So I was curious to check out these tracks out the back of Bannockburn I've heard a bit about from friends and folk.
I scored a fever on Friday night and still feeling reeeal dodgey now, but thought it an ideal time to get out of the house and get some fresh air. So I bundled my wife and daughter into the car and off we went to Bannockburn for some soft core adventure. Well, that's what I thought it was going to be.
From the entry off the main road it looks really lame. Nothing particularly inviting about the Bannockburn reserve. If you enter from the northern side of the reserve its quite boring, with no sign of anything needing 4x4. It's mostly hardwood new growth plantation with thin scrub.
We drove around the Eastern side of the reserve, me thinking we may as well have came in the commodore
Then we found some fun puddles and some ruts as we went around the southern border and headed back north.
There were no diff or crossmember gouges in any of the wheel tracks so I think highway tyres would get through everything we saw so far. You could go around any water either way.
Then after driving around for 20 odd minutes we found a valley of sorts, up until now the terrain was dead flat.
I wouldn't usually put my wheels where they are now, but did so for the pic. Normally I'd straddle the rut.
And as most would know, where there is a valley there is hills, and where there is hills there is fun shit. Haha. Now we found some much more interesting play areas.
Even came across a sand based MX track making me think I'll have to come out with the bikes soon. Nice whoops and decent berms.
You could do this whole area with highway tyres. If you start spinning too much just let your tyres down to 15psi or so. Bring a compressor. It's a good title play area, that my crappy pics don't do justice.
It's in this area that there are a fair few tracks to explore that will pinstripe the hell out of your Jeep. Prickles everywhere. We squeezed through heaps of it.
These tracks meander all over the joint. You'll stop checking these out real quick, because the scraping will be too much. Highway tyres no worries. No clay, just red gravel mainly.
I have to admit that I wasn't expecting much from this little area, but was surprised to find it was quite an ok look around and play. It's got a few pretty challenging sections, some I wouldn't attempt, but you can go around everything, and do it on highway tyres no problems.
We did find some sections that I wouldn't recommend on highway tyres...or when you have the flu and can't be bothered getting out of the warm car...
And luckily for me, it was 50mm short of flowing into my footwell, but we did get about 1L of water in the passenger front footwell, which was lower than the drivers side.
"See!" I told my wife, "That's why I am not putting the carpet back in!"
I was starting to feel too crap with my cold, so we headed back after winching out of the bog and never got to see all the tracks. We got stuck on the belly, and couldn't move. Winch to the rescue. And didn't get my feet wet. Perfect place to get stuck
In summary, I definitely recommend checking this little place out. It's got all sorts. Nothing too impressive, but worth a play for beginners and for something to do. I'll go back when I'm feeling better. There were some tracks and sections not possible with a Commodore, or, yes, you might do it but get serious sill damage and stuff.
I see on Google maps there is another reserve or two near Bannockburn with tracks on them. Might have to check those out too one day.
tracks aroung geelong, vic
Black Panther
Dexter
