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A few of us had gone down south of the Border for a recce to explore the area around Coffs Harbour in 2014 for a Recce. What we found last time was 4wding paradise, amazing views, landscape and some of the best 4wding to be had anywhere, mud , water, mountains, rainforest, you name it.
We had only scratched the surface, so we planned to go back for part 2 and continue the mission, everybody’s commitments meant it took longer than expected to get back there but a date was set
Two weeks before we left, the area had over 170mm of rain, so we expected it to still be fairly wet. The requirement on this trip was aggressive tyres, lift and winches.(lucky as it turned out)
Speaking to forestry and the state rangers they thought we were game considering how wet it had been and didn’t understand why I thought this was such great news…..I guess it is in your blood or it isn’t. I had mapped out a plan and list of tracks to cover over the weekend we would be down there. Including about four of the state forests.
For this trip there were five of us, Rob Macca bringing the trusty Zook, aka the Ferret, Craig with his 120 Black beauty, Richo in his 150 and Stewy running shotgun. A well experienced team you can rely on when things get difficult.
The plan was drive down to Coffs via the M1, and spend two days in and around the Coffs, doing a few of the tracks we did last time as they were so enjoyable and some new areas with a camp on the tracks Saturday night.
It was going to be a long weekend behind the wheel though.
Pre dawn Saturday Rob turned up at my place in the little Zook , and we were away, meeting up with Craig on route after a coffee. Its a solid four and a half hour drive south but at that hour there was little traffic.
Nearing Coffs on the way down, I wanted to have a look at Station creek in Yuraygir National park as I heard the camp sites were nice. It’s about a 40 minute north of Coffs. You travel through newfoundland State forest and Barcoongere State forest on the way there about 20 minutes from the highway. This is also where Pebbly beach is but we didn’t have time to do pebbly beach due to the tides and time this time.
As we had just came off the long highway run the tyres were till at full pressure and as this was a little diversion we put up with the hard ride and slowed it down. If it was any longer we would have dropped some pressure out of them. Interestingly the TyreDog tyre pressure monitoring system reported the Mickey Thomson’s heating up about 5 psi from cold to hot over the morning run
Station creek was very green with all the recent rain, There are some nice open campsites with fire pits and toilets there. They even supply free firewood.
But the downside was a large number of mossies, probably due to all the recent rain in particular. It is located right near pebbly beach as well which is well worth checking out.
As we were on a tight schedule it back out of the national park through XXX state forest and onto the highway as Richo and Stewy were already waiting for us at Coffs. A quick refuel of the Zook and we met up at Sealy Lookout at Bruxner reserve via the banana plantations.
A cracking view from the lookout of the wider Coffs harbor area.
We aired down at the looked as it only 5 minutes heading down the hill to the start of “Rover Trail”
I had already mapped out the tracks we would take and Craig kindly real time mapped the ones we drove on with Motion X over the weekend , so I posted this image up here for context. Thanks Craig
Rover trail has nice steep clay and rocky sections. Once wet it gets slippery and adds to it difficulty, it was very noticeable that due to the recent rain , a lot more rocks and gully’s were now exposed. You are into low range straight away for the beginning of the climb.
Video of Craig climbing up the trail
<a href="http://youtu.be/RWm9efoK94U" target="_blank">
Continued 2.
We had only scratched the surface, so we planned to go back for part 2 and continue the mission, everybody’s commitments meant it took longer than expected to get back there but a date was set
Two weeks before we left, the area had over 170mm of rain, so we expected it to still be fairly wet. The requirement on this trip was aggressive tyres, lift and winches.(lucky as it turned out)
Speaking to forestry and the state rangers they thought we were game considering how wet it had been and didn’t understand why I thought this was such great news…..I guess it is in your blood or it isn’t. I had mapped out a plan and list of tracks to cover over the weekend we would be down there. Including about four of the state forests.
For this trip there were five of us, Rob Macca bringing the trusty Zook, aka the Ferret, Craig with his 120 Black beauty, Richo in his 150 and Stewy running shotgun. A well experienced team you can rely on when things get difficult.
The plan was drive down to Coffs via the M1, and spend two days in and around the Coffs, doing a few of the tracks we did last time as they were so enjoyable and some new areas with a camp on the tracks Saturday night.
It was going to be a long weekend behind the wheel though.
Pre dawn Saturday Rob turned up at my place in the little Zook , and we were away, meeting up with Craig on route after a coffee. Its a solid four and a half hour drive south but at that hour there was little traffic.
Nearing Coffs on the way down, I wanted to have a look at Station creek in Yuraygir National park as I heard the camp sites were nice. It’s about a 40 minute north of Coffs. You travel through newfoundland State forest and Barcoongere State forest on the way there about 20 minutes from the highway. This is also where Pebbly beach is but we didn’t have time to do pebbly beach due to the tides and time this time.
As we had just came off the long highway run the tyres were till at full pressure and as this was a little diversion we put up with the hard ride and slowed it down. If it was any longer we would have dropped some pressure out of them. Interestingly the TyreDog tyre pressure monitoring system reported the Mickey Thomson’s heating up about 5 psi from cold to hot over the morning run
Station creek was very green with all the recent rain, There are some nice open campsites with fire pits and toilets there. They even supply free firewood.
But the downside was a large number of mossies, probably due to all the recent rain in particular. It is located right near pebbly beach as well which is well worth checking out.
As we were on a tight schedule it back out of the national park through XXX state forest and onto the highway as Richo and Stewy were already waiting for us at Coffs. A quick refuel of the Zook and we met up at Sealy Lookout at Bruxner reserve via the banana plantations.
A cracking view from the lookout of the wider Coffs harbor area.
We aired down at the looked as it only 5 minutes heading down the hill to the start of “Rover Trail”
I had already mapped out the tracks we would take and Craig kindly real time mapped the ones we drove on with Motion X over the weekend , so I posted this image up here for context. Thanks Craig
Rover trail has nice steep clay and rocky sections. Once wet it gets slippery and adds to it difficulty, it was very noticeable that due to the recent rain , a lot more rocks and gully’s were now exposed. You are into low range straight away for the beginning of the climb.
Video of Craig climbing up the trail
<a href="http://youtu.be/RWm9efoK94U" target="_blank">
Continued 2.
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