Picking up from cockatoo creek, we finished the telegraph track approximately 3 days ago now…which makes it Wednesday. We drove through the morning in anticipation for palm creek, eating a lot of dust along the way. It was impossible to sleep because of the corregation and the unpredictable turns in the road!! Having broken Calistas winch the day before, we decided that worst case if we got to palm creek and thought it was too hard it was 110 ks back to get to a desirable camping spot by night fall via the highway. Half of the cars we passed told us palm creek was fine, the other half told us we were screwed…although it was the shiny new cars who didn’t think we would make it, and the beaten up ‘characterised’ cars who said we were fine!

We got to palm creek by midday. The rain had completely changed it: because we were now approaching it from the other side we were met with first a large mud slide into a creek, and then a rocky obstacle course up a steep incline, which was of course also covered in mud and sludge!! By the time we had assessed it we had a large audience watching the excitement with cameras ready.

Cams car easily rolled down the mud slide and made it through the creek. Although he had 3 wheels airbourne at one stage making it up the rocky drop off he made it to the top, car jumping over rocks, with damage to only his sidestep. Toms car got bogged in a hole on the way up the drop off, having massive clearance issues. With the wheels unable to grip anything, the team quickly scrambled through the mud to haul trees and rocks onto the track to fill in holes and create a solid enough path for his vehicle to drive up.

Calistas car broke before she attempted it. In the time it took to get Calistas starter motor working, savannah had managed to get pinned under a tree thunk they were moving through the mud to create a better track, and a large group of people had come and decided to chicken out. Calista made it up and over the track with minimal problems!

We drove to the end of the telegraph track and stopped at bromwell junction for meat pies and icecream!! At which point calista handed me the keys to her car to drive the remainder of the way to archers river where we planned on camping. I’ve been told since that I’m not a bad driver, but my 4wd-ing needs some pointers. Something about taking corners too fast and water crossings too violently! I got to swerve blindly accross the road while an oncoming vehicle was travelling towards us as an idiot driver overtook kicking up a hell of a lot of dust in my face, which was fantastic for being able to see while driving!! Apart from a few cows crossing the road the rest if the drive was quite uneventful, and we all made it to archers river in one piece!!