For those of you that want the hardest Victoria has to offer, this was it!!!
By far the best, pound for pound itenary track listing I've done to date and the most hardcore loop I've ever done.

Trip report to come when I get a chance but none of the vehicle left without panel damage.
-all 3 cars couldn't open a door
My rig-
Rear quarters caved in both sides
Rear left tail light smashed
Rear left bumper gone
Tail light needing connecting via cable ties
Both side steps are now for the tip (bent like bananas and hanging on by 1 bolt each
Passenger door has a dentist in it
Front quarter dented in fouling up against passenger door restricting entry.

I really pushed Porky to the extremes this trip and decided to hit every possible hardcore line I could find.
Over the entire course of the night and day I only needed to winch once so am absolutely stoked with my driving efforts, line picking and the way Porky handled the terrain.
It's just unfortunate about the panel damage but they can be changed....
This is just how severe this area is when attempting to do every hard line that comes your way.

A brilliant effort by the entire team as Ken and Tony deserve massive kudo's for there epic driving capabilities.
I will post more some time tomorrow outlining the entire trip and loops we did as i have taken a few tracks from past trips with others and chopped and changed directions around so we are going up the harder stuff rather than down them.

Keep you all posted soon!!!

So Friday night we decided to meet at the cunningham hotel for a counter meal before we headed off to ellis track.
For those of you heading to the area (yarra junction) i highly recommend this place as they had an abundance of options on the menu including like 13 different chicken parmigianas!
For a pub out in the sticks the food was awesome including the oyster Kilpatrick which I complemented them on being better than the oysters I had in port douglas 1 week ago.

It was here where I met Tony & Shelley in the 2.8 td patrol and Ken in his used to be 3 litre now 4.2 td converted patrol.

Both these rigs had some serious presence about them and looked more than ready to tackle what we had installed for us when the light disappeared for the day.

We headed off to Ellis and aired down, our rigs, though all the same vehicle were all running completely different set ups, Mine is a Twin locked auto GU patrol with 4.6 diff gears on 35 inch km2s which only have about 2k of driving on them.
Tony's had decent lift on open diffs with a nice set of muddies
And Ken's has had the book thrown at his with 6 inch lift, twin lockers, 36 inch simmex centipedes crawler gears and the list goes on.

As those of you know, Ellis track is not for the faint hearted and over the years have heard of a large array of people challenging themselves and there vehicles on it.
1 thing I will point out to those who like a challenge and are wondering on whether they or there vehicle are up for it listen below.
You will hear many mixed reports about this track on the Internet about ellis track....
Some will boast the track is piss easy and some will say it proved to be difficult.
I strongly advise you the following....
DO NOT LISTEN TO THESE PEOPLE CLAIMING IT'S AN EASY TRACK.
OR OR CLAIMING THE DID IT IN (ENTER SAID VEHICLE WITH PRETTY STANDARD SET-UP)

The Internet is a funny world and people have a bad habit of trying to make something sound easy just to make themselves look greater on line.

It's very easy for me to say that I went throughout the entire night and day with the need of a winch only once , and come back here to boast about how easy this is only to misconstrued people and falsely advise others.
I may have only winched once but this track as a whole is dead set as hard as they come here in Victoria.

If you're ever willing to attempt it be sure you do it with decent lift, decent tyres 35 and above is my opinion but good set of 33s if you're ok with struggling more, and winch and recovery gear.... not to mention lockers are a favourable option unless you're like Tony and are an absolute gun of a driver that knows his own and his vehicles limits and capabilities.

So starting off here at the first couple hundred metres entering ellis we managed to climb the side wall entrance without the need of winching.
Tony struggled a little at first but only because it came upon him at night and quickly realised he was in the wrong line and managed to get himself where he needed to be which reminded me a little bit of Austin Powers forward back forward back forward back in that little golf buggy scene !

Once up, Ken came through with his rig and managed to get up with the first attempt with no problems.

Further up the track we come across my first challenge.
My main objective doing ellis and finding some of the hardest tracks in victoria is to find the hardest obstacles and attempt them first. Only at first if i dont succeed to go around.
Being the lead vehicle I managed to get myself in a section of track just before the rock climbs that's severely rutted out with high banks on either side.
The only option for me was to enter with a little bit of momentum and then full boot to ensure i made it up and over the tree roots climbing out of the ground and with a little bit of left and right on the steering I just managed to get through it.

Tony made a wise decision to avoid it after seeing my vehicle struggle through it and chose the smarter option.
Ken came through with his awesome kitted out rig and gave the same section several attempts with luck not being on his side.
Ken quickly realising that the centipedes were exactly what was not allowing him to climb up it as in this instance kept spinning on the spot on the tree roots (they have very little boulge) as they are a very nasty hardcore tyre well suited to mud but unfortunately would have had more of a chance making it up this one with a muddy that may have gripped a little better in this section.

Either way given his years of experience he made the quick decision to back out and follow Tony up the same path.

From here on in it was point and shoot.

All rigs struggled and all rigs tried to do very simular lines.
My biggest nemisses is one section of the track which I don't know what it's called but it has been a winch job for me on both last attempts.
It has a massive Rut like eroded walls where the ground is near the height of your windows and then has a massive bloody boulder the size of ayers rock at the end of it.
This rock though is angled on a slight 45 but it sits on a bit of an angle so when you attempt to climb it , it throws you hard up against the left back smashing you panels and rear lights every time you attempt it.

Both other times I tried to drive straight up it doing this exact this.
I manage to get myself bellied out half way up it and always need the assistance of a winch.
This time round a little birdie told me that when they were last updated ellis with the 4x4 adventure club he saw a few people straddle/ride the left wall which allowed the passenger side tyres to climb hard up against the walls of the bank which allowed the drivers side tyres to be wedged on the side walls of the rock which helped them crawl right up it.

I tried this... and tried it again and then even again only to fail miserably.
I honestly must be doing something wrong here and would like to head out with someone who knows this section of track as i would love to know how on earth people are climbing it.
It has become my mission to successfully allow me to finish elissa's track without the need of a winch and this damn wall is the thing stopping me (hurts so good)
Given the above attempts I decided it's best to pull out the winch as we arent here to damage our vehicles and get the show back on the road again.

Given the others saw what I went through it was a wise decision for them to go around and continue on to the other hard stuff.
From then onwards it was Rut city bish Rut Rut city bishhh...
The next sectioned had me ploughing through it for about 15 minutes just to get through a 50 metre section of track...
People had been going through this with some big arse tyres which was allowing me to bellie out on my punkin every bloody metre .
With a bit of back and fourth every couple of metres I was getting stuck it allowed me to get that extra metre forward each time.
Sorta like Paula Abdul's 2 steps forward, 2 steps back...
I got through it eventually with a bit of percerverence which then allowed the fine gentlemen behind me to get through it as well with no hiccups.

We managed to get further up the track that was even just as nasty as the last and found Tony sitting pretty behind me without Ken in our sites.
I jumped out of the car and walked over to Tony's and asked him to see if he could get Ken over the radio to see if he was fine.

Ken was M.I.A!
After a few attempts over the radio asking if he was ok we got a response...
Though Tony and I looked at each other like that didn't sound like our Kenny...
Immediately I asked Tony to ask the unknown imposter to state what car he's driving in so we could confirm if it was our Kenny.
He responded that it's him, he's in ellis track too and that he was driving his beloved Toyota Celica lol

Right away we realised someone's playing funny buggers and we began to power walk back down to see if our Kenny was ok.

We eventually got down there only to find he had got himself in a little bit of a sticky situation only to get out and successfully set his winch up to get himself out of the thing on his own.
From then onwards Tony and I realised this guy is the modern day MacGyver , amongst his massive curriculum vitae of deep sea scuba rock climbing cave diving and having one of the greatest survival in stick known to man this guy is legit the bear grylls of Australia.

He managed to get himself up and over on his own and off we were again.

The rest of ellis proved to be fun with some massive boulder and step climbs having all of us orienteering through lines that were quite extreme but doable.
Before you knew it and 3 to 4 hours later we managed to get to the end of ellis and up and over the rock garden successfully.

We then headed off to find camp for the night on East beenak rd.
No fire, just swag and tents set up and up in the morning to tackle the rest of it.

Gentle annie track was next and did not fail to dissa point, for those of you who haven't done it, there are plenty of easy lines to make your way around these next couple of tracks but that wasn't our objective.
Hitting up the gnarliest of rock walls, step ups onto boulders and managing to bump your vehicle up one rock step at a time was just what we wanted and this place delivers every time we head there.

Once we got to the end of gentle annie track we followed dour there down bunyip road until we got to forest road.
From there we found the entrance to bullock link track and wanted to hit this track from this entrance so that we can work our way up the rock steps rather than down it.
After a few different attempts from myself to climb a line that I'd never done i decided to pop the front back down and re line my vehicle so I could make it up the less crazy section as i was slipping into a spot that wasn't desirable for myself or my vehicle.

We all followed suit and made it up successfully here without the need of a winch.
At the very end of bullock link track there is a section that requires some severe spotting,
It had 2 massive bog holes on either side of it with the ground slanting on a bad angle which could cause your vehicle to slide and flip into one of the bogs upside down causing you to be in a very dangerous predicament.
I always worry about these situation as the last thing i ever want to be caught up side downin in a bog hole with side wall taller than the car which won't allow you to open doors and taking in water.
After a bit of spotting we all made it here with our schphincters a little tighter than when we started.

From here on in we got to the end of bullock link and turned right onto Robertson Creek fire line...
Boy was this track an adventure....
Rather than then turning off it and heading down rocky track we decided to drive it all the way down to the main road.
Same as the other tracks if you want to take the softer lines there were plentiful. But these big boulders and rock steps would have been amazing to attempt going up and would love to try them next time I'm up there.

Tony called us on the radio and told us he needed a bit of assistance... with these big boulders being our option down he had managed to snag his front pumpkin behind one of them and was stuck.
Winching forward was the only option being the last car but that even proved to be a problem.
Winching down hill is something I always laughed at people about up until I've found myself in the same predicament a few months back.

So we set the winch cable up around the tree at a height were it would pull the front end up rather than down to avoid bending his axle.

We couldn't get the winch rope amd tree trunk protector up high enough.
So we managed to rely on the oldest of us blokes on the trip.
He may be some dozen years older than me but Kenny (MacGyver) through the tree trunk protector over his shoulder and began climbing this tree like it was child's play
He wrapped it up at a decent height freed the rig and off we went again getting back down.
We all successfully made it down to the very bottom and it was time to air up and head home.

I just want to say a big thank you to all of you that come on this trip and how happy I was to call it one of the most grueling trips I have ever done.
With a track itenary like this and driving them in the directions we did really proved and pushed our vehicles and capabilities to our limits.

You guys and Shelley are awesome and I would highly recommend either of you 2 boys to anyone that's keen to head out for a wheel session that's going to be hard core.!

Thank you for being there and I definitely look forward to catching you all on the flip side.

Hoping your rigs come back to the way they were prior to this trip.
I know I got a bit of work ahead for myself with it as she's looking a little worse for wear.

See you out there!

Kind Regards
Georgie!!!

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Thanks for the report George, sounds like an awsome trip, except for the panel damage, I have been a winch man twice on Ellis track and just sat in the car both times, once with Peter GQ351 and he managed all the hard lines but also ended up with some panel damage from the rutted section, the other time was with Allan in Big Pig which was also an great drive with no winching and no panel damage from memory

Sounds like Bullock link is the same as it always was, haven't done it for a couple of years but used to love it except the bog hole section, the rock steps are great fun and a nice technical drive

Ellis is still on my bucket list and with 32's will be a real challenge, the only bit I would definatly bypass is the straight rutted section near the top, would definatly have a crack at the rest of it though.

Any photos or video footage of the entertainment?

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 Excellent report, thanks mate! 

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Nice trip report George. It certainly is a challenging track, especially at night where you lose perspective. I agree  if you've done it before, it's fun to push some hard lines to see if you can make them. Seeing different lines helps make you  a better driver.  I enjoyed the trip with you guys, who were up to speed for it. I still prefer day trips where I get to see other drivers take on things, as I always find it interesting to watch other drivers take different approaches to the same problem. Happy to drive with you guys any time. Just struggling to make time to fit in to my schedule.  Last trip was a year ago at Alcorns. I'll try to get back a little sooner next time. Ken.

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Awesome report George. Paints a terrifying picture for me to drive it in a couple of weeks. 

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https://youtu.be/j4d-DMRQep4

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https://youtu.be/1oeFfwDr0oI

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Great report Georgie,

Same about the panel and other damage , but hope it was worth the experience.

Liked the videos , came out well.

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