Whether it is a mechanical failure, a crash, being bogged, or even being rather lost, doing so while competing in a rally is a relatively “safe” eventuality because there are other competitors, the organisers (such as a sweep car) or your service crew all nearby to offer assistance. What’s more, unless you are extremely lost, everyone has a pretty good idea where you are, even though back in the 1970s and 80s we didn’t have GPS or mobile phones or satellite tracking. However, when we used to go out surveying, mostly for the purposes of organising a rally, but sometimes to just update maps and explore an area, we were often on our own. Generally no-one knew exactly where we were, except in a very general sense, and of course, we didn’t have those aforementioned modern technological devices (GPS or mobile phones). Therefore, breaking down or being bogged could suddenly become a big deal. Frankly, looking back on it, we did some amazingly stupid things and it’s a bit surprising that we never had to have the search parties come looking for us!
It is perhaps a remarkable testament to the reliability of our rally cars (mostly Datsun 1600s, sometimes Toyota Corollas) that we very rarely had a mechanical failure. One of my earliest recollections of being stranded was with my brother, Noel, in his Corolla surveying for the 1974 Derrick, down the east side of the Grampians on a sandy track far west of Moyston (about here). Something failed on the car, perhaps the starter motor, and whatever it was, we eventually decided that we couldn’t get it going. I recall that we walked many kilometres before reaching a farm house from which we could phone Noel’s wife (he was living in Stawell, fortunately only about 40 km away). I can’t recall how we were extricated but I think there may have been some towing involved!
Some of my most memorable bogs were while surveying for the Alpine Rally. In 1976 I was surveying with Val Barclay over the Easter period. I was determined to explore some new territory way south of Mount Buffalo. We explored the road far south from Dangdongadale (Abbeyards Road) which was fabulous – superb, smooth twisty mountain road. But I need to be able to link it across from the Buffalo Valley to the Buckland Valley. We picked up a track (probably Camp Creek Track, see here) that lead up along the ridge but it was decidedly 4WD territory but I persevered, thinking that perhaps we could transport over the roughest parts or maybe go in the other direction. I don’t think we actually got stuck on that side, but we wasted a lot of time exploring before eventually returning northwards through Myrtleford and on to Bright where we were staying. The next day we headed down the Buckland Valley to have a look from the other side. Again, a beautiful road to nowhere, and we explored several ways of linking the two roads together. At one stage I nosed the car a bit too far down a hill and it got steeper and steeper. It was too narrow to turn around and it was too slippery to reverse, so we ended up winching the car about 50 metres back up the hill to where it wasn’t so steep. This took about three hours and a great deal of energy. Later on that trip I got stuck in a bog hole in Two Mile Creek Plantation near Bright and had to winch again for an hour or so. All in all, it was not a very productive Easter!
A somewhat similar disaster occurred a month or so before the 1977 Alpine when Kate and I were going up to Bright for a few days to check out a few things, visit the Forests Commission etc. We were travelling up on a Thursday night, as I recall, and decided we would just checkout a particular road in the Warrenbayne Pine Forest south of Benalla. Well, it was wet and slippery and we slid into a gutter on the side of the road and with nothing to winch off, we were stuck. Of course it was night time, dark, cold and then, to top it off, a thunderstorm came over and drenched us. We walked for many kilometres without a torch (but with frequent lightning flashes), out of the forest to the north and not knowing what houses were around, we started to walk north towards Benalla. By this time it was about 10 pm and we saw a car coming towards us. It was a lady returning from a meeting in town and they lived back down the road beyond the turnoff into the forest. She said there were no more houses the way we were walking and it was about 20 km to Benalla, so we had better come and stay with her. We bedded down in her lounge room, having been tossed a few blankets. I’m quite certain she thought we were completely stupid, and she was probably right! Next morning she gave us a lift into Benalla where I fronted at the Forests Commission hoping to find Geoff Portman who worked there at the time. Alas, he was not around, but the introductions were enough to secure the services of one of the forestry officers who was going down that way anyway. He took us to our abandoned car and towed it out of the ditch and we continued on to Bright.
While surveying for the 1978 Alpine with a friend, Andrew Trevyllian as companion, we got stuck down what turned out to be a no-through road towards the north end of Stanley Plantation. It was wet, cold and muddy and because it was a new plantation area, there was nothing to winch off. We were stuffed. It was about 4 pm and would soon be dark so we started walking out. It must have been about 10 kilometres into Yackandandah where we wandered into the pub at about 7 pm looking like a couple of drowned rats. We dried off, ordered some food and rang a friend in Wangaratta who came and picked us up about an hour later. We ended up staying with him and he drove us out the next day, fitted some chains to the car and drove it out. Again, a less than successful weekend!
It was perhaps surprising that while surveying the 1977 Riverland Rally and 1978 Ready Plan Rally, that we never got seriously stuck or broken down. We did a lot of distance and were often in quite remote country, such as traversing the Sunset Country or meandering through the station country north of Mildura. We were perhaps a little bit more careful and often took two cars, but then again, often we didn’t. The closest I came to a disaster was when I hit a kangaroo on the course check for the 78 event and was perhaps 100 km north of Mildura in very remote country. Somehow we managed to coax the car back to Mildura in order to effect repairs to the holed radiator.
The “mother of all bogs” beset Noel and I when we were out near Birdsville doing some reconnaissance for the 1979 Repco Round Australia. That story is told here but it certainly broke all records for time stuck (about 15 hours)
After the 79 Round Australia my competition and, indeed directing days were over. However, during the 1980s I had some good times acting as Course Checker for Ross Runnalls who ran three long distance events. The first was in western Victoria (the 1981 Derrick), the second in East Gippsland (the 1984 Derrick), and the third in the Alps of north east Victoria (the 1987 High Country Trial). Ross was a forester and he lived at various postings, including Bairnsdale, Swifts Creek and Ballarat. We generally did the course checks in his clapped out Datsun 1600 or in Geoff Portman’s similarly styled Datsun. Geoff and Ross were noted at the time because they had won the Australian Rally Championship in 1981 and 82, but they were rough and fun foresters at heart, and loved the challenge of getting their old Datsun 1600s to weird places. They even took them to Cape York one year!
The first of these events was planned to start in Horsham, go overnight to Ouyen then daylight through the Sunset Country to Murrayville, then overnight south to Nhill and further south, eventually finishing back in Horsham. That last division explored some country far north of Hamilton that we had not touched in the 1975/76 Derricks, including the Little Desert. Unfortunately it turned out to be one of those very wet years, and the long weekend that we spent doing the course check would probably have been better done in a boat than a car. We spent more time bogged than we did moving, or so it seemed. The sandy areas were not too bad but some of the silt based forestry areas and shire roads were absolute nightmares. We winched off trees, fence posts and anything else we could find. Ross’s schedule for the course check was blown apart, but we just kept going. We checked quite a lot of the Sunset Country at night and then had a late dinner at a campsite down near Murrayville. Next day we headed down to Nhill and got severely stuck a couple of times on some easements, then further south, in the Little Desert, we were running on a mostly straight track from west to east quite late in the day (probably about here). There was so much water around that the only time we saw the road was when it went over a sand dune. Everywhere else was about a foot deep in water - just incredible. We got stuck at one stage in some ruts and it was a case of taking off the shoes and wading around, getting the winch out and pulling it out off a clump of mallee scrub. We had to be careful not to put anything down because we couldn’t find it again in the water! Geoff always had a great sense of humour in these times of adversity and asked me to calculate how long it would take to get to the end of the section if we winched the whole way. We did get there but it was well and truly dark.
Runnalls, ever the optimist, then said we should still check another section in the forest SE of Duffholme (west of Mount Arapiles) so we dived into this boggy piece of forest at about 8 pm on a Monday night. I needed to be back in Melbourne for work on Tuesday morning, so I got a little aggravated when we got seriously bogged yet again. This one took us a long time to get out of, and it was raining and cold. Runnalls eventually came into the forest also and found us and so helped with the extrication. It was probably about 10 pm before we finally headed for Melbourne, about 5 hours drive away! It had been a very long long weekend! The event itself was nearly as bad a disaster. The weather hadn’t improved - in fact the whole of north western Victoria seemed to be soaked. Runnalls rerouted the first section in the Wail Forest near Horsham and Portman and I checked it on Friday afternoon before the start that night. New route instructions were being hand written and photocopied at the start! Unfortunately Runnalls misjudged people’s ability in sand and more than half the field got stuck on the first section. Ouch! The rest of the night went reasonably well, although we had cut out several sections. It was nevertheless a fairly bedraggled group of competitors that assembled early next morning in Ouyen. Portman and I had been and continued to car zero the entire event so I got to see the conditions first hand. They were demanding to say the least.
Runnalls had decided to not go south of Murrayville and thus the Saturday night was planned to be a loop north of Murrayville rather than south to Hamilton. The daylight went OK although I have never seen the Sunset Country so wet - great sheets of water covered it in places and we slithered our way through at high speed, often not using the road itself but taking to the grassy verges in order to gain traction. Most people seemed to enjoy the daylight although a navigational sting in the tail at Murrayville brought a few people unstuck. I discussed the conditions with Runnalls and the general tiredness of the remaining crews and we decided not to run the night sections but to declare the event finished at that point. Most people seemed to agree with the decision, except Noel who was in third place, navigating for David Jones, and fancied they could still win. All in all, a good event totally spoiled by atrocious weather. You can read more about this event here.
