Town of 1770

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So we arrived in the Town of 1770 and checked into our hotel. Hog (who is our tour leader and totally awesome guy) arranged for some of us to go 4WDriving with some crazy local guys for $10 each. So 3 of us (me, Letitia and Georgie) hopped in one piece of 4WD crap and Hog and the 4 Germans on our tour hopped into the other 4WD piece of crap and we took off. There were already 2 random guys in the back of ours - one was Steve from Iceland who was drinking beer and I have no idea what the other guys name was. Anyway, as we took off, the back doors flew open and Georgie almost fell out! We were all screaming and grabbing her legs, but all was ok - they stopped, shut the doors and we took off again. We went to this sandy national park where our driver was going crazy! We had only just put our seatbelts on when we started going 80-100kms an hour down these sandy/muddy tracks through the forest, going over these huge bumps and screaming our heads off. Our seats were lifting off the floor and we were hitting the roof, and he didn't slow down and he kept playing this insane dance/trance music really loud! Us 3 girls got a little bit hysterical and were killing ourselves laughing and shrieking because we honestly thought we were going to die! Anyway, there was one REALLY large bump that we hit REALLY hard and we hit the roof and landed badly and almost rolled the car and all of a sudden it wasn't funny anymore. The driver came to a stop, and he jumped out to make sure we were ok. I hit my head and back of neck on the roof, and then my spine on the back of the window when I came down, and was winded and couldn't move at first, but after a couple of minutes I came right. Steve had spilled his beer everywhere (but by this time we'd been helping him drink it anyway and we'd already finished 3 cans which were rolling around like missiles in the back with us). Hog leapt out of his front seat in the car behind us and jumped in the back with us, because he thought we were having WAY more fun than they were in his car. It turns out from the car behind us they could see we were totally airbourne and had turned slightly in mid-air, and when we landed we bounced sideways and came within millimetres of hitting a tree, and then bounced back the other way and almost rolled over down the hill, before finally coming to a stop. They said it was the most extreme 4WD driving they'd ever seen - and our driver was sitting on the ground shaking and smoking and drinking beer - he'd scared himself shitless! Anyway, Hog continued on in our 4WD, which was almost as crazy as pre-near-death-experience with Hog now being a human missile in the back because he refused to put his seatbelt on, but it was slightly slower than before. We truely are lucky to be alive, but in hindsight it was one of the most fun things I've done on tour so far.

Needless to say, since we survived our time 4WDriving we all went out and got totally pissed with the 4WD boys and Steve from Iceland. He didn't even bother changing, and came to the pub with us in his dirty swamp mud covered clothes (did I mention we had a mudfight with dirty swamp mud? That was after our 4WD had stopped and we couldn't get it started again, and then the bonnet wouldn't open, and then it did, and then we push started one car with the other to get it going again, then the bonnet wouldn't close, then we kicked it a bit and it did close - you get the picture. Quality vehicles with seats not bolted to the floor, holes you could put you foot through, rain coming through the roof, and back doors that didn't shut properly). Anyway, spent lots of time drinking after that but luckily felt ok the next day.

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