We gathered driving experience when we did our 4wd trips in rentals. We had to go through some passages that we – back then – considered difficult. Some of those spots we still would call difficult.
But we have too little knowledge about the capabilities of Elsie (LC 70) herself and we aren’t always capable to judge what is easy and what is impossible. On one of Cairns to Alice Spring trips, we basically did a ~300 km detour because we weren’t sure if we can pass some of the flooded roads. With more experience we might still have come to the same conclusion, but the decision would have been better informed. In retrospective the detour was a good thing because we saw other areas which were beautiful and the original route would probably have been a mixture of anxiety and boredom.
To gain more trust in Elsie and us we decided that we should take a beginner 4wd course which we now did.
Because of the circumstances (excessive shaking of the car, lack of preparedness, panic) there are not any pictures of Martina or I driving any obstacles. The only pictures we got were those few from the quarry which show other cars.
The reason why the course was a good idea was not only learning more about the car and its pros and cons but also having someone near by with lots of experience. We correctly assumed that the instructors would not make us -beginner 4wd course attendees – drive into danger. So based on that we then drove up, down or through obstacles which we might not had done otherwise. I think that we generally had only two spots that we had not experienced before and that probably would have meant that we would have turned around if it happened on our travels. The first was a track dug out to allow two diagonal wheels loose contact with the ground and the second was the quarry. I don’t think any other participant thought they were capable of driving up the quarry. And still all of us were able to do so quite easily.