Kangaroos and Sand Dunes
Trip Start
Sep 25, 2008
1
30
37
Trip End
Ongoing
Gawler Ranges,
South Australia,
Australia
Monday, December 8, 2008
As we headed into the Gawler Ranges we took a short cut that was to save us 10-15 minutes, this ended up costing us 3 hours. As we headed down the dirt road with the tyres all still pumped up hard, the van on the back, the car not in 4WD we found the road getting worse. The road was quite eroded and therefore there were high banks on both sides and no way of turning around so the only way was forward. As we continued the road started turning to sand and the dunes got higher. We came to a large dune (at this point I should have stopped and put the car in 4WD) we drove half way up and then car sank into the sand up to the diff. After trying a number of different times we eventually started going again (after letting all tyres including the van down to 15 PSI, the car in low range 4WD, and after digging the car out) and had to have a run at a number of other large dunes as we continued down the track. After all that we managed to hit a kangaroo as we where travelling quite late in the afternoon now. The Kangaroo (about 6 foot high) came out of the bush on the driver's side and tried to stop. We clipped him with the bull bar on the car which meant no damage to the car, but he decided to stand up between the car and van so the front corner of the van to the full load leaving it looking a bit second hand. All up the Gawler ranges where very beautiful with magnificent rocks like wave rock and a rock formation called the pipe organ.
