Saturday, February 14, 2009

4WD Training Course at Yarck

We hooned up to Yarck to do the practical part of the 4WD training course in late Jan 2009. This was the weekend before the fateful Black Saturday where almost 200 Victorians perished in the worst recorded bush fires. It was hot - the three days prior to us arriving on Friday 30th Jan all topped 43 degrees C, a record for Melbourne.

The clip below shows Nicky negotiating the sand trap - the aim was to get the vehicle bogged then recover. Nicky almost mowed down poor Logan!


We saw heaps of wildlife - this poor wallaby was hoping to cool down in a nice water hole. Instead a dozen 4WDs descended to wreck his arvo! This was no ordinary mud hole - it was one of the exercises on the weekend.

Nicky then had to negotiate the truck, thro the said mud hole, with Bobby suggesting she might use a little more right hand. On more than one occasion! Listen to him in the UHF.

The next clip shows Nicky negotiating Latimers, one of the hills on the Yarck property. It might look flat, but believe you me, it is not! The property is filled with exercises like this - great fun and awesome for confidence building. We learned a lot about the truck and how to drive it.

When we returned to the tent after a long Saturday on the tracks, we found we had a visitor!

And finally this is Nicky negotiating one of the many bush tracks on the Yarck property. You can tell from the audio that she was getting a bit too close to the trees for Stuart's comfort!

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