Ray Mears Bushcraft - "Lets Offroad!"

Well thanks to everyone who contributed to my Xmas pressie, it was in fact a weekend offroad course.....and it was great!. It consisted of a day of sand/desert driving , a night out in the bush then a day of rocky terrain. It was all using you own vehicle so a few nervous faces were about on the Saturday morning when we met up at a service station on the edge of Perth...how much resale value could you scrub off your car in one weekend! Rest assured the guy who was running the course (a mid 50's true blue outback Aussie, kind of a mixture of bush tucker man and the late Steve Erwin!) started us of gently and assured we 'shouldn't' damage the cars, if anything he kept encouraging us all to give it some more beans! I took the hint and had a real good blast around the sand after learning about tire pressures, recovery methods, snatch straps and loads more. As ever, I managed to pick the hottest weekend so far in Perth this summer with forecast temps to hit 40! We used a large sand 'bowl' surrounded by dunes for the entire day which was boiling to say the least, even with aircon on in the car, as soon as you got out to let the tyres down or something the heat really hit you.


That said the car performed great and had more than enough power to blast up the dunes in a 'controlled' way!

After a long day, we set up camp out near a place called York about 100kms from Perth (and not a Minster or train station in sight!). No open fires as it was summer bush fire season, and it didn't cool down to be bearable in the tents anyway until about midnight! Twas a tad warm to say the least and I didn't need my 4 season sleeping bag. I did use the Optrex hip flask though Ade....thanks to again to the Sheffield Posse.



Sunday was us driving all day through the bush, sand, rocks, deep ruts...the lot! We ended on the Mundaring Power Line Track, a popular route for local 4x4 clubs, which had plenty to test driver and car, a few scraping noises from the bash guards under the car got the heart going a few times, but no damage. It was top fun though and really tested the car out, I reckon I'll give in before it does....After two days of 8hrs offroad driving a day I was well pooped though!



Anyway I now feel prepared for a bit more bush adventures.... Nadine reckons she should do the course as well!