Googs Track

Hi Blaze,

The track can be fairly trecherous when towing mainly because of the very large and soft snadhills in the northern stretches of the track (After Goog's Lake). The travel to Googs lake on the southern section of the track should present you know real worries but I had issues with a sandhill or two as per my blog entry at the top of the Forum page. The nature of the track means that there are quite a few hummocks, blowouts and twists just before the summit of many hills. This doesn't allow you sufficient run up at them. Again not an issue when in a sigle vehoicle but a problem when you have better than a tonnew behind you. The Jayco penguin also concerns me as not being robust enough but you and the owner would be best to judge that. I towed a Tambo Cooper at about 1100 kgs loaded with a 3L T/D Navara. This LINK may give you some idea regarding the conditions.

Cheers Mick

Hi Blaze
You will find Googs Track a easy little drive. The biggest problem with going the way that the National Parks prefer is people not knowing how to drive in soft sand. As you head further north, the dunes become larger (nothing like Simpson dunes as far as I am concerned) and this is where the problems occur.

Very high tyre pressures, not knowing what to do an the southern approaches are very cut up and it is near impossible to use speed to get over the dunes, just first gear and rock from side to side. One guy from Clare did it north to south a couple of years back towing a camper trailer. Got caught out on the first dune heading south. He remembered what I told him, drop the tyre right down, including the camper even lower and then proceeded to head south with no more problems at all. He then came across on group of new four wheel drivers, a very large group, with none of them having any sand experience - the out come 10 vehicles cutting the hell out of the dunes and nearly all getting bogged on nearly every dune!!!!

Googs Lake is a great spot to stay, but watch out for the usual stray toilet paper that is around the place, once again people not knowing that you should burn it before filling in your toilet hole.

I will give you a full run down on where to camp when I catch up with you in a few week.

It it was me, come from the north, keep your tyre pressures down and you will have a great little trip. If you are over that way, one very well kept secret and short, but great little track is the Buckleboo Stock Route, north of Kimba - well worth the drive.

Cheers

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G'day Blaze

Better spray some of that anti-scratch stuff on if doing Googs otherwise your pretty little rice burner may come off worse for wear....lol

Googs isn't hard 4x4-ing.

It's now some years ago since I drove Googs, south to north, but I recall some seriously chopped out dunes on the approach sides of the dunes. Keep your pressures low on both 4by and trailer and you should be OK. Also don't pump the tyres up when you get to near Mt Finke when the country opens up as further on there are a few more soft dunes that may stop you(I made that mistake and had to drop pressures again...bugga)

Enjoy he Head of the Bight and the whales. It is really spectacular when the pods are frolicking so close by the shore.

Cheers

Gday Blaze,
I did it in 2002, and for a fair bit of Googs, I towed a 75series tray towing a trakshak. The chopped out approaches and the corrugations were the main issues, and with the heavy traytop and skinny tyres I needed a good head of steam. Lower your pressures to 18ish will solve most problems.

I should be up there with a Friends Group doing veg surveys in Yellabinna in August. I'd suggest you come up from the south so we don't meet head-on :-)))

The only downside we had with the camper was a broken trailer axle on the corrugations north of Mt Finke. About 4 hours of work and a nice bit of bush welding fixed the problem. Here's some photos. Have a guess which State of Australia the last photo came from :-)) The name "Southwarkhead" has stayed with this guy since!
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Blaze we found the track relatively easy as far as sand driving goes. You'd get conflicting reports about it as conditions change. At times the track does cut up & with a 1.4 tonne trailer it could make hard going of it. The width of the Jaco in particular will see plenty of scratches off the mallee scrub. I'd also have some reservations about it's durability on tracks of this type even if it's an Outback version.
Cheers Craig............

We did it with no problems towing a cavalier style camper from north to south with a td hilux 15psi car 10psi trailer all in high range and all dunes on first attempt.

We sold it for an eagle and went through the murray sunset n/p and found the car worked very hard over the dunes due to the wider track on the van this is the problem you may have on googs also it is very narrow in places next to fences.