Busselton’s Secret 4WD Track
What’s this?! Busselton has a secret 4wd track? I don’t blame you for being surprised, everyone knows all the good spots down there right? But yet there it is, a stretch of moderate difficulty 4wding only 18 kilometres out of the town centre. It runs all the way to the Blackwood River at Sues Bridge, and I discovered it thanks to Western 4WDer magazine (always full of excellent weekend trips as well as stuff further afield).
We were late to depart for our long weekend thanks to a scheduling mix up, and the plume of black exhaust smoke didn’t engulf my neighbourhood until well after midday. Oh well, shit happens. We just had to hope it wouldn’t be too hard to find a campsite as I had been banking on having a little more time. Stopping only for some lukewarm and potentially salmonella infested servo food; we arrived at the start of the track somewhere around 4PM. The track doesn’t look like much, I only know it’s the right spot thanks to the GPS and some very careful trip planning.
It starts off a sandy and pleasant drive, but that only lasts a few hundred metres. Looking back on it now I would say that the first half of the track consists of mostly low swampy land, punctuated by little ‘islands of relief’. If you have the chance to do this track in the middle of winter, I recommend you don’t. It would be absolute hell! We made it through the first swamp okay, walking every route to avoid becoming stuck to close to nightfall. The second swamp however….lets just say it’s a wonder I made it through the first one! The story is pretty embarrassing, but I’ve thrown it in the video because it’s also a little bit funny.
By the time we had got moving along from the second swamp the sun had cast its last light upon the tree tops. It’s mostly state forest along here, so camping is legit and we had just enough time to set up camp with a little bit of light left in the evening. We were fortunate enough to land ourselves in a clearing with a good supply of firewood – it was going to be a very cold night, and indeed everything was iced up and frosted over when I awoke the next day.
The second day started off about the same as yesterday ended. Mud. We kept checking every puddle and even came across the Margaret River. There was a warning in Western 4wdriver that this crossing could be alarmingly deep and it would be advisable to skirt back out to the highway and around it when conditions are wet. It was not much more than a long puddle for us, but it still managed to fill Beau’s air filter with water; bringing it scary close to an untimely death.
Then my turn for trouble came around once again when ONE TIME we didn’t check a puddle properly. We poked it about 2 thirds the way along and it was fine. Of course the problem part had to be the last third of the puddle where the ruts dropped down deep and the patrol came straight to rest on its diffs. Took a bit of recovering that one!
So far mud seemed to have been the theme for this track, and I was actually getting pretty sick of it! I was hoping to make camp on the banks of the Blackwood river, but progress so far hadn’t been great. Thankfully we moved into higher ground about half way through the track where washouts and what can best be described as small rock ledges were the new challenges. A little track building was required here and there but nothing too serious.
In the end we pulled out onto the banks of the Blackwood in pretty good time, having not seen a single other vehicle for the entire length of the track. Pretty impressive for a long weekend hey? The track exits about a 5 minute drive from the Sues Bridge camp ground, a beaut option for camping but unsurprisingly packed for the long weekend. We settled for a camp of our own on the Blackwood, after an hour of searching. Not because they were all full or anything, but just because we were feeling picky!
One more thing, check out the video from the trip below!
Alex
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