Mia Mia Recce - July 2008
At 1.30pm after lunch we left Dennis as he headed home and we proceeded with Part II of our day after having done the Horse Creek track in the morning.
Thanks to the help of Tony and Angie’s trip meter we were able to find the points accurately on the map Terry had left us and we knew we were going in the right direction. The first 5km we meandered through some pleasant bush on a moderate track. Approx 7km up the track we found it started to get deeply rutted and sandy. Shane got ‘rutted’ (as he put it) heading down into the creek and Rob snatched him out.
The next leg out of the creek was badly washed away and too wide for the cars to straddle. The Rangie risked the high rise and with a few tedious moments got through. At that stage we had a quick discussion – should we turn around and try the other track we saw or should we try to repair the track? We decided to get the shovels out to do some road-building and all four vehicles got through without incident. As we wiped our brows we headed onward and upward past JJ Creek and from here on, the going was quite slow but no time to snooze in the passenger seat as the next few kilometres we were stopping nearly every 100mts to clear fallen dead trees!! It was great exercise!! Thanks to all the log moving team – Rob on chainsaw and the boys, Shane, Tony, Charlie and Gavin rolling logs and throwing branches out of the way.
Sweaty, weary and as time was getting on we only had three kilometres to go. We came over the rise down to the creek to be met with the largest log we had seen all day. All hands on deck again, only one option, more cutting! By this stage it was about 5pm, and the long shadows were creeping over the track, the setting sun was sending a glow across the sky and we were hoping no more surprises. The next section was clearer and we managed to drive around fallen trees for about 2km, with some awesome views and high peaks in the distance. We made our way right to the top of the ridge and off to the right we could see the homestead. From here a very rutted fairly steep and rocky down hill run (a little like Copper Hill) – good fun - to the final creek crossing.
By Rob Couper
