Well the rush of getting the Landy back on the road was finally behind me. So I packed up the old girl, threw in the family and headed up the road.
The plan for this run was to stay off of the Hume Highway as much as possible, as it is plain driving me nuts at the moment. So I devised a new route to play with, which funnily enough added up to the exact same km’s as the highway run.
However it did take longer due to the nature of the roads…..
Saturday
We departed Wagga and headed across to Tumut. The weather wasn’t the best, but that’s actually good news as I prefer it to be raining at the moment than continue with this drought. At last look we were pretty damn close to 200mm below average rain fall at the start of the month – so here’s hoping for a few more wet days!
From Tumut we headed out aiming for Brindabella. The route itself is signposted fairly well, explaining that 52km’s of it is gravel and that it’s not suitable for caravans. This road can be closed normally due to snow in winter, so it does pay to check BEFORE travelling.
Better than a highway!
The road itself winds through a lot of forestry land, all of which is accessible easily enough. There are a number of signs giving distances and directions to Kosciusko N.P – so that will be a future trip I’m thinking. Time to get the maps out again.
Brindabella Valley
In places the surface changes back to broken bitumen, mainly for the steeper, narrower and windy areas around the Brindabella Valley. If you are in a rush, then this isn’t the way to go. Take your time and you’ll enjoy the drive and the scenery, even with bad weather.
Looking down over the Brindabella Valley
Continuing on we travelled through some familiar territory and had a break at Cotter. For those that don’t know, Cotter is pretty much made up of two parts. There is the day rest area, and the camping area on the other side of the road. Both sides are definetely worth the stop, with the camping area a good base for exploring the area – which has some brilliant four wheel driving.
Park in the day use area
Foot bridge also at the day use area
From there it was a quick run into Canberra where we were staying for the night!
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Sunday
Well the missus decided that an overnighter wasn’t going to do the job, so I was told that we would be departing on Monday now. Oh – and the girls were going out for lunch.
So I did what any bloke should in them circumstances – I went for a play.
Now the day did start a bit later than normal, due to the events the night before. Which does tend to happen when you catch up with a mate.
Stopping at Weston to meet up with a couple of mates, we made our way to Piccadilly where we turned up towards the power line there. Brindabella Rd had been quite slippery coming in, and looking at the track I decided to drop all tyre pressures to 18psi straight up. It turned out to be a good decision.
Start of the ‘short’ power line trail
The trail itself can be quite technical in the dry – and in the wet it’s all about sticking your wheels in the ruts and having clearance. Something I’m sometimes lacking with the Salisbury rear-end.
End of the ‘short’ power line trail
Continuing on we headed down to Flea Creek. The run was quite good, albeit slow in places. This is a great area to camp for a weekend, but you won’t get a caravan in here. You should be right with a decent camper trailer following behind.
Stuck between 2 patrols
Lunch
After lunch we climbed out of the valley and turned onto the power line trail (long one – actually there’s a million of them, but this one is actually called it!) It was greasy in places, but a lot better than I thought it’d be.
There was a loud murmur concerning McIntyre’s Hut. Once I’d finished laughing, I advised that it is a steep enough track and very much clay based. I also mentioned that I wanted to be back in time for the NRL Grand Final, and last but not least – I only have a hand winch!
The sign to prove it
There are a couple of areas along the trail where you can choose to either stay on the main track, or take the more direct route. I took one look and stayed on the main track, however it was interesting watching the others try.
track 1, patrol 0
Further on I decided to have a play, as I’d been pretty sedate all day. Unfortunately the rear Salisbury diff decided to strand me about ¾ of the way through, which provided some entertainment to everyone around.
Oops – stuck well and truly
How to clean the back of your vehicle – lesson 1
How to clean the front of your vehicle – lesson 2
Now having seen all of that, you’d surely be thinking about going around about now. But sometimes the challenge is just too much to pass up…… 😆
Trying
Failed
From here we back tracked around to the base of Mt Coree. With the weather still crap and cloud cover fairly low, we decided not to climb up to the summit. So we kept travelling towards Brindabella Rd. The track itself was very slippery in places, especially on the down hill runs but slow and steady with lowered tyre pressures made it in easy enough departure.
One back onto Brindabella Rd I took the shortcut across the forest to Cotter. The two creek crossing gave a chance to wash some of the excess mud off.
One of the creek crossings
I stopped in at Cotter to pump up the tyre pressures, then it was a quick run back into town for the Grand Final. I went down to Car Lovers after the final and cleaned up the inside and outside of the old girl – it came up good. But I was starting to hear a bad ticking noise in the front right wheel that kept coming and going intermittently……
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Monday
I was having a few Bundies last night and I realised that I’d heard that noise before. I was whilst fishing out the back of Wagga and it was the bolt that held the disc pads in.
Soooooooo, I checked. And yep, that’s exactly what it was. So a quick jack, wheel off, bolt put back into place, key ring used for a split pin – wheel back on and we were ready to go.
Thankfully an easy job
Today was consisting of a different way altogether to return to Wagga. We followed the normal route to Yass and stopped for lunch. As soon as we pulled in I finally remembered that it was a long weekend. We’d been lucky so far this trip to stay away from the hoards – but it caught up with us
So I turned off of the highway and headed to Harden. It was a great drive other than one [insert choice of word here] who seemed to think that overtaking a vehicle doing 95km/h with a learner coming the other direction is a good idea.
So I took the easy option and pulled over to let him pass. Saved embarrassing him in front of his family, which I really felt like doing
Harden has a great little area for the kids to have a play and is a good stop for them to run their energy out.
We continued on towards the Olympic Highway, turning onto it and aiming for Junee. The run is quite pleasant with nowhere near the traffic that the Hume Highway contains.
At Junee I caught sight of a sign mentioning a train museum. My youngest fella is absolutely nuts about trains, and I figured that now was as good a time as any.
It cost us $20 to get a tour – and that was giuded all of the way. The guys there are very knowledgeable, but more importantly they are willing to explain all of the history about the carriages, trains and the surrounding areas – did you know the train stations used to compete every year for the best garden? 😆
Big kids heaven
Thomas is real!
Just a little happy
The run home is nice and quick from Junee – about 2 cans
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Overall this trip made a nice change from the normal boring run that I always seem to do. I especially liked travelling over the mountain into Canberra, but even the inland run was pleasant enough.
l ran pretty much on 10 litres per 100km’s – even with the amount of slow going on Friday and Saturday.