Meandering Downunder

Trip Stats:
Vehicle: '95 LR Defender 110 Tdi300 Wgn
Distance: 1123kms
Time Frame: 3 days
Economy: 11.8ltrs/100kms

Day.1 (363kms / DT:7h22min):
Headed off around 7am and made my way down to Beaudesert for Breaky, then continued down through Rathdowney; Woodenbong and Urbanville where I turned sth along Paddys Flat Road. Came to a nice little river crossing called Billy Mays Point. I could driven across the normal way over the bridge but where's the fun in that, so I took the little side track through the river. Continued until I reached another spot I had come across in a previous trip - Paddys Flat Comping along the Clarence River (near where the Cataract River meets). Some nice little free spots here to camp as well. Drove around checking the area out for future camping. Came across someone's camping gear that they either had left behind or it may have been left for some hikers....
Continued along until a reached Sugarbag Rd which I turned onto. There was a No Through Road sign that I past which concerned me as the map I had showed it continuing through to Drake. Wasn't long before I came to the End of the "normal" road but the road (aka track) continued. It was a nice to get offroad and I followed this road for a few kms where it popped out the other side onto another formed dirt road. Reached the little town of Drake where I came across a strange name for a Hotel "Lunatic Hotel" - can only imagine the clientele... From town I turned onto Long Gully Rd then onto Rocky River Road. This section of the road was quite windy but the scenery was great. The road followed the Timbarra River with some great camping areas along the way.

Turned off Rocky River Rd onto Upper Rocky River Rd then continued along to see how far the road went. Came to where the road crossed the river and thought it was a suitable place to turn around. As time was getting away on me, I turned around and headed back to where I had to turn off into the bush and onto my first bit of offroading - Billyrimba Trail. Nothing hard about the trail, just a bit steep, but easy. Finally made it to the top and turned onto Billyrimba Lookout Trail. This was I decided to make camp for the night.... Not a bad choice I thought.

Day.2 (283kms / DT:5h37min):
Not really knowing what the road conditions were going to be like, I packed up and headed off early to see what laid ahead.... nothing exciting at least.. Upon reaching the Gwydir Hwy, I headed NW to my next Destination for the Night - Lemontree Flat Campgrounds in the Kwiambal NP. Along the way I stopped at the following spots: Town of Emmaville; Pindari Dam; Ashford Limestone Caves; MacIntyre Falls.

Day.3 (477kms / DT:6h37min):
Final Day and the the long drive home, but not before doing a little exploring of some tracks in the local area, which lead to some hidden gems. Reached my final destination of HOME by about 3pm, giving me enough time to unpack and then plan/pack for our next trip :)

On this trip there was supposed to be 3 vehicles leaving together, but due to other circumstances, they were not able to leave with us and said they would catch up with us in few days’ time, so we ended up leaving Home by ourselves @ 2.45am and made our way to our 1st stop - Goondiwindi for Breaky. When we hit the Western Fwy, I noticed that I was getting Speed Wobbles - Not a good Start to the Trip. Reached Goondiwindi in good time to refuel and have breaky at Maccies. From here we pushed onwards stopping @ Narrabri for morning Smoko. Pushed on to our 1st night’s camp - Parkes Showgrounds.
Distance & Time: 1040 kms/11hrs 37min

Up early to start D2 and headed off, noticing a bit of a squeak/squeal coming from the front of the Landy. Stopped and couldn't find anything obvious. Noticed noise disappeared when I put my foot on the clutch but couldn't understand what it might be. We decided to push on and the noise seemed to disappear at Hwy speeds. Made good Time to get to Wagga Wagga where I was to find out what squeak was to be.... I started to get a bad vibration through the steering wheel when accelerating from start. I stopped to check what I thought it might be and I was correct in my thinking - a failing Rear Uni-Joint on the Front Drive Shaft :( Made a few calls to RACQ/NRMA and got the Mechanic out to inspect what I already knew. He removed the Front Shaft for me and said nothing could be done until Tuesday due to the Public Holidays... Luckily I had 2 spare Uni-joints on board and made a call to a good Landover Mate that I trusted and he took the time to help me as much as he could over the phone in the method of replacing the Uni-joint on the side of the road by myself. I also put out a SOS on the AULRO website that I greatly appreciated at the time, knowing that there was other Landy owners willing to help us out. After quite a few hours I managed to replace the Joint and headed off to our nights camp where I planned to regrease/refit the front drive shaft back to the Landy. Reached camp and decided to try and grease the uni but without success. Again, more phone calls to my mate and posts on the SOS Aulro Post and the decision was to refit the shaft the following day and drive for a bit and then try to see if we could then get grease into the uni-joint. A few hours later, the 2nd car/family of our group of 3 cars/families arrived in time for dinner/dinner and a quick catch-up before calling it for the night.
Distance & Time: 304 kms/3hrs 40min

Early rise to continue refitting the Front Shaft with one more unsuccessful time in trying to regrease the shaft. Fitted the front shaft and packed up and heading into town to buy a few Food & auto spares (grease, grease nipples, etc.). Hit the road and headed for Beechworth to meet with a fellow Landy Owner before continuing onwards to our next stop - Myrtleford where we refuelled and headed down Buffalo River Rd to our nights camp near our turnoff into the VHC - Manna Gums Campgrounds. This is also where the 3rd vehicle/family caught up with us to make our group whole again.
Distance & Time: 260 kms/3hrs 48min

A quick pack up and a quick look over the vehicle/trailer & lowered our tyre pressures down (25psi Front & 28psi rear) before we hit our 1st VHC track - Dandongadale-Buffalo Trk. This was to be an interesting start to our VHC Trip with the track graded as a ""M"" & ""D"" by hema. The 1st few hills had me wondering if I did the right thing in bringing the trailer along as the poor old Defender really noticed the extra weight behind it. It made it up all the rocky loose hills as long as I applied a bit more right foot before hitting the harder/loose parts. Out of our group of 3 vehicles, there was only 1 that wasn't towing a trailer and we made him take the lead just in case my Defender needed a helping hand to get to the top of some of these steeper sections of the track. We followed Dandongadale-Buffalo Trk then onto Dan Buffalo Divide Trk & onto Lake Cobbler Trk, then to a apparently a ""H"" rated track Abbeyard-Lake Cobbler Trk before joining up to Lake Cobbler Rd. This section of the road is where things went wrong for the lead vehicle. A couple of young Nissan Patrol drivers came flying around the corner way too fast and couldn't stop quick enough and slid into the mates 80's Cruiser. We stopped and checked out the damage and he exchanged vehicle details before they continued off - still at their high speed, obviously they hadn't learnt their lesson.... The damage wasn't too bad but would result in a new B/Bar and possible new bonnet/guard. We made it to Lake Cobbler to rest a bit and calm the nerves and grab a bite to eat before continuing our way to our night’s camp along King River/Hut. The road down into the King River Hut was slow going with the trailers on as it was quite rocky and loose. Made it to camp with daylight to spare, so the decision was to made to help make up for lost time was to head out and do the circuit drive to ""Craig’