AMSAG Black Springs Rallysprint
Saturday November 21, 2020
Pete's Excellent 2WD Offroad Adventure
There's an old saying about perception and reality: "The map is not the territory". Back in the days when map navigation was used in rallies, the official map WAS the territory - road realignments etc which had happened after the official map had been published were deemed not to exist, so you had to follow the route as mapped, not just follow the roads and assume that's where you were supposed to be. (My very first rally started in Oberon. At the Driver's Briefing my clever and devious navigator turned to me and in a whisper just loud enough for everyone else to hear said "I mustn't forget about the Duckmaloi realignment". When people around looked startled she said "Oops!". Need I say that there was no such road realignment? Other crews spent some time driving slower than they needed to in case there was a passage control they might miss.)
Well, the map I tried to use to make a video of the Wombat Road stage lacked so much detail that calling it even an approximation to the territory would be overstating its worth. I managed to get myself lost, and I knew I wasn't on the rally route when I came to a hump across the road which would have had the Commodore emulating a seesaw if I had tried to drive straight over it. It wasn't really possible to reverse out to somewhere where I could turn around. I thought about doing it at an angle, but there wasn't enough room on either side to get the approach and departure correct, so I did a bit of a survey and decided that I could drive up the bank on the left hand side and get across without scraping too much off the underneath of the car. There was a depression on the other side with mud in it before a climb out to an actual good road.
I got over it and only almost got bogged in the mud, but the fact that you are reading this tells you that I got out successfully. I have to admit that my enthusiasm for doing more videoing that day ran away, so I went home.
