Camping at Cobbold Gorge

Apologies for the lateness in this post - things have been extremely hectic around here for the past few months, and unfortunately blog posting is something that has been squeezed out. This will just be a quick one, but hopefully it will be worth sharing!

In July, we headed out to Cobbold Gorge for a long weekend. This wasn't really the smartest idea we've ever made. You see, the first step is to drive half-way across the gulf till you hit Georgetown. then you turn south, and keep driving... I think it took us ~7hrs to get there. Not great when you've only got 3 days break, and you've just committed 2 of them to driving... Oh well!

So we got there late, and the campsite was crowded...

...which annoyed me. We were able to snag what was basically the last site. it wasn't great, but it was do-able. People continued to stream in after we had set up though, with one thoughtful mob setting up their camp encircling an abandoned tent. When the occupants of the tent returned from their bushwalk, they had no choice but to pick up their tent and walk it somewhere else. I think one of the other mobs took pity on them, and made some room. Why they pack you in this tight (or overbook so much) when they boast of having a 10,000 sq km property, I'll never know!

It's sounding like it was all bad, but in reality, it wasn't as bad as it sounds. Once we were settled in with a good fire and some dinner on, things got a lot better. No one in the camp ground was rowdy, and everyone was just content to enjoy the evening.




The next day we made the financially painful decision to go on the gorge tour. It was expensive, but why go all that way if you don't see the gorge itself? And this was when it all started to make sense.

The 4WD buses took us on a tour of the property, and told us the story of the history of the area and the early settlers.




We then split into two groups, with one group heading directly for the gorge, whilst our group climbed up the escarpment to the top of the range. On the way we stopped to look at an early settler "shelter" made in a rock cave, as well as the home of a colony of butterflies.

Who knew butterflies lived in large colonies, and called one particular spot home? There were thousands of them there. These butterflies eat the leaves of some plant that is apparently highly toxic to humans, and most other animals as well. If you or your cat was to eat a butterfly, you wouldn't have long to live, due to the high concentration of the toxin in their body. No one quite knows why they like to eat it, or why it doesn't harm them.
















After a brief rest at the top of the escarpment just watching the view, we headed back down to the start of the gorge, ready for the river tour. The river tour is run on a pair of aluminium launches, powered by an electric motor at each end, and charged up via solar panels up on the top of the escarpment. The width of the launches was dictated by the narrowest gap in the gorge, and they are custom built to these specifications! They have an electric motor at both ends because the gorge itself it too narrow to turn around in. When you get to the end, the driver simply swaps ends, and drives home backwards!


































Wow. What a place.

After the tour, we headed back to camp for dinner. We packed up and pulled out for home the next morning.




J was on driving duties, since I burnt my hand pretty badly whilst putting the camp fire out. Should have known better - I poured a jerry of water over the coals to make sure they were out. Obviously, as soon as the water hit the coals it turned to steam, which came straight back up towards my unprotected hand. Trust me, I won't be doing that again.

Unfortunately there was nothing for it than to head home - it's not as if there was a hospital within a couple of hour's drive (or flight) anyway. We jury-rigged a make-shift cooler using the green towel, a bucket of water and the AC vents on the car. It actually worked very well - a little too well even, as I had to regularly remove my hand from the cold, as it was turning blue. It certainly worked better than the instant-cold icepack we had in the First Aid kit, which turned out to be complete rubbish. Thankfully I got out of the situation with no lasting damage, other than a very sore hand for a couple of weeks. Very lucky indeed.

I probably wouldn't recommend a trip all the way out to Cobbold Gorge from Cairns, especially not just for a couple of days. But if you were heading past, you'd be silly not to stop over for two or three nights - it really is a very special place.

PROJECT - 4WD Shower System

This is a work in progress so far, but I thought I'd throw up what I've done up to now.

When we were over on Moreton Island at Christmas time, our trusty old solar shower bag sprung a leak. Also, the weight of hanging 20kg bags of water from the top spars of our shower tent took it's toll and broke one of the fibreglass spars. Not to mention that we had to lash the shower tent to our main tent to stop it falling over with so much weight up top - ask me how I know what it was about to do!

But generally, the lack of pressurised water sucked big time. The solar shower had always done us proud, and in the outback even a dribble of water over you washes the dust off and you instantly feel a million bucks. But the sand needed more pressure to get it off you - the dribbling water stream from the bag simply made it stick to you more. So I cracked it with the solar shower, and vowed I'd get something better.

When you're looking at your options when it comes to camp showers, there's a LOT of very different solutions out there, ranging from the fancy to the basic, and from the cheap to the expensive. You've also got to weigh up the size and weight of the various options - if it's too big or cumbersome, you're not going to take it with you. and if it's too hard to set up or takes to long to get going, you're not going to want to use it.

We settled on a heat-exchanger style setup. There are a number of companies who make kits in this style, and they're all pretty similar. You have a 12v water pump to draw water out of a bucket/creek, and pump it through a heat exchanger. It comes out the other end hot, and you plug in your shower rose, and instant hot shower. The heat-exchange is plumbed into the vehicle's cooling system, so running the engine gives an unlimited supply of hot water for showering, or washing up, or whatever you need hot water for. Keeping in mind that the vehicle's cooling system will normally run at around 110-degrees, you can end up with quite hot water (which can catch you out if you're not careful!).

These systems have their downsides - you've got to shower near the car, and you've got to have the car running to get hot water. But they're very compact, since everything mounts under the bonnet, all you've got to take with you is the pick-up hose and the shower hose/rose. And that sounds perfect to me. They're also very simple - no complex, fancy stuff to go wrong. And they're ready to use as soon as you are - no boiling water / forgetting to leave the solar shower bag in the sun, etc.

I had decided to use a Glind unit as they're a local QLD based company, and others have had very good experience with them. There are other options that are very similar - Twine is another Aus-based company that's been doing this for a while, Piranha have their Power Shower setup, and there's a mob called Helton that make heat exchangers in different shapes and sizes, and you supply whatever pump you want. The Glind units seemed ever so slightly better built (6 bolts holding the centre together, instead of 4 on the others for instance), the pumps that were included were a bit better, and their service and response to emails was good. So I was pretty sold on the Glind unit.

The only problem was that, being who I am, I didn't really want to spend $500 on the Original kit that included the big FloJet pump. It's listed as being able to draw water from a creek 10m away and up a 2m incline, and give really good pressure. I figured that pretty much every time I'd be using it, I'd be drawing from a bucket/jerry at the car, and thus could get away with the smaller pump. The pressure and flow rate might not have been as good, but it would be easier to mount under the bonnet. Another tick in the Glind's favour is that the smaller pump (the Little Ripper kit) is a fully marinised pump as well - meaning it's salt-water safe - important if you ever need to draw from a very salty bore, for instance. I found a lot of the others, with their smaller pumps, were not marine pumps.

So that was saving some money right there - the RRP on the Original kit is $500, the Little Ripper, $430. Then I happened to chance across an eBay seller in Bris, reselling the Glind kits at a discount. So I bought a Little Ripper kit from him, for the princely sum of $355. Wonderful - that was much more in my price range, and would do everything we wanted. Maybe not as fancy as the big kit, but that was OK. The next day I received the dreaded email from the seller advising me that Glind were out of stock of the smaller Little Ripper pumps. Rats - knew it was too good to be true. However, the factory was offering to upgrade me to the bigger Original kit for no extra charge! Awesome! Every now and then you kick a goal!

2 days later, the big box arrived at home:


How all of that fitted in that box, I'll never know. I certainly haven't been able to pack it all back away.

Of course, the downside to this was that instead of easily being able to fit the smaller pump under the bonnet, I had to squeeze in the big pump. A fellow on the Pathfinder forum had emailed me photos of his install. He had his pump (the bigger one too) mounted vertically, behind the grill and in front of the radiator. Initially I was going to put mine in the same spot, but the manual that came with the pump was *very* insistent that the pump was not sealed and should be kept away from water. It was also quite clear that the pump shouldn't be mounted motor-down. Now, obviously this other fellow has not had any problems with his set up, and he covers MANY more outback miles that I probably ever will. So I really don't think it matters. But I'd already had a spot picked out for the smaller pump, so I thought I'd see if the bigger one would fit.

An afternoon playing around with cardboard and a pair of scissors produced a workable template, which was easily cut out of some left over aluminium treadplate and bent up.


Pretty, it ain't. In a lot of spots, what looks like me not being able to cut a straight line is actually sections that have been clearanced from the plate to allow it to squeeze in...


...there, using existing bolt locations and without needing to move any of the existing equipment. It's a tight fit...


... as well as not having much headroom. Luckily, the angle that it's on mounts the highest part of the pump head inboard of the raised section of the bonnet. Whilst it touches the sound deadening under-bonnet lining (some paint dabbed on the pump head shows exactly where), it actually just squishes the lining a little bit, and still has heaps of room around it. Very happy with how it's turned out. It should be kept nice and dry up there, well away from any water, mud or muck.

We wired in a switch for the pump...


... right next to it, where it's protected nicely in the relay box. Our car is missing the left-most two relays on the top row, which provided a perfect spot for the switch and wiring. The switch has a little green LED on it to show when it's on. It's been wired back to the front control panel of the dual-battery system, and connected through a fuse box to the AUX battery feed.

A few days mucking around with the welder yielded:




A brace of 3 brackets, to hold the heat exchange nice and securely. The last two brackets took all weekend just in themselves - there's no way I could do this as a career - 3 days of fiddling x even a piddly hourly rate would bankrupt anyone!

The end result:


The heat exchanger is all mounted up and ready to go. It's held very securely - the left hand side is rock solid, with only a bit of flex capable on the right-hand side (with the single bracket). I'm hopeful that once the hoses are all connected it won't be a problem at all. It clears all pre-existing equipment, brake lines, vacuum lines and such, and still provides access to the transmission dipstick behind it.

For now, that's as far as I've got, with the heat exchange being fitted to the car tonight. Later in the week I'll need to plumb the HE into the car's heater/cooling system, and bleed any air out of the system and top the radiator/overflow tank. Half an hour spent scrounging through the heater hose bin at Supercheap (and generally making a pest of myself to anyone wanting to get down that isle) netted a pair of VB commodore hoses, which are the perfect shape and length, having a right-angle bend just near one end of them. Unfortunately they're ever-so-slightly too big, but I'm hopeful that with a pair of clamps holding them fast, they'll be perfect.

Once that's done, I need to hook up the shower lines. I need to source a different fitting for the pump - I need a second 90-degree outlet fitting to make things neat. Hopefully I can find a caravan accessory shop in town somewhere, as I think they'd be my best bet. I'm also going to drop into EnZed or Pirtek to have a chat about the fittings that I need - I want to be able to mount quick-connect fittings under the bonnet somehow to make setting up and packing up nice and quick, but don't know what my options are. So I'll speak to the experts, and see what they suggest.

So far I'm pretty happy with how it's coming along. We'll be testing it out at Easter, so it's got to be done by then! I'm hoping to have the coolant system hooked up this week, so we can run it around town for a couple of weeks and prove that there's no leaks or other issues.

Can't wait!

4WDing in Toowoomba at Christmas

When we were in Toowoomba for Christmas, Grant & Sam invited us along for a drive one afternoon. Since we'd just had the new, lifted suspension installed prior to the trip, I was keen to see how the car would perform.

As luck would have it, just as we arrived at Grant & Sam's place, it started bucketing down. Within minutes, Mum had called to let us know that there was a Severe Storm warning announced for the area, and that we really should consider just staying indoors. Not to let a pesky bit of weather get to us, we aired-down and raced off in front of the storm!




We wound though the outskirts of Withcott, and found ourselves on a fire trail behind an old quarry. It was an area that Grant knew well, with their 4WD club frequenting the rabbit's warren of tracks that criss-cross through the area. And it's easy to see why! Beautiful bush at every turn, and different levels of difficulty to keep everyone entertained, no matter your skill level.


After getting into the swing of things with some smooth gravel runs, and some steep descents, we soon came to our first challenge - a steep, washed-out hill climb.


After a quick walk to get a closer look...


...it was back into the trucks to drive it.




Piece of cake!

We followed the Pudge along as we wove around the bottom of the range.


We were managing to stay ahead of the rain, but there was still a considerably amount of water around from a previous storm the day before. Which just served to make things more fun!


The most challenging hill we came across on the day was a long uphill climb, containing both washed-out ruts, as well as bumps and holes which served up the perfect recipe for crossing-up the axles. A couple of different angles, some rock packing & track building, and a bit of right boot, and the mighty pathy climbed up with very little effort.










We have been stopped here by a combination of loss of traction (axles crossed-up, with the unloaded wheel simply spinning freely) and loss of momentum (big rock right in front of the passenger-side front wheel). For a more dramatic angle...


Thank goodness we have the bullbar fitted! The old bumper would have been crunched up hard against the ground and rocks by now, but the steel bullbar, with it's upswept side wings, allows the car to sit right against the ground, but not be damaged or get in the way. The rear end was flexing pretty well, considering the fact that the suspension was brand new, and hadn't had time to settle in and loosen up any.




Again, some rock packing was all that was required, along with a different angle of attack, and we were on our way. Unfortunately, what you can't see in those pics is the big rock that was in front of us on the driver's side. As we drove out of the hole, the back end of the car slide sideways down the track, and the rear bumper just kissed up onto the rock. Being plastic...


...it didn't take much to tear the paint off, scratch up the plastic, and pull the bumper away from the body. But that's 4WDing! You buy them to use them, not to sit them somewhere looking pretty! I'll pull it off myself, straighten up the mount points, flatten out and paint the bumper, and it'll be as good as new. Or I'll borrow Trev's welder again, and see about knocking myself up a replacement bumper out of steel to prevent the same thing happening in the future!

We carried on, until arriving at a lovely pile of rocks along the top of a ridge - the perfect thing to climb up onto!!!












And with that, we were basically at the end of the track! We popped out back onto the highway just past Highfields. A quick air-up at the Highfields servo, and then we ran back into Toowoomba, all in time for afternoon tea at Mum & Dad's place!

What a great afternoon!