Todays Trip Report

Today’s trip took us from the Redhills Camp down to Parakai and the hot springs at the Parakai Aquatic Park. It wasn’t a strenuous 4WD day - more of a scenic tour via mainly the backroads of the area. After fueling up in Dargaville we farewelled Grant Purdie who was forced to accompany his VX Cruiser down to Auckland for, what turned out to be a major gearbox overhaul that would take him out of the trip for a few days. The other members of Grants entourage (wife Jill and sons James and Sam) along with their belongings were scattered among other trip participants allowing them to continue on the trip.

We also lost Ron Wadham today - at some stage he managed to lose all the bolts holding his locking front diff together and ended up with one of them punching a hole in the diff housing. So off he went to look for a new diff housing - eventually finding one in Auckland and rejoining the trip a few days later.

We passed through some large plantations of pine trees that are approaching maturity and will soon be felled and milled - this is worrying the locals a bit as they're not sure if the roads will "hack-the-pace". We also crossed the northern Wairoa River. Although not New Zealand’s longest river, it is the most navigable in the country and early this century steamers used to service towns like Tangiteroria long before there were roads. As you can see the river is still very tidal even up here. Its possible when the tides and moon are right to see a large ‘bore’ in the river as the tide races in.

As we continued south towards our destination, a few extra "side trips" were thrown in as one of our fellow trip participants knew the area like the back of his hand. These additional trips were off-road tracks with some mud that, of course, people had to drive into, even though they knew that there wasn’t too much chance of coming out the other side unassisted. This, again, provided a good chance to demonstrate various recovery techniques.

Then it was back onto the road and down to Parakai Aquatic Park which was our final destination for the day. After the dinner, put on at the camp, everyone was free to enjoy the water delights (slides and pools) of the park.

We found out later on that, while most participants were enjoying dinner and the pools, one of the organisers and two trip participants were out having fun marking the forest for the following day. They were out till after midnight as the tracks had changed  so much since the tracks were planned (some of the tracks had been washed out so significantly that there were holes that a 4WD could drive into) that a lot of the route had to be redesigned - not an easy thing to do in a dark forest in the dead of night. How’s that for dedication???

Distance covered: 270Km

Route Map

The map below shows the route followed the Challenge vehicles today.

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Hutt Valley Nissan - Williams and Adams - Pudney and Lee Wormalds
Johnson, Lawrence & Elder

The North Island Four Wheel Drive Challenge has been put together by a small dedicated group of 4WD enthusiasts (all experienced club members) on a non-profit cost-recovery basis.

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