Brunswick Revisit, June 2025

Attending

Dave & Emma – Prado -TL

Brandon – Dmax

Sean – Triton – TEC

Alan – Ranger

Well, as per usual, every year I like to run a trip out to Brunswick. This year’s plan was to continue exploring a track that I found a couple of years back, we attempted it last year, but turned around due to time, so this year, I was determined to do that track first.

Meeting at the Harvey Bakery, we headed out to Brunswick, airing down and getting right into it.

Normally I exit down this hill, this year, I’m going up it, it’s the most direct route to the track I would like to explore more. This section of the track has certainly gotten a lot worse compared to last year.

Myself, the ranger and the triton are all twin locked, whilst the Dmax had a weak LSD rear diff and open front end.

The Prado struggled a little with clearance at the start, but eventually found a path to the top, the Triton and Ranger managed to follow similar lines and made it up with less effort.

The Dmax had a little bit of traction issues at the start, eventually making it to the top, via the chicken track. This new chicken track wasn’t there last year.

After stopping for a quick morning tea, we proceeded for the track we were here to conquer. The usual deep ruts at the start, riding the side wall to get past, and that’s when something bad happened. I started to hear a banging noise from the Prado, it was coming from the rear end. I thought I had done a diff or something, but I was also confused to how that could happen, besides the rear end flexing hard, due to the deep rut, I was just idling it through. Leaving the others at the top, Sean drove down in his Triton, pulling out all sorts of tools, to jack up the back end of the Prado to investigate the cause.

How lucky were we, the cause was eventually found. The back end was flexing so much, the little weight that’s welded to the drive shaft, hooked the aftermarket bash plate, bending it downwards, as the drive shaft was rotating, it was banging against the bash plate.

We tried to bash it back in to place while it was still fixed in the car, but we were unsuccessful with that, so we had to totally drop the bash plate, do a bit of bush fix, refit and carry on.

With a successful bush fix/come a permanent fix, we headed off to the next section. Looking at it, with the angle we were on, I thought it best to stay in the ruts, sadly, first attempt was a fail, second attempt included a bit of track building, which was a fail also, third attempt was to ride up high, on the drivers side, this was a success.

Proceeding forwards to the part of the track I’ve never been to before, and once there, the decision was made to turn around. I didn’t get a proper picture of the track ahead, but basically its made for a big lift and a big tyre car, of which, none of us have here today.

Turning around, we made our way to our camp site. Someone else had decided to cut one of the tree’s down and left it by the fire pit. We had brought our own wood, but hey, lets face it, these big pieces of wood were asking to be burnt.

The following morning was pack up time. The usual way out is normally the track we came in on the day before, but after seeing that, a decision was made to find a different way out. Overall it wasn’t too bad, a couple little ruts and a mud crossing, and not long after, we were airing up and heading home.

A big thanks to everyone that came, and that’s it for anther year

Story by Dave

Please click below to see a Youtube vid of this trip.