G'day guys, Dan here from Epic Drives Western Australia. Thanks for joining me
again. we're the channel that's dedicated to everything outdoors and adventure in
Western Australia predominately four wheel driving of course. Well this is episode 2 of the Epic
Western Australia podcast series and today I'm gonna talk to you about a
couple of things. Firstly, Google Streetview.
A new track that's about to open from Mundaring all the way down to Albany.
My plans for the summer in relation to four wheel drive trips of
course and YouTube episodes. We'll talk about some tips, four wheel drive gear and
camping gear. I'll also share a story of my travels as well as some slightly
off-topic subjects about the Bibbulmun and some interesting WA
history. OK, so first up the very best news that I've heard this month would
have to be the opening of a new 4WD track which has appropriately been
named "The Track." It begins in Mundaring and ends in Albany or vice versa however
you look at it and this has been made possible by the West Australian
Four-Wheel-Drive Association and it's taken a lot of people a lot of years to
make this track a reality. This tracks not designed to be a mud runners
paradise or anything like that it's more about an alternative route about being
more connected to nature as you make your way down south the scenic way as
opposed to just traveling down the highway which nowadays to Albany takes
you about four and a half hours where as this track will take you four or five
days. Now the truck is designed to be accessible for most four drivers even
all-wheel drivers but that said obviously in the wetter months you're
gonna come across some washed out bits of track and mud but the design is for a
safe passage and not extreme at all so as I said it can be suitable for
all-wheel drive vehicles and it's ideal for those of you who take
along your camper trailer. You can't go out and just buy the old-fashioned paper
map instead you'll need to download it and they've got a few options of how you
can download it and essentially you stick it on your tablet or on your phone
or in your GPS depending on the type of data that it uses. You can also just
download it onto Google Earth and work it out from there and the reason for
this is because just like the Bibbulmun and the Mundabiddi the Department of
Parks and Wildlife have they're controlled burns there's of course bush
fires there's flooding and a track the length of Mundaring to Albany is no
doubt going to have parts that are at times inaccessible so the track will then have
to deviate and use different roads so by having it as a downloadable live map any
changes will be made and then when you download it as long as you make sure
that you're downloading it relatively close to when you're going or you know
on the day you're going a few days before it's gonna be the best possible
route you're not going to run into troubles of having to quickly find
another way around a section of track when you're in the middle of nowhere. If
you want to check that out all the information that you need can be found
at the WA Four Wheel Drive Association's website, which I'll link in the description if
you're listening to this on YouTube or alternatively you just head straight to
the Western Australia Four Wheel Drive Association's website which is wa4wda.com/thetrack
and the best bit is it's
all completely free how good's that you don't get many
things in these days that don't have a catch but this is just a here you go
click the link download it away you go FREE. Now one of the things that I really
really like about this trip is it's not predictable it's not using tracks that
you know are well-worn that we all know and just joining the dots. This track
actually doesn't cover routes along the coast instead it traverses inland and
uses the forestry tracks as well as various other tracks making it new and
interesting even for those of you out there who are the most
seasoned of 4-wheel drivers. Its 930 kilometers which gives you a couple of
options either you can take on sections, day trips or overnight trips or opt to just
do the whole thing in one go which will take you four to five days and I said
before and I'm sure that this kind of track will appeal to four wheel drivers
obviously all over Western Australia but all over Australia - and who knows maybe
even the world. So accommodation wise there's plenty of
options you've got your standard and my personal favourite bush camping and
taking all your gear and taking all your gear out and making sure you don't leave
your rubbish and all that sort of thing. Then you've got the small towns along
the way that you can pull off the track and stay in a B&B or a farm stay or you
can stay in the towns in the caravan parks. One thing that's good about this
track is it does go through towns that are less frequented by the usual crew
heading down the highway to go to Margaret River and Yallingup and all
the standard usual and perhaps the most incredible thing about the track is
that the trip from Mundaring down to Albany seems to just be the beginning
there are plans to make this track around 4000 kilometers long. So obviously
this is on my immediate to-do list and I'm also planning a lot of trips down
south this summer and I know like I said before everyone heads down south in
summer it seems to be just about as predictable as the Western Derby.
But I've got a lot of ideas to travel tracks that are less worn no doubt
they're known about but they're not the usual obvious places to go. I guess you
could say a little less known about. So if a trip down the track or a two
three-day trip down south sounds like something that you might be interested
in then head over to my facebook page I started a group join the group and let
me know that you're interested I'll update with what my plans are and where
I'm thinking of heading and you're more than welcome to come along and it's a
group page so by all means feel free to post content that you feel is applicable
to my page whether it be about four wheel driving ideas on trips in Western
Australia anything really just try and keep it on topic of the outdoors in
Western Australia. And as well with the trips that I'm doing this summer I'll be
making episodes for my youtube channel but I'll also be writing trip notes with
all the GPS coordinates on there and you can download those print them off and
away you go. And they're also all completely free and
they're on my website epicdriveswesternaustralia.com so heaps to come
this summer. I've actually had a really busy month and it's had nothing to do
with four-wheel driving or anything to do with my channel we've actually moved house so
packing up and unpacking and cleaning and all that kind of stuff so I haven't
had a lot of time however one thing that I have done this month is, I was very
fortunate to be a part of an interesting project to do with the Bibbulmun track
and it was using Google's 360 Street View camera which is called the Google
Trekker and it was converted so it could be worn as a backpack as opposed to
attached to the roof of a car which is normally how you see street view and
we were the second team there's multiple teams we did three days out in the track
and we started at a place called Gringer Creek Hut which is
the places you can stay on the track and we hiked all the way down to Lane Pool
and filmed the whole thing. It did make for an interesting spin on a fantastic but
usual hike down the Bibbulmun however I didn't know at the time and I found out
when I got back that there's actually a complete blackout on using any of the
footage so I spent three days hiking and a week and a half making this video and
I'm not sure if I can actually even upload it so worst case I've got a video
that I can watch myself and show my family. Best case I've emailed the
relevant people and they're going to get back to me so it could possibly be on
YouTube within a few weeks but saying that it was a great experience and
something that I'm extremely grateful for being given the opportunity to be a
part of.
Another day. You know being a four wheel driver is something that anyone with an
off-road vehicle and some basic skill and knowledge can get stuck into pretty
much straight away and I started with zero gear and just sort of acquired this
stuff that I needed as I went so the first thing that I bought was an air
compressor and I also bought a tyre repair kit and a digital tire pressure
gauge and I've also made a whole video on that subject I'll link it just in the
description above if you're watching this on YouTube so I won't go into it in
too much detail and I'll put a link to it just above if you're watching this on
YouTube somewhere at the top there but what I will say now is an air compressor is
one of those absolute must-have bits of kit for your four-wheel drive if you
intend on going off the highway in fact they're good to have when you're driving
on the highway the reason for that is simple. Say you get a flat tyre well no
worries you just chuck on your spare tyre yeah but what happens if that spare
tyre or another tyre for that matter has a problem and is flat or blows out or
whatever well then you've got a problem. Now you could go and grab a tyre repair
kit and plug the hole but then you're still got to fill it up somehow with
the air that's come out of it but perhaps for us 4xers the most practical use
of an air compressor is to re-inflate tyres that we've purposefully deflated
and that might be because you're driving on sand or mud or rocks or whatever the
condition might be. Now if you are one of those people (which I'll put my hand up
I've been guilty of before) who run tyres at highway pressure off road you do run
the risk of firstly prematurely wearing out your tyres and potentially a tyre
blowout which is essentially where your tyre just explodes and if your
traveling down the highway at 110 in the country and that happens to your car
well you can imagine I mean it can be fatal. And a lot of people (me again
included) have thought well I'll just wait till I get to the first servo it
can't be too far away from the track and I'll reinflates my tyres now the problem
with running tyres that a low on pressure on the highway is again wearing
them out. You've got softer tyres, you've got more
grip that with more grip comes more wear and so don't be one of those people
who just decide to run the standard pressures that you always run your tyres
on the highway everywhere and wait till you get stuck to air down there. I am my
own worst enemy when it comes to that because it takes 10 minutes and you know
I get a bit excited I've hit the track drive for a while I start putting it
into high four I end up in low four and it's not until I'm well and truly down
the track that I even get out and air down. Now I'm no doubt wearing my tyres
out prematurely but also I've come to the realisation that the damage that
you're doing on the track may not be noticeable until you're heading home and
a lot of tracks we travel hundreds of kilometers down the highway so at any
point during that trip home over countless times of not taking care of
tyre pressures I'm potentially putting myself and my family
at risk. So I've made the conscious decision now whenever I get to a track
I've got an idea of what it's going to be like, the minute I start hitting
corrugations rather than speed up and try and fly over them which is taking
away control of your car I'll air down, slow down and I'm not only treating my
tyres correctly but I'm driving more responsibly as well. So if you're new to
four-wheel driving or for whatever reason you haven't got around to getting
yourself an air compressor well, stick it on your Christmas list.
What a perfect time of year to get yourself a bit of kit that will become
the most used bit of kit in your arsenal. Air compressors cost anything from 50
bucks to 900 dollars you can spend even more if you want you can spend thousands
of dollars on an air compressor. Generally
do you get what you pay for but I don't think you need to spend anywhere over a
grand that's for sure so my advice would be look for something around the 200 to
400 dollar mark and while you're there some other useful tools would be a
digital tire pressure gauge as well as tyre deflators and I'll put a link to
all that sort of gear in the description below and it's the gear that I think is
suitable and not just rubbish. So as I've sort of been going on about
now for a while learning about tyre pressures is one of the most valuable
skills that you can learn as a 4-wheel driver because it is the most effective
way of changing your car's performance of road because when you think about it
obviously the point of contact with the road is your tyres so essentially it's
the easiest mod that you can do to your car and it's completely free. Now
most of the time you are going to be deflating your tires,
however as I said before you must make sure that once you do hit the highway
again your re-inflating and that could even mean just a quick highway run that
is only a couple of kms. It's tempting to leave tyre pressures down but what
happens when you're running lower pressures on the highway is as I said
before wearing your tires out but more importantly if you do have low tyre
pressure on the highway and you take a corner you're running the potential of
running the tyre off the rim and that can lead to catastrophe. You can roll
your vehicle if that happens. Another bonus of deflating your tyre off-road
is it does preserve the track. You're not spinning wheels to climb over obstacles
as much as you are with fully inflated tyre because you are giving your tyres
more grip so it preserves the track. So the most obvious question is well what
tyre pressures should you run and unfortunately there is no magic formula
that works for every vehicle because there is a lot of
variables and everyone eventually develops their own preference as they
gain more experience in the type of conditions that they typically drive in.
So I'll give you my typical off-road situation. Normally driving from home I'll
drive along the highway of course say I'm following a river from beginning to
end down to the ocean. Start off with an unsealed road, corrugation maybe
bull dust that sort of thing as i'm traveling along it might get muddy and
boggy and then towards the coast obviously sand, sand dunes, some sharp
sandstone and beach driving and that's all in one day. So that's an awful lot to
be asking of your tyres and that's before you take into account the extra
weight that you take with your driving. You fill up your fuel tank or tanks, water
with your camping gear four wheel driving gear your tools, recovery gear not to
mention you might have the whole family in the car with you or a
camper trailer, caravan so all these factors we don't sort of think about
when we start driving off-road with our tyres. You need to factor in when you're
driving off-road particularly when it comes down to your tyres and
tyre pressure. Now the best advice that you're likely to get is from a tyre
center that either sold you the tyres or sells the same brand of tyre that you
are currently running on your four-wheel-drive because obviously these
guys are the experts so doing a little bit of homework before
you head out is a wise investment of your time but essentially the type of
pressures that you should be running on your four-wheel drive we based on
firstly the type of vehicle that you're driving plus all the other factors that
I mentioned before. All the extra weight that you're taking with you plus
anything else that may require special attention. So I'll give you an idea of
how I run my tyre pressures on my Hilux. So I've got a set of Yokohama Geolanders
they're 265's on the 16 inch rims and the recommended PSI for highway
use is 40 psi front and rear that's because I don't have a canopy or
anything like that so once I hit uneven, corrugated, unsealed roads I'll often
drop my tire pressures down 5 to 10 psi so then I'm sitting at around 30 to 35
psi and what that does is it softens the ride a little bit and it also protects
my tyres as they're a little bit softer so the sharp rocks that you're rolling
over aren't causing your tyres potential damage and if the ride gets
consistently rough I'll drop them another 5 to 10 psi and then I could be
sitting it around 25 psi and at that pressure you want to make sure that you
lower your speed a little bit don't exceed 70 kilometres an hour because
with lower tyre pressures what happens is you've run the risk of actually
running the tyre off the rim so you want to be careful of speed but as well
cornering, so if you take a corner quite sharp there's a lot of force going on to the edge of the tyre that's connected to the rim and you can actually
just peel it off it's potentially as disastrous as a tyre blowout. And then
once I reach a section of track that requires me to put my four wheel drive
into low range I'll drop my tyres once more so then I'm sitting at about 20 psi.
Now when you're getting down to these sorts of pressures it's all about
traction so I keep my speed down to around 50 kilometres an hour and I'm
very mindful of this stage with regards to cornering and speed. Now there are
situations where I drop my tyre pressures even lower than 20 psi and
that's mainly when I'm doing beach driving, driving on sand, driving through dunes
and the most tempting thing to do when driving on the beach is to go up nice
and close to the water's edge because when you look at it, the sands a lot
firmer there but the problem with that is sure it is firmer but if you do get
bogged very close to the water's edge if the tide comes in you're gonna
get your car swamped with seawater and goodbye car. There's plenty of YouTube
videos of four-wheel drive fails don't become one of those guys. So in those
situations what I'll do is I'll drop my tyres even further and I'm sitting at
around 15 psi and that's just my benchmark pressure if I do find that my
tyres are spinning or I'm getting bogged I'll drop them right down and I'll go
down to 10 psi however as I've previously mentioned you've really got
to be careful with really low pressures in your tyres especially beach driving
where you tend to keep a little bit of momentum going a little bit of speed to
keep yourself on top of the sand but essentially what you're doing is at 10
psi you've doubled the tyres footprint on the road so the tyres able to
essentially float on top of the sand and you shouldn't have to be racing along
the beach just to keep yourself on top. You want to be extremely careful if you
go and take a turn to get off the beach to quick your tyres come off and I have
seen that a few times with guys. Not doing the wrong thing, not driving like
idiots but their speed was just a little bit too high as they came off the beach
and it's really hard to try and change a tyre in soft sand
and it's also extremely dangerous not a place you want to be with a tyre that needs replacing.
On the subject of beach driving, I've actually got some trip
notes complete with GPS coordinates and turn-by-turn instructions that will
allow you to print them off and just take them with you and read them as you
go with a little bit of preparation beforehand of course and if you haven't
ventured north of Lancelin before then perhaps this trip might be of
interest to you. I often neglect going north in favour of
heading south for beach locations for my fourby but if you haven't been up that
way in your 4WD before definitely at least check it out and the trip notes
head from Lancelin all the way up to Sandy Cape and 99% of that trip is
offroad. It's definitely a trip to consider taking at least two to three
days to drive and if you're into fishing and taking in the sights then plan to take
even more. I'll link it in the description below or you can just head
to my website and look under the blog section epicdriveswesternaustralia.com
The trip starts in Lancelin which is a really really popular tourist spot
that gets extremely busy on the weekends and holidays but the sand dunes there
are worth checking out if you haven't been up that way before.
And from there heads north to Sandy Cape stopping in it places like Dide Bay, Wedge
Island, Grey, Hangover Bay, The Pinnacles, Cervantes, Lake Thetis, South Hanson Bay,
and Jurien Bay. If your new to camping and you're considering doing this trip
there's some things that you would want to consider taking with you. You don't
need much however taking the right gear will make your trip that much more
comfortable and memorable. And the trip notes and all that are completely free,
all I ask is that you do go for the right reasons and respect the track. If we all
do our bit to keep the area clean then places like this will remain pristine
and hopefully open for offroader's well into the future.
Now for this trip besides your usual camping gear (which I'll cover in more
detail in a future episode but,) you'll need a decent shovel with a long handle
so you can dig your car out of deep sand if you get stuck on the beach. A set of
Max Tracks or the equivalent like Treadz any recovery board, some sand pegs for
your tent, plenty of Suncream, hats sunnies and on board UHF, if you've got
the ability to attach it a sound flag to help make yourself visible whilst you're
cruising through the dunes, an air compressor is a must,
tyre de-flatores, digital tyre pressure gauge all the things I mentioned before,
fishing gear if you into that, snorkeling or diving gear and don't forget your
bathers and a towel. There's so much up that way that in fact
you need to really take multiple trips to see it all. It's often a few degrees
warmer as well than Perth so make sure you factor that one in before you head
out in the middle of summer and it's also a great place to visit in winter.
Because you do often get slightly sunnier days even though you're only a
couple of hours north and one of the places that really interests me up that
way is Wedge Island, it's a cray fishing village where I guess essentially you
could call them squatters were permitted to enter into lease agreements with the
local government back in the day and the makeshift town is named after a
wedge-shaped island which just basically sits just off the beach. For my knowledge
there's around 350 shacks left at Wedge. Unfortunately the oceans been claiming a
few and because of that the shacks are now being considered unsafe for
habitation and many of the people who use the shacks for fishing holidays continue
to fight to keep their beach shacks. There's even people who live there
permanently and if they're forced to leave they'll essentially have nowhere
else to go. It is a really sad story and a loss to the community as a whole. That
places like this are slowly disappearing off the map.
I mean sure the shires argument that the shacks are unsafe (and maybe some are
some just need a little bit of TLC) but I think the real argument in all of this,
it's land isn't it. What some consider an eye saw others consider an icon. Who knows maybe
in the future this area will be home to big mansions and manicured lawns, fancy
cars, big boats, it really wouldn't surprise me. So I've been up that way a
couple of times now and I guess every 4wd / Camping adventure wouldn't be
complete without a bit of a war story and there was a section of the track
and i'll put the GPS coordinates at the bottom, where the two times that I've
been there I've had issues, both times. The first time was just a rookie mistake
really, hadn't been four wheel driving long and out there luckily with another vehicle
and it was just an off camber section between two small sand dunes it was
nothing really and as I went down my car went with the
tide of the sand essentially and I got wedged in between the two sand dunes and
I could not go anywhere. I had one sand dune directly in front of me and the back
of the other small sand dune at the rear of me. We were there for a while and as we
were there other people started rocking up and all the ideas that they had, to me,
just sounded like damaging my car for no real need until one guy rocked up who
knew the area and he just drove around the chicken track which none of us saw reversed up
and was able to snatch me out and we were just fortunate that it was at a
weekend and we were there with a guy who knew he was on about. I did learn a lot
that day. And, then about a year later I went up there on a solo trip and had the
boys with me I knew about the section I knew it was coming up I had in my mind
prepared for it and exactly the same thing happened again. This time though
because I was more knowledgeable about tyre pressures, I had the right gear. I
did manage to get myself out of there relatively quickly but it does go to show
you that even when you are prepared things still do go wrong. It's not about
preparing for if they go wrong it is about preparing for
when they go wrong. If your new to four-wheel driving you will soon learn that and I
just hope that if something like that does happen to you that it doesn't put you
off. You've got to remember, you're very very unlikely to run into serious
trouble and as long as you go prepared where you can get yourself out. I mean it
is adventure after all and with every adventure there comes risk. But as well
as having war stories, every adventures got its success story and it was the
third trip that I took up this way that I discovered a really nice campsite north
of Sandy Cape away from all the people right on the edge of the water with a
couple of tiny little Bay's that we had to ourselves.
I'll put the GPS coordinates down the bottom there for you but as I said
before you go there treat it with respect.
The thing that I don't want to happen is have some idiots go there and leave their
rubbish, beer cans, cigarette butts, big-ass bonfire. It makes us all look bad.
It gives everyone the impression that we're just a bunch of bogans. But this spot is
ideal for fishing, you get dolphins, fish jumping out the
water, it is paradise. We were there towards the end of summer so a little bit cooler
so I'd imagine if you are going during the long weekend or during the school
holidays or that sort of thing then well yeah it's probably gonna be busy. We were
there during the week we had as far as the eye could see all to ourselves. I guess
we're getting towards the end of this podcast / YouTube video
however you're watching it and I want to leave you guys with a question.
whereabouts in WA would be your most memorable four-wheel drive / camping
experience. It might have been when you were younger and different now. It might
have been something recent that you've done. If you do make videos link them in the
description below. I've started a Facebook community page
so if you search for Epic Drivers Western Australia join the group, I'll
happily let you join. Leave us with a story or a funny meme or anything really.
Keep it relevant to four wheel driving in Western Australia, camping, hiking
whatever as long as it's to do with adventure and gotta have a bit of a
sales pitch here I've got merch. I've got four-wheel drive inspired shirts, check
them out at my Etsy store in the description below and on that note I'll
leave you to it. Thanks for watching Epic Drives Western Australia and remember
this. Life is a journey, best discovered four-wheel drive. Catch
ya!
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