Landsborough, QLD 4WD Course 08-10 October, 2021
- Ken Fredric
- Oct 8, 2021
- 8 min read
Updated: Mar 29, 2023
Day One - Scarborough - Landsborough 08 October, 2021
The purpose of this two-day break was to undertake a 4WD course on the Saturday, being run by the Australian Off-Road Academy, the company that Explorer recommended for 4WD training.
We set out on Friday morning around 9 a.m to pick up Matariki from storage in Rothwell.
Because the storage area where Matariki is parked also houses a number of birds that like to decorate our vehicles, we’d bought a car cover for the Mazda and a tarpaulin for the motorhome. After loading up Matariki we had several attempts at getting the car cover fitted over the Mazda and eventually succeeded.
We drove up the Bruce Highway, then Steve Irwin Way, directly to Landsborough. Because it was still quite early, and we couldn’t check into the campground until after lunch, we decided to have a coffee then check out the Landsborough Historical Museum before lunch.
The Family Tree Cafe was directly across the road from the museum, so that was an easy decision. So morning tea was a cappuccino each and we also shared a sticky bun, sitting outside on the footpath watching the endless stream of cars go by - that’s a very busy road, made worse by the railway line that carries frequent trains, which hold up all that traffic.
Next stop was across the road to the Landsborough Shire Historical Museum to kill some time until lunchtime. We were both very impressed by the amount and quality of exhibits in the museum. It’s well worth a visit if you like museums.
The museum visit took us up to lunchtime and we’d already decided to lunch at the Landsborough Pub. We both had fish and chips with salad, and were underwhelmed with the dry fish. Very average as far as pub meals go.
Meg had picked up a booklet on the local area at the museum and found a walk we could do after lunch to take us through to when we could check in to the campground. The walk was to the Dularcha Railway Tunnel, which was about a 4 km round trip.
It was then time to go to the campground that we’d booked for two nights, so we headed the short distance to the Ingenia Holidays Landsborough campground, where we’d booked an unpowered site
This is one of the nicer campgrounds we’ve stayed in, with plenty of trees, a lake teeming with wildlife and hundreds of birds ranging from ducks to kookaburras.
The site was a hardstand, so we
didn’t need to put out the tarpaulin, and there was the added bonus of a grey water outlet and fresh water, although we didn’t bother hooking up to the fresh water because we were going to be away most of Saturday.
Spent the afternoon mentally preparing for the 4WD course and relaxing as much as we could with our trepidations of how the course would go.
There’s quite a community in the campground, with a lot of longer-term residents, who gather each night at the communal fire pit. After our dinner we joined the locals for a few drinks before heading to bed for an early night so we would be fresh for the following day.
Day Two - Landsborough 09 October, 2021
The 4WD course was being held at Old Gympie Rd, Mount Mellum, which was only about 4 km from the campground.
Our trepidation about the course meant we were awake early, which meant we had to hang around the campground for a couple of hours before the scheduled 9 a.m. start time.
We thought we’d be way early to the course start point, but there were already two other vehicles there with Dave, our trainer for the day, and we had a short wait for the last couple to arrive. The trainee group was made up of four vehicles, a Landcruiser, a Prado, a Toyota Pathfinder Explorer and our Explorer, with couples in each vehicle.
The first part of the day was spent near the meeting point in an area that had a number of challenges for us to learn about. Turns out our trepidation was well founded, as the picture above shows with wheels off the ground!
We spent the morning navigating narrow paths between trees, going up and down hills with potholes and gullies, and driving through the “crab walk”, which is the area shown above that required the instructor Dave to guide us through many parts step-by-step.
By the end of the morning we were fairly well versed in the different types of terrain that would face us in the afternoon. Thankfully that took us to lunchtime for a well-deserved break.
Turns out that the morning’s activities were only a taste of what was to come!
As these photos show it only got worse, and I was seriously wondering why the hell we’d signed up for this course. Thankfully though, because we’d packed for a couple of nights away, we had spare underwear!
The afternoon’s activities were centred around hills one, two and three.
We had a short drive from the meeting point up a very steep hill, to the top point of these hills, the last section of which was actually driving up hill three. We would become very familiar with hill three in the next couple of hours.
Because we had followed directly behind Dave, we were the first of the four vehicles to attempt these obstacles. But, before driving them, Dave walked us down hill one explaining how we would approach the descent, and back up hill two also explaining the ascent. We were close to our limit of being able to walk upright going up hill two, which Dave said was a good indication that it would also be close to our vehicles’ limit to do the same.
So we were first up. Dave was down the bottom of hill one with a UHF radio talking us down every step (wheel turn?) of the way. Thanks to Dave’s brilliant guidance we made it to the bottom safely. Having completed that little task we had to drive back up hill three to the starting point for a second descent. When it was our turn again it was only very slightly less scary than the first time. All four vehicles had two descents down hill one.
Having conquered hill one I was thinking how bad could the hill two descent be? I should’ve known better!
I freely admit that I was cacking myself near the bottom of hill two on the first descent, at the part near the bottom where the wheels were on rock and applying the brakes didn’t stop the vehicle because it skidded on the slippery surface until it got past the rock. Once again, with Dave’s expert guidance, we made it down safely before going back up hill three to the start point for a second descent. After our second descent we all stayed down the bottom of the hills for the next little adventure, going up the hills.
Before attempting to ascend hill one (we were first up again) Dave mentioned that we might need to engage the diff lock if the wheels were spinning too much. Turns out we made it up hill one without diff lock, but with the nose of the motorhome pointing up to the heavens I had to rely on Dave’s instructions to get up the first part because all I could see was sky. As with the descents, we all had two cracks at going up hill one before moving onto hill two ascents.
Now, hill two was a different story due to the exposed rock that made the surface very slippery and after a first failed attempt with wheels spinning too much, we had to roll back down to the bottom of the hill and engage diff lock. Turns out that it’s not always easy to engage diff lock on a new vehicle and we had to roll forward and back a few times before it finally engaged. That whole process made the ascent even scarier but once again we made it with Dave’s excellent instructions. Because the hill wasn’t a straight climb, it curved around to the right part way up, we had to stop on a flatter part after the initial ascent and disengage diff lock before continuing to the top of the hill. We had the same issue with disengaging as we did with engaging, so had to roll backwards and forwards a few times before it disengaged. Once at the top we drove back down hill three for our second attempt at the hill two climb, which was pretty much a carbon copy of our first attempt.
Once the other three vehicles had completed their two climbs we were all back at the top of the hills where we had initially started, and Dave led us back down hill three towards the meeting point. Part way down Dave stopped and wanted to do a short detour, but the track was too steep for the two Explorers, so us and the other Explorer people jumped in with the Landcruiser and Prado owners to do the short detour. Then it was back to the meeting point to finish off the day with some instruction on recovery gear and techniques, and on water crossings. This was also an opportunity for us to ask any questions we had.
The course ended around 4 p.m. and we were ready by then to get back to the campground for a cold drink and shower. However, we first had to inflate our tyres back to the recommended pressures, which we did using the onboard compressor and ARB inflator for the first time in the field.
We headed back the short distance to the campground, via the Landsborough Hotel to pick up some nice cold cider to celebrate our adventures with. Once parked up and hooked up again to the grey water outlet, we cranked up the water heater so I could have a shower, then ripped the tops off a couple of bottles of the cider while waiting for the water to heat. Meg was able to shower in the campground showers, but the hot water in the mens’ shower block wasn’t functioning so I had to use our own facilities.
We spent the rest of the evening recovering from the stressful day and self-medicating.
Dinner was Mongolian Beef with rice that we’d taken from home and, after dinner, we hung out with the other campground residents for a while around the fire pit. We were really tired by that point so had an early night.
Day Three - Landsborough to Scarborough 10 October, 2021
Woke nice and early after our early night and sat outside enjoying the peace and quiet while having our morning hot drinks, before the rest of the campground woke up.
After having brekky and cleaning up a mountain of dishes in the campground kitchen, which we were parked across from, we began the departure process, which included filling up the fresh water tank and emptying the toilet cassette.
The Landsborough Guide booklet we’d picked up at the Landsborough Museum on Friday mentioned a couple of Aboriginal sites that were on the way home, so we headed for the first site once we were all packed up around 9 a.m.
The first site we were aiming for, Little Rocky Creek: Axe Grinding Site, was just outside Landsborough. Unfortunately, despite there being a sign indicating where it was, we missed the entrance so just carried on to the second site, the Bora Ring, an ancient Aboriginal meeting site.
That was really all there was to see there so after reading the information sign we started the drive home, via the Bruce Highway.
After dropping off Matariki at Rothwell, and trialling the tarpaulin cover for the first time which worked great, we headed home to end another adventure.
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