Pre – Departure Check List

Mechanical

As our tours take in some hardcore remote area 4WDing, please ensure that your vehicle is fully serviced by a mechanic that understands the type of driving that you are going to be undertaking, and that any on-going problems are sorted out prior to departure. A mechanical failure down at Sandy Cape or on the Saw Back Range Track amongst others can lead to a difficult and expensive recovery. As it is highly likely that we will encounter deep water (ie above bonnet height), a snorkel is a must and extended diff breathers should also be considered.

Electrical

Due to the likely deep water issues, please ensure that alternators, starter motors, fuse boxes and computer management units are in good condition as well as being sealed and protected from water ingress as much as is possible. Carrying and using a tarp or water blind will also help to reduce this potential problem.

Using Roothy’s Love Potion (Lanotec) to liberally spray all parts electrical will also provide a measure of protection for leads etc.

Spare Parts              Due to the nature of the driving you are likely to encounter, carrying a ready supply of oil is essential to an enjoyable trip. We recommend you carry the following quantities as a minimum.

                                    Engine Oil – 5 litres

                                    Brake Fluid – 1 litre

                                    Power Steering Fluid – 1 litre

                                    Gear Box & Diff Oil – 1 litre

            Belts                Carrying a full set of replacement belts can mean the difference between an easy track side fix and an expensive time consuming trip for your fellow travellers to obtain replacements. When having your pre-departure service, ask your mechanic to replace all belts and then retain the used belts for you to keep as spares.

            Hoses              Carrying a full set of replacement hoses is also excellent insurance. The same philosophy for belts should apply to hoses. Get them all replaced and keep the old ones for spares.

Filters              To avoid potential contamination problems, ensure that you carry spare filters.

Other Considerations

            Salt Protection

Beach driving and subsequent river crossings are going to subject your vehicle to exposure to Salt Water. I regularly get under my vehicle (at least once every 3 months) and give all under body parts a serious coating of Lanotec or Fish Oil products to Salt Proof it. Inside door panels also get done.

This is where those that don’t understand the joke try to gag those of us that do…so they won’t feel inadequate.

Hardly a joke first up…..more a theory on life…and probably one I don’t subscribe to all that often…..

But here goes……”You are far better to keep your mouth shut…and let every one think you are a fool,

than you are to open it and remove all doubt!!!!!!”

They will get better….I promise.

This will be our first item of merchandise. Details will follow soon.

These are simply the best tyres I have ever driven on. When I purchased the Patrol, it was running Bridgestone Duellers and as they were nearing the end of their life, I decided to go for the Coopers. These were 31 inch tyres on standard issue 16 inch steel rims. I stuck with the same tyre size in the Coopers LT265/75 R16 and the improvement in on road handling was enormous and off road was even better.

85,000 kilometres without a flat tyre, much of that in serious off road conditions says it all. If you want a first class all rounder,  I recommend the Cooper ST Discoverer.

This is without doubt the most disapointing purchase I have ever made. When looking for a GPS that would give me the best mapping off-road as well as being a good street directory, the Magellan Crossover offered the best potential at the time. What attracted me to it was that it came with both Topo and Street maps on separate SD Cards and if required, I could also purchase Marine Charts as well.

I have persevered with this thing for almost two years and quite frankly, it does not deliver. With a purchase price up around $1200-00 when I bought it, you would expect a better result than it provides. Back up service from Next Destination who are the Australian Distributors is also very ordinary. The mapping is out of date and on many occasions when driving on roads that had been in place for several years, the GPS was showing me in the middle of a paddock.

Problems Experienced.   

Set up a trip in the trip planner and after a while it would just hang itself. The reset button wouldn’t work and I would have to wait for the battery to go flat (8 hours) before it would reset itself and start operating again.

Loading addresses to navigate to was anything but user friendly. You had to know exactly where the address was including the exact suburb or the street address would not be in the data base. eg Loading an address for Mt Isa and it wasn’t there. After doing some more searching, I found that the suburb entered should have been Mt Isa City…… not Mt Isa. The option should be there to enter the street names and then the processor should throw up suburb options to match the address for us to select from.

You need to be an absolute computer geek to get it to talk to your computer. Personalising the unit is far too difficult for the normal person because of this lack of user friendly interface.

Whilst out on the Canning Stock Route last year, we had Hema paper maps and 3 GPS units with us. Whenever we did comparisons on position readings at the various wells enroute, the Navman unit showed exactly the same reading as the Hema map, the Tom Tom showed a variation of a few minutes and my Magellan was anything up to 20 minutes out.

I have tried to store track info for future reference and it will only hold 8 tracks. Without the ability to down load these, it ended up full and hung itself again so all info was lost.

All I can say about this unit is that I am looking forward to trialling the new Hema Navigator. I wish it had been available when I purchased the Magellan.

In July/August 2008, we joined  Swagman Outback Safaris for a 20 day tour out through the areas made famous by Len Beadell and Alfred Canning. This was a “Climb Aboard or Tag-A-Long Tour and we had 13 passengers who climbed aboard, together with 2 tag-a-long vehicles. This gave us a party of 20 all up, including Doug, Scott, John and myself who were official guides, cooks and company drivers. Scotty was also the official mechanic.

Departing from Alice Springs, we headed south on the Stuart Hwy, taking a detour to Rainbow Valley. From there it was on to Yulara for an overnight at the Ayres Rock Campground. Next day we headed for the Great Central Road to Docker River and the Giles Weather Station. Then onto the Gunbarrel Hwy to Carnegie Station. From there we made use of the private track through Glenayle Station, coming out onto the Canning Stock Route at Well 9. Then it was up the Canning to its junction with the Tanami Road and back to Alice Springs.

Whilst there were no serious driving tests in this trip, the challenge of the CSR is handling the logistics of such an undertaking and the sheer pleasure of being as far away from “so called” civilisation as you can get in Australia.

Early January 2008 saw the Cooper Family join us for 3 days on our Wild  Wild West Tour.

4WD Tracks in Tasmania Ref. page 183

Date I Last Did This Track.     August 30th 2007.

Weather Conditions Fine & Sunny

Vehicle Details Single Vehicle – GU Patrol

Difficulty Rating Rated Hard

Time Required 1 – 2 hours plus play time.
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Fuel Availability.

Diesel. Bridport about 3 klms from start of track. Pipers River about 20 Klms from Bellingham end of track

ULP. Bridport about 3 klms from start of track Pipers River about 20 klms from Bellingham end of track

ULP Premium. Bridport about 3 klms from start of track

Autogas. Nearest supplies are Launceston, George Town and Scottsdale.

Camping. Free camping (no facilities) is available at various places along the trip if you wish to stop enroute. Take your own water, firewood and dunny roll. This is one shovel flush country….so please make sure you flush and burn your paper. In my opinion, the best campsites are at West Sandy Point in behind the Boobiallas.

Trip Report.

We started this trip from the Bellingham end at approx 90 minutes after high tide. Aired down to 20 PSI but should have gone to 14 to 16 PSI. This is a good fun beach driving experience that although rated hard in the Tassie Tracks guide can safely be tackled solo (if you have a reasonable level of driving skill) about 2 hours below high tide. Side tracks leave the beach at several locations, leading through the Boobiallas behind the sand dunes. These are overgrown in several places and I came away with lots of deep scratches in the paintwork. West Sandy Point offers excellent fun tackling a large, steep sided and extremely soft sand dune. In addition, enjoy some pretty campsites, a good safe (Shallow) beach for swimming and a spot of beach fishing.

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