2014 Victoria High Country 4x4: Day 4

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The previous day: Day 3 - Mt Pinnibar to Garron Point Tk river crossing

More photos here

After a restful night of sleep, we thought the worse of the rains were behind us, and we looked forward to a good day ahead........then !

First I noticed the fridge was turned off, and the AC inverter shut down, well perhaps the battery was not properly charged yesterday....but WHY?!

Continued to the routine morning inspections, I saw one of the fan belts for the alternator was mangled, and the other, flipped inside out. I bet it was due to the high revs during the climb to Mt Pinnibar that caused it to slip loose, and eventually mangled and flipped.

Then the rain started to come, really annoying !

Changing the fan belts in the rain and mud.

It was a good 90 minutes, before we replaced the fan belt with the spare, a task made harder by the falling rain.

So now we still have the task of climbing out of this deep valley on some unknown tracks, in this wet condition ! Not to mention that the map from our present position does not quite point to a proper track ahead.

We started from the top-right, it is only just 4.5 Km of climb, where all the jiggles are, winching & track building

Seeing that there is only one track ahead, we moved on.

The first 1 Km or so, we encountered no real issues, and I was quietly hoping for an alright day.

Just when I was somewhat more optimistic, ruts started to appear on the steep track, and Langi had to negotiate through them and across them. And I was still in my Simpson Desert mode, thinking of only ramping up momentum. With a petrol engine with no lockers, that seemed the par.

All of a sudden, Langi dropped into a deep hole in the left, and stalled, then slid back, the rear right wheel was fully lodged into the rut, with Langi 3 tonne weight leaning onto the right side wall. My first instinct was to stop Andre from coming up any further by radioing.

After a few tries to move forward, with shaving some of the soils in front of the front wheel, the rear wheel just did not want to budge, even with some digging around it. The Max Trax was used, but it won't even begin to grip.

Finally the decision was made to winch the car backward, after preparing a more level ground for it to rest on, then figuring out the next step. But it has to be executed quite precisely, lest the car can slid into an awkward angle. And it worked, with the rear wheel riding out the rut over the Max Trax.

With Andre guiding in front, I was able to crawl Langi step by step up, straddling across the deep ruts over some very narrow ridges.

Looking decidedly s...house!

Winch hooked up, Max Trax under the rear left wheel.

Over the next 1 Km we literally had to do the same for both cars, and the rain did not help the situation.

Just as we pushed on a little further over some steep but solid tracks, there it came ....this section was crisscrossed with deep ruts together with sink holes. We had to resort to rebuilding the track by filling in all the deep holes with stones, and working out the line to take over a 200m climb, almost step by step. Woo...ow, we cleared that with no drama, just !

And that were all on Garron Point Track, narrow, steep and rutty......it was a tough 5 Km climb out of the deep valley, my dreaded dream had come true !

As we move southwards onto Escarpment Track, then South Escarpment Track, we encountered a couple of large fallen trees, one is demonstrably newly fallen, just to show that, fallen trees are a frequent event in any forests.

Fortunately a bypass can be found, our chainsaws were still not needed.

Finally, we reached Nunniong road, after, at least, from my perspective, the longest 25 Km I've even done, a good 5 hours passed since we left our camp site.

At that stage, Andre was showing sign of weariness, plus a little love-sick, and definitely had no more appetite for more adventures, he elected to take the main road home. I was sorry to see him leaving, but understandingly. I am sure TC was also a little un-nerved with all the excitements happening on his first ever 4x4 remote trip, but we opted to push on for a few more days, if the weather turned better, which was on the forecast.

After bidding goodbye with Andre, we went straight to Moscow Villa, which has a legend of its own.

Moscow Villa, turned out to be as good its reputation, probably qualifies for a 5-star rating as far as huts in the wilderness are concerned.

It was built by Billy Ah-Chow, a bushman in the '60s, of Chinese heritage. Here is a link to a bit of the history of the hut...

History of Moscow Villa, unfortunately due to the improper formatting of the page, I have to cut and paste this bit here...

Quote

A story about Moscow Villa was often told by Bill. At the height of the McCarthy era and the Menzies government's attempt to ban the Communist party a group of officials of the Forrests Commission toured East Gippsland, including Moscow Villa (although they did not know it as that).

They got out of their car to be confronted with a sign (Moscow Villa) above two bright red gate posts. They erupted. Bill said that when they calmed down he told them the following: (It was a story told well and I am sure I can remember it verbatim.

"I built this hut single handed, and with the exception of two things, I bought everything that needed to be bought, and carried all of the items here. That's why I thought I could name it what I wanted to. I finished the hut the day it was announced that the battle for Moscow had been won. If you can remember (he told the officials) Russia was on our side and that was the first defeat of the Germans. I thought it was an appropriate way to celebrate a win in those dark days. Moscow Villa has other, deeper meanings for me. M.O.S.C.O.W. V.I. L..L. A. " He spelt out. He ticked the words off on his fingers "My Own Summer Cottage. Officials Welcome. Visitors Invited. Light Luncheon Available. The kettle's on. Come inside. By the way - the two things I did not buy were the gate posts. They were supplied by the Forests Commission, and came already painted!" It is sufficient to say that the name and gate posts remained as they were.

And thus Bill was able to keep in well with the officials, despite not wishing to have a great deal to do with the "shiny bums" as he liked to call them.

UNQUOTE

The hut is solidly built, with a fire place and can house 10 - 20 campers if the weather is too harsh outside.