Please feel free to post your own pics of the trip on this thread and I'm sorry Red_devil, but I've stolen the first photo here from you anyway!
We started out on Friday morning with 22 trucks in total, predominantly shiny Suzukis with everything up to a brand-new 3.2 V6 Grand Vitara.
Thw weather was terrific and we had very few issues, although we did find out at the Mackley River that one of the older shiny Grand Vitaras had no 4WD. The driver was well into his 70's and did the whole trip in 2WD on road tyres. It was wonderful watching him drift the tail around the steep, loose uphill climbs to keep his momentum up. (His much younger passenger accused him of bl***y rally-driving and wanted to bail out!)
Here's how we found out he had no 4WD.
The Mackley was extremely low and so the crossing was trouble-free, although we did shift a few goolies to protect the sills of the shinys.
The only other problem on the trip was an escudo which dropped a radiator hose, dumped all it's coolant and overheated. (The workshop had just fitted a new waterpump and hadn't tightened the damn hoseclip!!!) This necessitated a tow up the long haul out of the Mt William stream crossing, about a minute after this photo.
The good weather meant that the views from higher up were brilliant.
While everyone else had lunch, a few of us had a play on a little side track.
Everyone stopped to look at the burning coal seam near the Denniston end.
We stayed overnight at Westport and woke to rain on Saturday morning, all the shinys except one left for home and the rest of us went up to the Denniston Plateau loop-track for a nosey. It was drizzle and mist until about an hour before we left, but good fun. The 3.2 V6 didn't make it around, but had a good try and he was amazed at just how far he got before leaping in our trucks for a ride.
All in all, a great weekend with a great bunch of people. Many thanks to everyone who participated.
