A freezing cold start to the day as Stevo and I merged onto the Ampol Service station on Gnangara road meeting up with the rest of the West Coast crew. Everyone was there that needed to be there, assuming Greg and Linda were meeting us at Bells Rapids.

Moving out in convoy we headed for Bells Rapids. Once we arrived and departed from our warm cozy 4WD's it was still noticeably cold waiting for instruction from the orgainisers... the chill factor with the easterly wind working its way down through the Avon Valley was lets say not very pleasant.

The training started right on 9.00am with the ASU coordinator addressing about 30 eager volunteers. They then put us straight into obtaining the skills of rope handling and knot tying, from the old grannie knot, to a clove hitch and through to the more difficult bowline knot. Then onto another important exercise of rope bag throwing, quite and interesting exercise attempting to hit a target and then a moving target.

Morning tea and then moving onto obtaining more skills on how to look after possible casualties, restraining them securely and safely for transport, then onto the differing scenarios of rescuing casualties out of a fast flowing river that the Avon Descent participants maybe stuck due to water current and snags, ASU volunteer trainees utilising rope throwing techniques.

Before lunch we were sent off to a different location to literally walk a casualty up the side of an extremely steep hillside - semi cliff face. Bronky was elected to be the casualty with UgBoot, Stevo, Sparky being the bearer carriers. The apparatus used was lets say winch based techniques, all very interesting on how this exercise was performed with pulleys, ropes a trussits. 

All in all, the ASU coordinators and instructors were fantastic, they made the day of training enjoyable and very educational. All hands on training and I'm sure many West Coasters got a lot from the mornings activities.

There is a follow up meeting this Wednesday night the 13th of July 2005, this is the theory component of today's training, then the next event is when we are issued with some gear including VHF radio's and allocated into our groups. Then we spend a weekend on the Avon, this will give us a chance to map the area we'll be travelling of the actual Avon Descent event. And we will be traversing restricted areas.

So, thanks to all those members that made the effort to be a part of the activities today and then committing to the theory based meeting this Wednesday evening.

After the mornings training we were all about to pack up and head for home, but alas it didn't take much for someone to give a bit of a nudge to go for a drive. I made the suggestion to head for Muchea and then heading West thinking that only a couple would take the offer up, yeah right! We ALL went ;-)

So we headed up the Great Northern Hwy and then headed for Muchea, finding the way in we went straight to 'THE HILL'. A couple of us having a bit of trouble selecting the right gears on the way up, but we all got up eventually. Then Sparky says whilst travelling in convoy, lets head for the S bend ;-) Well why not? Just a little confusion as to where the S bend was when we were almost right on top of it, Sparky's GPS waypoint moving left to right, then left and then behind him all whist he was only moving several feet, weird. Once the S bend was eventually found and we all proceeded to drive up to the top around the back door and then coming down together after paying homage to the S bend on foot.

Sparky couldn't contain himself but to give the S Bend a go back up. I asked him just before he went for the summit of the S jokingly... 'mate, would you like some balas?' Sparky's said... 'rrrr why not mate, its a Pajero!' (in that raw Scottish accent of his)

First attempt was pretty good, almost making it too! Second attempt after re-evaluating the situation from the first attempt was nothing short of AWESOME. Sparky literally threw that little SWB Pajero up that S bend getting the front LH wheel off the ground how far UgBoot? Unbelievable effort by the Sparkmeister, well done mate.

We left the S bend and headed to the power lines and then onto Neaves Rd, aired up and headed for home.

So not a bad day out considering that no 4WDing was in the original equation, but hey?! We are first and foremost 4WDrivers, yes? So why not?! ;-)