of started a little bit before i actually got to the tracks because
that was a work rig and as work rigs go they often get a bit thrashed and you know they don't get
quite the amount of care taken from everyone who drives them as they probably should if it was your
own personal car so on the way up there i remember i'm coming over the hills on the highway and this
thing is just boiling itself and i know that's pretty hard to believe with a 4.2 controller
they don't do that never heard of a 4.2 balling over i ducked down into um back at Gosford to a
mate had a workshop and just used a corner of his driveway pulled the radiator out
hosed it all out left him with a massive bowl of mud on his driveway and just hooked it back
up again so i catch up with the guys probably yeah closer to lunchtime i've come in from one way and
i've caught up with them just as they're getting to the bottom of the descent and everyone's been
having fun you know those winches out everywhere and recovery gear hanging off trees and all sorts
of stuff i'm like man we've got to get in on this um and it just progressively got harder the very
bottom of that is just festy bog holes that you just there's a there's this one thing that's a
drop off it's like bloody Gunshot up in the Cape it's just like you just drop straight down like
that and we were cruising we got through the mud holes and we just started our climb big
long couple of climbs up back up to civilisation some fellas brought along this Jeep and this thing
this Grand Cherokee i think that was a beast and then i'll make found the limits of that uh poor
old Jeep now they run um uni joints instead of cvs in the front right i'm pretty sure i don't really
know exactly if that's the right term for i'm sure someone out there watching will definitely correct
me in the comments um and they just smashed one and that's where it just got harder because the
daylight ended and the rain started and we're at the bottom of this track this is a track where you
struggle to drive this in the daytime in the dry and all of a sudden we had a dead four-wheel drive
dark and it's pouring down rain and honestly guys i know everyone says Patrols are beasts
and when you do them up like that one that we had was done up it's not hard to see why but that day
is what cemented in my mind how much of a beast that truck was because not only did that Patrol
drive that hill but it towed two of the cars up that same hill totally as the kind of hill that
any other car would struggle to drive was lifting wheels and scrabbling we pulled that um we got
the wheel back on the jeep just enough we got a chain and a strap and all sorts of things onto
it i towed that up and then by then it was pouring down rain and old maiden Pajero he was at the end
of the track and it was slimy so i ended up going back down there and towing him all the way up the
top of the hill as well and just got to the top of the hill and looked around and i'm like this truck
is an absolute weapon and i just couldn't believe it that it had just done all that but i i've got
to say looking back i think that's my craziest at least my most memorable four-wheel drive trip
low-range trip that i've ever done um that patrol was an absolute beast your story just reminded me
just because it was so much fun i think the best trip i've ever been on was driving our little
zero dollar Zook back from the Port of Melbourne back to Sydney after it had been pretty well uh
taken care of yeah it was looked after it was being looked after down in Tassie and you know
came off a ship it had been pretty well lived in i suppose but i was given the task of basically
going down picking it up and getting back to the office and i think i had about a week to do it
so i looked at the maps and figured out that if i played my car drive i could probably swing up
through the higher country and maybe find my other couple little tracks to tackle on the way home
now this thing as i said hadn't been particularly well looked after but it was a very solid rig
we picked it up a little while before this trip as a bit of a project and we called it the zero
dollar Zook because we sold a bunch of gear we had in the shed and called in some favours for some
gear and that sort of thing and actually built this this rig up and it was a little weapon so it
had a i think a g16b out of a Vitara made it up to the five speed had 31 muddies on it must have had
a lift at least two inches and maybe maybe more because it really you know fit those thirty ones
in pretty well uh but i remember i was coming down towards Talbotville down um South Basalt
Knob track which is if anyone's driven it it's extremely steep and it's weird not a particularly
easy track at the best of times of course it started raining so it was just slick mud and
that's the second photo the ground's starting to get a bit wet about a third of the way down that
first steep section is when i found out that the boats before me had done a little bit of damage to
something either a front axle or a cv or a hub on the right-hand side every time you tap the brakes
it pulled really hard to the right like incredibly hard to the right and uh it was already super
steep it was already really slick so that hill was just the entire thing was me terrified but i
survived that was good we got down to Talbotville awesome awesome campsite and then we did crooked
river track which snakes all the way back towards Dargo which is beautiful but that's of course when
you find out there's there's no uh plugs in the floor anymore and you just end up with completely
wet boots yeah we took them out because it just it just made the water stay in there for longer
and from and now that i think about it i'm fairly certain it had a front mechanical locker
which just made it even more ludicrous because you can lock up and do these strange things and
drive one wheel and i knew Zooks were capable but after driving a three wheel drive Zook
through the high country i'm very very impressed and one of the one of the keys of this trip was i
really wanted to drive the highest drivable track in Australia we didn't make it to blue rag on this
trip because the track was closed but i found that you could drive up to Mount Mackay in Falls Creek
which is technically the highest drivable point in Australia uh we drove up there it was you know
just a bit of off-road it's nothing crazy went to bed snow had fallen overnight so it was because
it had been spinning the day before i was kind of prepared and i had this terrible old swag i ended
up throwing a tarp over it because i had no faith in it whatsoever and you can see in the morning
it's just it's all completely collapsed and there i am in there i just remember getting out of bed
in the morning i was about negative five degrees body temperature but you know it's all good
oh painful jump back in the zoo negative five body temperature tried to warm up but of course
someone had blown the heater the windscreen wipers didn't work and it didn't have a demister so i had
to drive through heavy snow with like my hand out the window doing the typical snow glove
and wearing a skinny jacket to be fair i don't know if i had a demister factory yeah that's
true just breathe on the windscreen the final step was um we we finished the high country
conquered the high country and on the way back through i went through the Brindabellas for
a bit of a play as well and i put that thing almost entirely on its side by driving forward
which was about as deep as the Zook and it was just bad will it was just bad real placement and
i still have nightmares about to this day because it was on film luckily all the film went missing
so there's no evidence there's no evidence that i can't drive
oh it's probably still just plenty of evidence very good okay that is a red hot contender i like
that story khan it is time to pass over to Mitcho i've seen some photos i'm about to bring them up
it's a GU patrol but a different one to the one i was talking about mate what's the story exactly so
i was pretty stoked when i first started working here because within my first two weeks of working
here they sent me down to Victoria to build another GU which was used as a camera car got
back from Victoria about another two weeks later the boys were taking it out on its first maiden
maiden voyage through the Simpson Desert and i was so jealous that i didn't get to go on that
trip but uh at the end of their trip one of the guys that used to work with us he walked into
that's where i was sitting working on the computer and he goes oh Mitch we need someone
to go to bird and he barely even finished the word Birdsville and i'm like yep me maybe i'll
go i'll go stuck my hand up straight away so the reason i had to go to Birdsville was because uh
the boys were finishing up the trip there after they crossed the Simpson desert and they basically
just needed someone to pick the car up and drive it back to Sydney now i didn't know at the time
that uh my card had expired or i can't exactly remember what had happened there but it either
expired or it was having yeah it was having issues so it was the only bank card that i had
flew all the way into Birdsville and i couldn't help myself i had to drive out and see big red i
was told to do it so had some fun in the uh in the big GU it made it up and down big red no problem
drove back into Birdsville and i went to fuel up and my car just wasn't working and i had no
idea why and all i had was about 50 bucks cash on me and uh so that well luckily for me that
was just enough to pay for the fuel there and by the time i got to the next town i was pretty well
needing some fuel already and it was about four or 500 k's i think to win dora so i stopped in at
Windora and the sun was going down i'm still stuck in the middle of nowhere and uh long story short
with that part is the legends at Windora pub i cannot thank them enough and if you're going
through window on your way out to Birdsville or if you're coming back from Birdsville stop in there
and have a beer and buy anything you want because they are absolute legends they ended up spotting
me some cash to fill up the GU to get to the next town because i had to be at the next town to be
able to meet my deadline and uh so yeah to this day i still can't thank those guys enough because
that was that was unreal you probably thank him by paying him back Mitch it's been happening
no i ended up calling up that pub uh a couple weeks later and tried to pay them back they
wouldn't accept it at first they kept telling me that i'd probably come across them broken
down on the side of the road and give them a hand at some stage but i ended up i ended up
sorting it out with them next time i'm out that way i'm definitely calling in to say thank you
because they are absolute legends oh there you go Mitcho pretty damn solid story they're in fact
three solid stories or at least two good stories from you blokes and a bit of waffle from me
gonna open it up to the viewers i want to know two things from all you guys watching at home
number one what was your favourite story out of all three of those and number two
we want to know your craziest four-wheel drive story so jump on down to the comments
and let us know guys that was a bit of fun it was good to have an electronic beer with you guys
hopefully lockdown's over soon and we can do the real thing around campfire soon good on you cheers
brother hey and if you liked these yarns and you want some more cool behind-the-scenes stuff of
our adventures here at adventure kings click that link in the top right corner because Mitch will
take you behind the scenes on the most epic r d trip he's ever done with the MT1 camper trailer