Off Road Driving Training - 11th April

‘Concentrate and listen to me carefully or it may just cost you your life”. Not surprisingly we all pricked up our ears. Pete, our off road driving trainer described the roads through Cape York as “bad and horrible, nothing good about ‘em” and our 4WD’s as “cumbersome, bad handling cars…once you’ve lost control, it’s all over”. We spent the day practicing high speed threshhold breaking and in the processes learnt how to deal with skids. We first practiced on bitchiman and I found the experience of hurtling towards the game Pete, watching, watching his hand till it dropped so we could apply the breaks, really quite alarming. This exercise was repeated later on dirt roads. We were re-programmed to stall the car, hit the animals if they get in your way – DO NOT serve to try and save their fluffy little existence, do not try a re-correct your skid happily bounce off the road into the scrub, it’s better than rolling. If you are about to get in a head on collision, do not slam on the breaks, get off the road, if your not blessed with small scrub, hit a tree (preferable a small one) or an ant hill. Never, under any circumstance slam on the breaks or you’ll skid and roll, a firm tap followed by continuing, increased pressure. Break straight. Colour changes in the road means a condition change. Always walk through bogs and rivers before attempting to cross to test the conditions, even if your rightfully scared of crocs, do it or wait till you see someone else do it, because if you get stuck, you’ll end up crossing the river more than just the once increasing you crocodile attack probability.