Vehicle Tests > Overlander 4WD of the Year

Day 3
With a belly full of camp oven roast pork and a hot cuppa off the dying embers of our campfire we hit the road on another hot dry day. Passing the historic town of Hill End we followed undulating country roads to the Mudgee road via Sofala and then passed through the oddly shaped sandstone mountains around Kandos, Rylstone and Bylong. A mix of secondary sealed roads and dusty back roads saw the vehicles touring ability, dust sealing, behaviour on corrugations, hill climbing and cornering all put to the test. We have a regime of changing vehicles every hour or so, so in one day each driver gets to drive each of the vehicles in a variety of terrain.

We crossed the New England Hwy just north of Muswellbrook and glided by the horse studs around Scone for a great lunch stop at the Moonan Flat Hotel. This prepared us for the long steep climb up the western side of the Barrington Tops and once through the dog fence at the top of that great climb we were back into the 4WD action with a nice run through rocky creek beds, a couple of steep pinches and some almost wet bogholes.

We descended the Tops to Gloucester and made a quick run up some very winding forest roads following the Knodingbul Forest road through some recently proclaimed national parks with odd names such as Tapin Tops and Cottan-Bimbang. This is a great drive through some huge trees and it seems to climb and climb forever. The road surface is unsealed but in good order and once again provided an insight into the handling, steering response and pulling power of the diesel engines.

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We overnighted at the delightful Mt Seaview Resort in relative luxury compared to our bush camp the night before. It had been a long day, nearly 11 hours of driving but this gave us the opportunity to gauge the comfort of each vehicle over an extended period.

Day 4
The next morning we went exploring around the Cells River Conservation Reserve and found some great 4WD tracks. These really tested the ascending and descending ability of each vehicle as well as over bonnet vision. We took a different return route to the south stopping off at the beautiful Ellenborough Falls which were quite a sight as they plummeted over a sheer cliff into the deep canyon below our feet. We stopped by the Manning River at Wingham for lunch and then followed the Pacific Hwy to Norm Needham's home north of Raymond Terrace where we used his hoist to see how each of the vehicles had fared from all the battering they had received over the past few days. This also gave us a chance to check the underside of each vehicle for its suitability to 4WD use.

Day 5
The final day was spent on a very soft Stockton Beach, which is always a great test of a vehicle. After a little fiddling with tyre pressures to get the right flotation happening we made several runs up and down the beach and over the many sand dunes swapping between each vehicle so we could all determine how they performed in similar conditions.

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