Aloha from Arkaroola, again,

Today was spent undertaking activities within the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary.

This morning, I treated the truck (and myself) to a couple of 4WD tracks. The first, called the Mt. Jacob Backtrack, was 13.5km long, and was fairly challenging for a relatively inexperienced 4WDer like me. It was a great learning experience, and a good test of the capabilities of the Jap Jeep. The second, the Station Backtrack was 5km long, and whilst the track itself wasn’t as challenging as the first, there was a 150m side track up to the Frome Lookout, which was very steep, and rutted. With my newly developed overconfidence in my driving abilities, I elected to tackle it. I had a heart thumping moment when half way up, one side of the truck slipped sideways off my chosen line on hard packed dirt, into loose shale, and then started to roll back. Thankfully, all the fancy traction control gizmos did their thing, and the drama was soon over. I felt rather pleased with myself (and my vehicle) when talking to a Toyota Landcruiser owner later at the bar, who elected to leave his truck at the bottom and walk up!

This afternoon, I went on the 4hr guided Ridgetop Tour. You can’t take your own car on this one, which is probably a good thing, as the scenery is much more impressive than the tracks I did myself, and this way you get to look at it, rather than concentrating on driving! Here’s a sample of the scenery:

I didn’t get back ’til 5:30, and after a beer, and a longish dinner, I couldn’t be bothered filing a report, hence the hiatus in my postings.

Here are the tracks on Google Maps:

Cheers,
Julian