Jason in his nice shiny Jeep, Brennan in his massive 79, nice truck by the way!! and me in the old beaten up Disco met at Heyfield, all within 2 minutes of each other, headed to the pub for a cold refreshment and meal after a hot drive. A pot was enjoyed and a quick chat before the decision was made to head to camp and have a cook up there so off we went to Chynes Bridge camp ground. A great spot right on the river so we collected some wood, did half a set up then went to the river with a can in hand and had a great cool down. Then the realisation set in that the other campers that where already set up where in fact a bunch of neanderthols who made it quite clear they didn't want any other campers in "their" camp ground, a few came and went but we just settled in for the night and enjoyed the bush TV.
Saturday morning we where up and out by 8.30 and eager as to get onto some challenging tracks, 10km up the black top and we where on the dirt and letting air out, let the fun begin. Burgoyne trk was an nice way to start with most of it pretty easy with a couple of tricky, dry, rocky and loose sections to keep us interested. Then onto Mount Margaret Trk and up B1 track Dingo Hill Trk witch had some great climbs and a few sections that needed a bit of concentration and a well sorted 4by, this is where things got interesting with the 79 wanting to lift wheels and with a big lift and roof top tent it was decided to pull out the winch to settle the front back down...We then headed up Caledonia River trk, had a swim and some lunch onto Butcher country link trk and finally onto Butcher Country Trk. We where planning to canp along Butcher somewhere but the kms kept ticking by and nothing was jumping out at us so we just pushed on through the heat and dust. Thank god for air conditioning as it was hot and sweaty very quickly after the lunch dip.
Camp ended up being all the way up atHowitt Plains Hut, so after 10 hours of great driving and 100km of some challenging tracks it was great to pull up, set up camp and have some cans, dinner and more cans. The sad thing was yet another display of discracefull human behaviour. Some low life piece of shit had done a crap in the middle of the camp ground and left it and his paper just sitting there, 60m from a perfectly good pit toilet, no wonder government wants to shut half the camping spots...
Sunday morning we had a great breaky of scambled eggs and half a kg of bacon to start the journey homeward. King Billy track led us to Bluff trk both of which had some fun bits but overall where only rated as easy to medium but the views are amazing and you really have to realise how lucky we are in Australia!!!!!!!!!!!!
We arrived at Lovicks Hut at about 10.30, what a beautiful camp spot and great hut, well that was untill we found the fire pit out the front still smoldering and full of cans, stubbies and food scraps and wrappers. Some people are a total discrace to the human race and should be shot on site, oxygen thieves and inconsiderate ass holes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! BUT this is how stupid they are, the whole group had signed the visitors book, complete with obsenities, names and where they had come from on the 5/3 and we where there early on the 6/3 so pretty obvious it was them, as soon as I can work out how to load photos from my phone the evidence will be all over the net on every forum I am on, and thats a few. Pricks, I only wish we had arrived while they where still there!!
We then did 16 mile jeep trk to Bindaree rd, up The monument Trk which is almost back to its great self after being gradded a while back so provided one last fun climb then left onto Clear hills Trk and across the top of Mt Sterling with more amazing views and then over toward Buller and onto the blacktop to head home.
Thanks to Jason for organising the trip and thanks to Jase and Brennan for making it a great weekend. All up we covered 165 km of tracks most of it was easy with a few medium to hard sections along the way. Anyone with good tyres, small lift some bash plates and a winch could do this trip without issues. Fuel is available at Heyfield on the way in and at Mansfield on the way out so 250km is total between fuel stops.