Duck Creek Road, Beaudesert and cult45's Landcruiser Rebirth

[cult45]

It all started innocently enough, I'd just had the 2" over stock EFS system installed and TRE's replaced on my month old [to me] BJ74 LX. Hadn't been off the tarmac in 7 years. So I heard about this spot about an hour and a half drive away in a pokey little town called Beaudesert. It's on the other side of the Gold Coast hinterland and just a magic spot. I wanted to see what the 13B-T was capable of and potentially test out my factory PTO.

So I fuelled up, grabbed some apples, nuts, water and coffee and hit the road. Had Dire Straits cranking on the way down to drown out the 105km/h speed sensor [still yet to be removed] and drove the hour out to Beauy. It's a beautiful drive and the day was pretty damn fine, a few clouds gathering but nice and warm to break up the terrible winter rains we've had. The landscape south and west of Brisvegas is beautiful, it's like something out a film. Long low timber fences running for miles and neat rows of green, green crops or grazing fields for cattle. Its virtually all farmland aside from the small towns along the way and one of my favourite drives to do on a lazy Sunday.



Once you pass Beauy the road drops down to two lanes [one each way], the fences become more unkempt and the quality of the road disappears quite quickly. Often you have to put a pair of wheels on the shoulder to let another car pass you. 20 mins later I saw the sign.

WARNING: On uploading my pics I begin to notice that they are in fact all terrible. Nonetheless I press on..

 

[cult45]

I wasn't quite sure what to expect but I drove along for another couple of kays, a Mitsubishi Canter 4WD in front with a quad and a red heeler in the tray, and a HiLux behind. The HiLux was signed up with Leighton's logos and was dead clean so it must have been Dad and son away for the day. Good to see.

Eventually the Canter pulled off on a pair of ruts marked Private Property and the HiLux and I continued on. Round the next bend the bitumen stopped and the dirt began. A nice pair of deep ruts and an IFS 100 series coming down, the 1HD-T idling away with the high idle modern diesels have. It sounded great. I pulled over to lock the hubs, the HiLux took off [damn new in-cab technology] up the ruts. After getting the hubs in the 100 series was right next to me so I flagged them down. An older couple, really lovely too, spending 3 months touring this great state of ours. The truck was nice, twin ARB lockers, 2" lift, bigger exhaust, a winch and one of those roof mounted pop-up tents. It was here I discovered that my day out was just driving a track. I'd assumed it was a park of sorts and there'd be only a handful of people there, allowing me the space [privacy] to learn to use my PTO. Cool, I was up for a track. Oh and they added 'There's 30 or 40 cars in front of you.' WTF?? Busy track. I let them go, thanked them for their help and got my backside trackside for the first time in a loooong time.

The track meandered along for a little bit, then came to serious looking gate and a suggested donation of $3 a car as this was maintained by the owners of the land. I only had a bloody EFT card so I threw in all 35c I had. I'll get em next time. I cracked the serious gate, idled in and locked it behind. I looked up at the road ahead. No going back now. So I shifted into first and drove on..

 

[cult45]

The track slowly began to ascend a nice steep mountain, with grades up to 15%. EVery 100 or so metres there was those speed-bump things that [I think] they use to allow for water to runoff. Some of them were badly washed out on the upper side but nothing too difficult.

About five minutes in I came across this trayback parked up on some blokes driveway. Folks round here do stuff like that. Sometimes the terrain is so bad they'll keep a quad permanently at the gate and use that to traverse the track up to the house cause the LandCruiser won't make it.

With views like this it's not hard to see why it's a popular track.

 

[cult45]

The track began to slowly deteriorate [and by deteriorate I mean get more enjoyable] and soon the concrete-hard dirt began to soften into nice little muddy washouts and knee-deep pools of filthy brine. Great stuff. THe 13B-T rarely got out of first and aside from the uber-sensitive throttle it loved every minute of that track. The track was going great. Along the way I passed a 75 troopy 11 seater full of young kids, the Dad in front idling slowly past me, the kids in the back all yelling 'Bye!!' in unison. Classic kid behaviour. Made me smile. A Nissan Patrol gave way to me on a narrow stretch [righty so] but I couldn't help myself and spooted a side track I had to investigate. It was black clay-like mud and admittedly I took the easy way up. I don't like diggin at the best of times - but diggin yourself out of black clay mud because you're a bit rusty and picked a bad line? No thanks. I got to the end of the little 100m track only to nearly drive into a pond that wouldn't look out of place in Crocodile Dundee. The surface was covered with a fine layer of some kind of grass that blended in extremely well with it's surroundings. It was miles from the ocean and halfway up a mountain so there was definitely no crocs, but jeez it looked nasty. I parked up nearby and took a nice shot of the truck showing how bloody good it looks at home where it's supposed to be.

 

[cult45]

The black clay-like mud and my lifted truck.

 

[cult45]

Moving right along I got myself back on deck for the climb to the top. Apparently there was a cafe at the top [God knows how much business this thing gets or why anyone would choose to put a cafe at the end of a 4WD track] but I stayed a believer in the latte at the end of the tunnel.

A couple of blokes on BMW bikes passed me [The Long Way Round style - may have even been Ewan McGregor and Charlie Boorman] but they avoided the ever growing pools of brown brine. Fair enough too.

As I climbed I was amazed at how few obstacles stopped my truck. I mean everyone raves about the 13B-T and 7x series trucks but this little thing could not be stopped. It articulated it's way through muddy bog holes and over entire fallen trees with ease. Maybe it's my driving [I like to use momentum more than horsepower] but my little BJ74 could not be stopped.

A few two-stroke dirt-bikes zoomed past me like I was standing still [and let's face it, it's a diesel so I pretty much was] and a bunch of Navara's with wives in the front and kids in the back. More Nissan Patrols and a few Pajero's. The track was so narrow in parts that often you or the other bloke would have to pull over in a precarious spot to let the other pass. Usually in my world such things are accompanied by a wave, but a pair of blokes in a pair of Tritons breezed past without so much as a nod. I thought 'Aresholes go 4WDing too mate,' and left it at that.

 

[cult45]

After more families, bog-holes, dirt-bikes, Nissan Patrols and the wayward HJ60 I made it to the top of the mountain. It was absolutely stunning and is it any wonder these crew live out here.

 

[cult45]

..but no cafe. The dirt road stopped at a t-intersection with a sign saying

<-- NSW 33 | O'Reilly's Farm 5 -->

Hmmm.. I scratched my head momentarily as I unlocked the hubs and asked myself one life's greatest questions: O'Reilly's or NSW? I detest New South Welshmen rugby league players for about three games mid-year and I'd been to Ireland so O'Reilly's it was. Now the only question left to be answered was what to do with my life..

O'Reilly's was the cafe. Thank the Lord! But holy s***! There were: three full-sized buses, forty cars of all descriptions [including a lifted 100 series with 18" black rims and Mickey Thompson muddies], a bunch of half-ethnic early twenties that were ridiculously good looking, rain pelting down, screaming kids running everywhere and a 50 year-old woman changing her shirt in the middle of it all. And to answer your questions yes she was largish and yes she was wearing a bra. I looked around at the melee and remembered back to the track.

Life is much simpler on the track..

 

[cult45]

I ducked inside, ordered my large latte to go, realised I had no cash, saw the $10 minimum spend for EFT, added a muffin [and 2km to my afternoon run], tallied it up to $9.75, added a Golden Rough chocolate [and another kilometre] and prayed my overdue credit card statement hadn't seen me cut off. Not so much because I was tired and needed a coffee, but because there was a hundred bloody people lined up behind me! The gods of finance granted me my wish and I packed up my newly acquired calories, headed back for the truck and hit the road. Too much noise for me. The view [had it not been raining, or had I had a proper camera to really get some light in there] was delectable, the food smelt delish and the prices were better than back in the city. There's a good chance I'll be back.

I balanced my calories back to the truck, cranked it over and one-handedly reversed, didn't run over the kid on the scooter, selected first and drove off, leaving the half-ethnic stunners and screaming kids to fight amongst themselves. I drove back down the 5km to the turnoff and re-performed my antiquated hub-locking routine ready for the trip back down..

 

[cult45]

..until I noticed this:

 

[cult45]

I found a nice spot under a gum tree and shut her down, popping the bonnet. WHat was I looking for? How the hell do I know? Ok, I'm not totally useless. I was looking for a missing belt or a loose wire. Found the latter. I fumbled around under that hot bonnet for a few minutes [man the bay of a BJ74 is PACKED] but couldn't sight where this thing plugged into. So I let it go and left it up to fate. Didn't have a multi-meter to check if it was still charging so I dropped the bonnet and went back to those glorious mud-holes and washouts.

About halfway down I came across a side track I'd missed earlier. Hmmm, it had a pretty hefty looking series of ledges on it, but fxxx it, I got a lift kit, right? I can do anything..

Surprisingly I did do anything and climbed the hell out of this thing on my second attempt, this time with a better line and low-range. The pics don't really do it justice but it was a bit of a mother for little old me, keeping in mind this was my first time behind the wheel in nearly 7 years. Each ledge was nearly a metre straight drop from the one below it and there was about four of them, three one one side and one on the other, so it was a lesson in articulation. Needless to say, thanks to EFS and Paul at Redcliffe Springs my BJ74 is quite well-spoken now.

 

[cult45]

Whilst there were lots of muddy pools and little bits of soft track here and there it was mostly rock-hrad dirt, pounded by countless 4WD's, often exposing the scattered rocks buried underneath. As time goes on these rocks become more and more exposed [as I'm sure you all know] and it is the WORST terrain to drive on. Especially on leaves. Correction: especially on NEW leaves that have done all of 300km. One stretch of the track is quite long and straight but rough and I'd seen a brand-spanking new GU Patrol 4.2 turbo coming at me, it's occupants riding comfortably on all four coils despite the terrible terrain. I recall hating them and their fancy technology and then despising my 'cart' springs, designed and used since the Stagecoaches of the late 1700's. Ok that was a little dramatic, but I did have spring envy and I wondered of Gary Waggoner's UZJ-45 would take much to copy..

The rest of the trip was uneventful, just idling downhill that wonderful 13B-T and H55F taking me down safely all the way back to the very serious gate.

 

[cult45]

I got back onto the tarmac and made my way home, trying desperately to snap all the Landcruiser's I could find to feed the bottomless pit that is Mud. I saw bugger all which is odd - after all this was the country and this is the spiritual home of the Landcruiser.

 

[cult45]

The drive back was stunning.

 

[cult45]

My non-charging ammeter gauge didn't slow me down so I can assume that the loose wire was indeed the culprit. I'll check it out tomorrow when there's less mud and more light. Soon I was within sight of home.

 

[cult45]

Oh and this guy thought he was the man. I didn't understand, I guess was a Jeep thing.

 

[cult45]

My findings? Duck Creek Road is a great little track. It's probably just over an hour each way, and the terrain is quite varied. Unless you stray off the main track you won't need lockers or probably even an LSD. I would even wager that you could do it in 2WD if you knew what you were doing. Actually that reminds me a trip my mate did to the tip [Cape York] in the 80's in a 302W powered ZB Fairlane with nothing more than an LSD. And that was before they graded the road. His pic should cause a stir hehe..

 

[cult45]

I digress..

So I may just try Duck Creek next time in 2WD. There is some challenging driving but nothing that can't be handled with some forethought and a good line. Difficulty I would say is about a 4/10 [with 1 being tarmac and 10 being Lions Back at Moab (based purely on this video as I have never been there: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6Gi_aCVtUw&feature=related)]

If you get a chance and you're in SEQ give it a shot, it's a good drive!

In short - I'm back baby. My mind is now wandering to 3-way fridges, roof-mounted racks, snorkels and timber decking inside the back. It's good to be back off the tarmac!

More pics next time.

Boom

 

[JJY93]

Looks like a nice day out might try it some time
I saw a sticker having a go at the jeep thing stickers it was
"yeah I got your jeep thing.....
Now it hurts when I pee"

 

[Josie'sLandCruiser]

Hi All:

Thanks for sharing with us!

Those BJ74s sounds like a great rig! What sort of fuel "mileage" did you get on this trip?

Regards,

Alan