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These photos are from a recent offroad trip to Sundown National Park. Sundown is about 30mins south of Stanthorpe. We went there for a kinda long weekend.
If you want to see more pics of sundown, check out the gold coast 4WD club website
http://www.goldcoast4wdclub.org.au/past_trips/sundown/sundown1.htm
This year Anzac holiday was on thursday, so my mates took friday off and headed to sundown for 4 days. I had to work friday, so we headed to Stanthorpe for friday night so we could head into sundown early saturday morning. Here's a pic of the hotel we stayed at, exciting huh?
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When we left the hotel I saw something drawn on the rock face behind us, hmmm, what does it say?
No, it is a giant vw symbol. Hey that's pretty cool. I swear it wasn't me.
After you head south from Stanthorpe, you will get to Ballendean. There is a green dinosaur there, hard to miss. Turn right here and Sundown will be about 5 minutes down the road. The lady in the petrol station said I wouldn't get the VW very far because the tracks were 4wd only, I said I'll be right and had a giggle to myself.
After you suffer the painfully slow trip in, you will reach the main camping ground, Burrows Waterhole. The trip is slow because the tracks are made of small rocks. It took us 1.5 hours to do the 15km track in. We passed a hilux on the way in that told me I wouldn't make the Rats Castle circuit, I thought well if his hilux made it I'll be fine.
Unfotunately all the good spots were taken when my friends got there, so we were stuck beside one of the pit toilets.
Burrows Waterhole is beside this creek/river. It is quite pretty, and even though it hasn't rained for ages, it still had plenty of water and was slowly flowing.
This is a nice photo Rhys took of me crossing the rocks. This is on the Rat's Castle circuit. People said I wouldn't get my Baja around this track. But if a Hilux can do it then so can I. I didn't have any probs at all.
Rock Crossing
As you can see, it was very rocky.
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Very rocky indeed.
Looks like the moon
You can tell how rocky the track is in this picture. My car was so filthy,
covered in dust by this stage.
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This is looking backwards across the rocks. I was told that these rocks are usually partly under water, which makes it a lot trickier to cross.
Another view of the rocky
crossing
We decided to walk around and stretch our legs a little here.
The cars are Rhys' old 2 door rangie, Ben's diesel landcruiser and my Baja. Dave left his rangie back at camp for this circuit.
Showing off
Here's Rhys saying check out the wheel travel on my stock rangie, I'm
rad. Not somewhere you'd want to take a new 200mm of ground clearance
type of 4WD.
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Although this looks like a completely flat hill, it is actually quite steep. I had to put it in first and put the hand brake on hard to make it stay there.
I told you it was steep.
This is looking the other way from the last photo. In this one you can
tell it is actually steep. The blue landcruiser is at the bottom.
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Here's Rhys going past on the hill. There was two was to come up this hill, one real steep rocky hill, and one not quite as steep or rocky hill. We all opted for the easier hill.
Trouble.
On our way back from the Rats Castle circuit,
we had to head up a not so steep, but very rocky and rutted track. There
were about 3 different lines up this hill. First Rhys took the right
track, and got momentarily stuck with a front and back wheel in the air,
due to a slight error in his wheel positioning. He rolled back a little,
aimed the car a little better and was off again. The track Rhys went up
can be seen behind Rhys in the photo.
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So then Ben headed up in the landcruiser and got completely stuck on some bumps and rocks. So Ben blocked that track and I headed up the track Rhys choice. After some careful wheel positioning I got the baja to the top first go. The only person who had no probs!
Stuck
Leaf springs don't like this sort of thing. Ben was stuck with one front wheel,
and one back wheel in the air. The other back wheel was just touching because
it's spring hanger was stuck on a rock. After much wriggling, rocking, and
jamming rocks under the wheels we got him out of there. From here we went
back to camp for the night.
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On our way home on Sunday we went past Red Rock Gorge. It is supposed to be a waterfall, but it was too dry. They is a walking track that goes from the lookout platform all the way around the top of the gorge. You can just see it in the picture.
Red Rock Gorge 2
If you look further around to the right, this is what you see. More hills and
Red Rock.
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When we left Red Rock Gorge we went the rougher 4wd track out of the park. It was fun and had some real big ruts. We came across a Rodeo which decided to head back when the track got too difficult for him. He look at the VW funny as we went past him. This little water hole was rocky on the bottom, and was followed by a steep crest rock formation which Ben's cruiser just bottomed out on.
Baja Crossing the Creek...
As you can see, the bottom was very uneven and rocky so the car was on a lean
with one side much deeper than the other.
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The back wheel are just going over the high point here.
Baja Crossing the Creek -
Animated Gif
You can watch a 6 frame animated gif of the baja crossing the creek, and going
over the small rock crest.
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