Is a bush made promise still valid when you get home ?

I'm not sure if the question here should not be "Are OzTents up to it" but anyway.

Well we expecting it as we arrived for our annual family camp at Talbotville (victoria), and on the first day the kids went to a freezing wind swept Mt Blue Rag where number one son proposed to long time girlfriend and she said yes.

Well she said yes as soon as she realized he wasn't shivering from just the cold and snow showers!

24 hours later they were proceeding up the long and shaley Billy goat Bluff track in there Pathfinder when a partly out of control Navara was descending with a broken CV joint.

It was a bad spot with lots of boulders and they quickly pulled of line hitting the diff.

They continued up, but the car began to find the track harder and harder until another decsending vehicle yelled out that there front wheels were not turning.

It appears that the diff had finally exploded outwards leaving a large hole in itself and a long trail of oil.

What proceeded next was a harrowing gear crunching 3 hr recovery descent begining with a 3 wheel turn around on the most difficult part of the track.

With no front wheel action and apparent loss of some electronic control systems they had no power brakes either and had to use every bit of strength just to pull the car up using only its back two wheels.

They were not sucessful every time !

The Pathfinder limped back into camp its blown front diff now waterlogged as well from the 5 river crossings on its way home.

Hard choices, but about midnight is was decided the the only way to get the pathfinder home was to physically cut out the front axles.

The electric axe was dragged out and by 2am it was done (its amazing what an 18v grinder can do in anger! )




Next day the exhausted crew went into Dargo for a rest, whilst I remained at camp as I had an opportunity to test out a Bt50/ford Ranger hill descent control on a serious hill known as South Basalt track.
With the impressive test over we were relaxing at camp when we were hit by the heavy weather change with damaging winds.

Our camp was huge with some 20 vehicles and the few people remaining at camp struggled to save what they could but it was futile.

Almost everyone suffered damage, our 2 Oztents failed, the 3rd survived because it was being held at the time, everyone of our trail bikes was blown over, but that was nothing to the near total destruction of the kids camp.









48 hours earlier she had said yes in the Pathfinder which was her pride and joy and now both it and the campsite was a wreck.

I walked up to my future daughter in law and said - you know there is a 48 hour cooling off period for any promises made while camping.

She just smiled ?