Tackling Tassie's Wild West

For the past five years Isuzu Ute has been the only car brand in Australia to offer ‘real world’ off-road drive experiences to its customers.

Since 2015, seven Isuzu I-Venture multi-day trips have taken Isuzu 4x4 MU-X SUV and D-MAX ute owners across some of Australia’s most picturesque and challenging terrain, including South Australia’s Flinders Ranges, Queensland’s Fraser Island, Victoria’s High Country, South Australia’s Coffin Bay and Western Australia’s Coral Coast.

Steering the latest Isuzu D-MAX and MU-X 4x4 vehicles before they’re replaced by new, improved versions from later this year, we snagged a ‘media’ drive in the most recent I-Venture trip in mid-March, focused on Tasmania’s Wild West coastline.

Here were some of the off-road highlights during the three days…

Playing at Henty Dunes

Beach driving is an integral part of many an I-Venture trip, and it was no different with the Tasmanian event, with participants spending a few hours in the fluffy ‘sand pit’ of Henty Dunes.

Vehicle access to dunes is from a picnic spot about 14km north of Strahan where, after a pep talk from I-Venture head trainer and chief motivating officer, David Wilson, and lowering of tyres pressures (down to 18psi in some cases), the convoy snaked its way into the dunes via the narrow, bushy track leads.

In among the 30 metre high white sand dunes, we tackle some steep ascents (not all successfully!) and create a ‘figure eight’ circuit in an open section  to practice our fluffy sand driving skills and create some nice overhead imagery from the drone.

It’s child’s play for most drivers in their low-revving torquey Isuzu vehicles, locked in low range 4WD, before the obligatory group photo and back-track to the bitumen…

Cruising along Ocean Beach

You can actually walk from the Henty Dunes to nearby Ocean Beach (takes about seven hours apparently!), but we did it the lazy way, looping back on the highway and graded dirt roads, to the Macquarie Heads turn-off and on to what is regarded as Tasmania’s longest beach.

Turning left onto the hard-packed sand, with the waves crashing one side and tall, vegetation-covered sand dunes the other, we cruise a few kilometres south to Macquarie Heads, with white painted lighthouse and fast-running ‘Hells Gates’ the postcard-worthy backdrop.

It’s a mostly highway smooth  beach run, as long as the tide is out and you slow down for the occasional sharp drop-off caused by creek-like waterways running from the dunes into the sea.

The beach stretches 30km from Macquarie Heads in the south to Trial Harbour in the north, but we only manage a few kilometres of high-range 4WDing to the north before arriving at another natural wonder: the mouth of the Henty River.

Henty River trout fishing

Most Isuzu I-Venture trips include a TV celebrity or two; in this case we had the pleasure of the company of Hook, Line and Sinker hosts, Andrew Hart and Nick Duigan.

The plan was to brush up on our fishing skills at the Natone Hills Fly Fishery in Upper Natone, near Burnie, under guidance of our fishing experts, before going after a wild trout in the Henty River later in the trip.

As it turned out, persistent rain forced most participants to join the undercover hatchery tour and gorge on freshly smoked rainbox trout, while a few hardy types wet a line in the stocked ponds, where the hand-reared trout were more than happy to jump on a hook disguised with Powerbait.

The Isuzu owners weren’t as successful tossing lures into the mouth of the Henty River, which offers a unique opportunity to hook a freshwater rainbow trout not far from the salty surf where the river joins the sea. It was a different story for the TV celebs though, who pulled up a few earlier in the day while filming an episode…

Tackling Climies Track

Another big attraction of taking part in any ‘tag-along’ I-Venture trip is the opportunity to tick off a ‘bucket list’ off-road track, with assistance and back-up provided by the I-Venture crew.

The ‘bait’ for this trip was an attempt at the hardcore Climies Track, near Zeehan, a 20km long, one-way coastal track, usually only tackled by jacked-up, dual-range 4WD vehicles with experienced off-road drivers and plenty of recovery equipment.

Due to some overnight rain on Day 1, the crack at the Climies Track was postponed to the final day, which turned out to be unusually sunny and calm for this section of ‘Roaring Forties’ coastline.

Rain or no rain, it was never going to be easy. Jeep held its 2019 Wrangler launch at Climies, where one of Australia’s most experienced 4WD journalists managed to tip a vehicle on its side, and it took the battle-hardened I-Venture crew 10 long hours to complete the track during a very wet recce in November 2019.

However, hopes were high when the 15 Isuzu vehicles gathered at the wooden bridge crossing at the start of the track. The first uphill section across boulders and ruts proved relatively stress free before a deep bog hole halted progress about 1km in.

After watching a highly-modified Patrol ahead of the group make two frantic attempts to get through, head trainer David Wilson decided on a very muddy and slippery cross-country detour, using all 20 or so available MaxTrax-style planks to create a more stable surface.

More than an hour later, including a tricky snatch snap recovery of one of the unmodified D-MAX utes, the convoy was through but only progressed another 500m or so before having to finally call it quits at the top of a very tricky descent.

‘We have to abandon the track, and this pains me greatly as there’s never been a time that we haven’t been able to get through (on an off-road track,” Wilson explained to the group after a lunch stop.

“I’ve just run all the way to the bottom of the hill and while I think I could get you down there, with the way those vehicles ahead of us are bogged down there, I think the track is now impassable.”

Nobody appeared too disappointed but importantly, some valuable off-road lessons were learned and all vehicles made it back in (mostly) one piece.

And with many ‘repeat offenders’ among the group, having enjoyed other I-Venture events in the past, they should be ready to go again when the next thrill-packed trip is announced…

Related reading:

Isuzu I-Venture Blue Mountains

Isuzu I-Venture Eyre Peninsula