Thread: Defender now quite secondhand...

Well at long last we have managed to make it up to our family retreat - "Highview" (thanks to my parents for the original name). However, due to the amount of rain and the long delay since our last visit we had a bit of roadworks to do...

Here is the view towards the house form the bottom of the valley. The house is along the ridgeline in the far distance. The soil along the track through the farms at the bottom is black and slippery as hell in the wet. There were plenty of signs that the neighbours, who live here full time, had had quite a bit of fun during the wet. Despite that there were actually no ruts big enough to even lift a wheel in the Defender. The neighbours had just kept tracking wider and wider off the road each time the previous route got to greasy.


And this is what we were dreading - the road into our property has disappeared...



Well, not entirely. The road surface underneath the weeds has actually held up better than we expected. No rutting from runoff at all really.


This is closer to the range - house is on the ridgeline dead ahead. And below us is where the road should be. Nothing a few hours with the brush-cutter couldn't fix...


Once we got into the trees at the foot of the hill the weeds and lantana thinned out and the road here was fairly clear. I said fairly clear as there was one tree down that we had to carve up and drag off the track.


The drive in has its moments, but the real fun is the last couple of kilometres where the track winds up the hill through the forest to the house. I think this will be my new desktop picture...


Now this corner, about halfway up the hill, has given us quite a bit of trouble over the years. Again my parents have given it the fantastically original name of "Devil's Elbow". It has been bulldozed a couple of times and used to be a lot tighter and steeper. Now it just presents problems in the wet as there is a natural spring which soaks it pretty thoroughly... We kind of gave up clearing here and just let the vehicles push it all over.


Again the road up the hill was remarkably well preserved. No wheel-lifting, hair-raising action at all. We have installed an automated, speaking rain gauge which we can ring up. If there has been more than 15-20mm rain in the last 24hrs then the road is generally too slippery to drive up without chains or a winch. Since it is supposed to be a relaxing, retreat then we have adopted the approach that if it's too wet, forget it. Whilst we were building the place we spent too many hours trying to winch cars and building materials up the muddy track that now we do everything to avoid it in the wet.

Here is the track along the top of the ridge leading up to the house. We just cleared a hole big enough to poke the cars through...


Once we finally arrived we put the 4WDs out to graze while we had a well earned lunch.


And here it is...
The house is a pole-frame construction. Two-storey split level projecting off the hill to the north looking down to the adjacent valley. Solar power, gas fridge and hot water, septic system and a very nice microwave phone link courtesy of Telstra.

With the road up the hill in such good condition the new Defender now feels like a bit of overkill - but hey, it's all good!


After another couple of hours on the slasher my hands are shot and so is the rest of me so I'm done now.

Mate you are sooo lucky having that to retreat to. Your parents were far sighted getting it sorted and I'll bet it is nice and cool up there on hot days.

Excellent photos too. I am not surprised that there was minimal damage to the drive. The overgrowth will have held the surface soil in place.

Originally Posted by solmanic

We have installed an automated, speaking rain gauge which we can ring up. If there has been more than 15-20mm rain in the last 24hrs then the road is generally too slippery to drive up without chains or a winch.

Cool idea Could be a useful thing for some of the Coromandel tracks over here. They can get downright treacherous in the wet.

Originally Posted by solmanic

The house is a pole-frame construction. Two-storey split level projecting off the hill to the north looking down to the adjacent valley. Solar power, gas fridge and hot water, septic system and a very nice microwave phone link courtesy of Telstra.

Great looking place. I bet the local wildlife think its the bees knees when you're not there too

Thanks for the pics and things. Some of us are having to work this weekend