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These photos are from a offroad trip to Benarkin State Forest. We camped there over the easter long weekend, and went on several drives. One was through Benarkin State Forest, and the other main drive was along the Nanango old coach road / seven diggings track. Unfortunately we didn't take enough photo's. The seven diggings trip is excellent. A good variety of tracks and play area's and hills.
We decided to stay at the Emu Creek camping ground in Benarkin State Forest.
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There was heaps of people here since it was the Easter long weekend. Lots of screaming kids. Especially when the Easter Bunny came on Sunday morning.
There were deer in with us in the camping section. They were pretty cool, you don't see deer in the wild very often around Brisbane.
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Most of the Benarkin tracks look like this. Red dirt, a little rocky but not too bad. Plenty of hills to try in here.
Every now and again the forest track would open out into a small quarry. Lots of small hills to play or park on.
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This would've made a nice photo if I was in the sun.
Benarkin has lots of cattle grids, so most of it is cow paddocks. We saw a few cows, kangaroos and deer in the forest.
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Although you can't quite see in this pic, you actually get a nice view of the rolling hills and paddocks.
Because the tracks aren't used so much, you come across the odd obstacle such as a fallen tree. Benarkin has lots of tracks and we kinda got lost in there. Our forestry maps didn't help much.
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This is Dave starting his journey up the steepest hill we found. As I came down the hill leading to it, I saw the track going up the next hill and said a few colourful words.
We stayed on the opposite hill to watch Dave try the climb. If you look hard you can see white through the trees, which is his roof. The rangie spun all fours wheels most of the way, so I thought I was in trouble.
I got to the bottom of it, hit the accelerator and didn't back off. I
made it first go which was good. The BFG mud tyres do amazing things on
the back of a baja.
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The pics from now on from this track. The track is shown in the Dirty Weekends 4wd book.
This is the waterfalls mentioned in the book. Unfortunately, there was no water. It has been a bit dry lately.
On our way to the waterfall, we passed what was supposed to be a dam. It had no water, accept what appeared to be a little puddle of mud. Dave decided he was going to drive through the mud to be cool. He quickly found out that it was very soft, as you would expect on the bottom of a dam. So he was bogged.
We got the snatch strap onto Rhys' car and pulled Dave out. Don't snatch using the towball like this, the towball can rip off and become a high speed projectile. We were only pulling softly and not snatching, so we didn't worry.
After Rhys told Dave how crap he was for getting bogged, he lined himself up for a go.
A few seconds and lots of V8 engine revving later, Rhys too was stuck in the mud. Right up to the middle of his wheels.
Determined to beat the mud, Rhys lined up for a second go with more speed, more revs, and a different line. He still ended up stuck in the mud though. I was going to have a go but after seeing the rangies get hopelessly stuck 3 times in a row I decided not to. If my car wasn't completely full of camping gear I may have tried it.
Everywhere along the 7 diggins track there were little play areas. Tracks that don't go anywhere, you just drive up them and back down them. As you can see in the first pic, there are two main tracks. A left not so steep one, and a right very steep and rough one.
The left one was relatively easy
But very dusty.
You can also see a few single line motorbike tracks.
The last photo is of the top of the steeper track. It was very rough and had a few big rocks that could easily cause panel damage. Our cars were fully loaded with camping gear so we decided not to try this track on this particular trip.