The Old Grafton Road 4WD track

I have been four wheel driving my entire adult life. And have had plenty of courses whilst in the Police.
It is always fun.
It is always challenging.
It is always interesting to push the limits of what the car can do.

But not today. Today, I bricked it and found myself stuck at the top of a cliff on Tommy's Rock Trail in Diehard, NSW, a 4km 4WD only track, off the Old Grafton Road.

The sign at the bottom indicated the track was open. It mentioned it was a steep climb up to a cliff top and to supervise kids.

It did not mention that the track has a clay base, turning this narrow, rutted, washed out trail into an ice skating rink - that followed the cliff edge all the way up to the top, with just a couple of feet between the edge of the trail and an 800m drop into a gorge.

It did not mention that there were several trees down across the track, causing you to put your tyres within centimetres of the edge of the track and the 800m drop.

It did not mention that there were three feet deep ruts caused by the recent rains, meaning I had to try and blindly straddle them all the way to the top - given that the nose of the 4WD was pointing skywards and you can't see the track. If a tyre fell in to one of these ruts, I probably would not be getting out of it on my own.

It did not mention the steep, hairpin bends at the edge of the Gorge, where the camber of the track would have you falling to your death, with only a couple of feet of muddy track as margin for error, or slippage.

It also did not mention that once you were halfway up, there was nowhere safe to turn around. You were committed until you reach the top.

If the sign had mentioned any of that, I would not have attempted it! But, fool that I am, up I went. The bottom section was fun but challenging, and there was not a huge drop. But then I began getting increasingly concerned that we were not going to make it down alive.

The Pajero performed brilliantly. Other than one little moment of struggling for grip on the apex of one of the steepest hairpin bends going up, that car did not put a foot wrong.

That was probably down to the Goodyear Wrangler Duratrac tyres I had put on 3yrs ago. Top of the range 4WD tyres, 70/30 road / off road, big knobbly tyres that have excellent grip in the wet, mud and sand. However, they were down to the last 5000 kilometres of tread and I had planned on changing them in the next few weeks. Lord, did I wish in that moment that I had just changed them over early!

And as we had already driven down a very steep, windy road into the Gorge, the brakes were already hot and smelly. So, I found myself idly wondering whether Mitsibishi had changed the brake pads and discs during the last service...to ensure we had enough brake pad left to get down. (The answer was no, I found out later. This next service will be an expensive one).

Scary stuff. We got to the top, where there was a very small parking area on the cliff top. Perhaps room for three cars. I did not meet anyone else on the way up or down.
I wonder why?!

I didn't even go to the look out area. Dick was so happy to be out of the car, he was twanging about like bouncy ball and I was slightly concerned he was going to bound over the edge of the cliff. I'll attach a photo below of what it, apparently, looks like!

There was no phone signal anywhere along the entirely of the Old Grafton Road, which takes four hours to do, then another two hours to drive back to Glen Innes along the highway. But I somehow found a smidge of signal at the very top, and sent a message to Julie, the caretakers of the Showgrounds where I was staying. It seemed sensible at the time, given that I hadn't told anyone where I was going. I sent something along the lines of "Stuck at the top of Tommy's Rock Trail and bricking it that I won't get down. If I'm not back by 5pm, the car has fallen off the cliff"

Cue Julie ringing the SES and emergency services, as she knows that track well. She had been a front seat passenger a few years back, and physically threw up when they got to the top, it had frightened her so much.

As you can imagine, I really wasn't thinking about taking photos and most of the time, the track was too steep for the handbrake to hold the car, or I was gripping the steering wheel for dear life. I think I managed one at the bottom, one at the top and one about a third of the way down, on one of the only flat areas you can safely stop. So some of the photos below are screenshots from YouTube, where full time adventurers have done the track (in the dry).

The gold mining ghost town of Dalmorton was amazing. The scenery was amazing. The rock falls and land slides were amazing, the volume in all of the five rivers was eye popping. The graffiti from the 1800s in the old tunnel was cool as.

I had a great deal of explaining to do to the police and State Emergency Service (SES) when I finally got back at 7pm!

Lol.

What a great adventure!

Just off to Goodyear to change some tyres.Read more