Late afternoon we tried to access Lake Owen, south of Goongarrie, via a feeder creek from the south-east with a view to locating an historic condenser on the lake and camp the night.

To do this we had to cross the Kalgoorlie Leonora Railway (at the Canegrass Crossing) and then retrace our route northwards on the western side of the line for 3.5 kilometres.

At this point we turned west and made a 900 metre cross country drive to access the creek.

Scott led the way as we came out to the creek. There was no water in the channel. The coarse sand was mildly damp in places and generally firm.

That changed 500 metres along the creek.

Scott got stuck but managed to get going again by lowering the pressure of his tyres. Kim followed Scott and ploughed through the upper 250mm of coarse river sand – to the black ooze that lay beneath it. Lowering tyre pressures didn’t help.

After a quick assessment Dan decided to use his Prado to snatch out the stricken Patrol. Dan’s snatching exploits are the stuff of legend.

He maneuvered the Prado to the front of Kim’s Patrol. And then, almost inevitably, the recovery operation went the way one could predict when bogged in the middle of a ‘dry’ creek bed, late in the afternoon.

The snatch didn’t work. Neither did a second attempt. The Prado went down. The never-previously-used recovery boards came out. The black ooze provided enough lubrication to cause the wheels to just spin. Time for Plan B.

Out came the winch. With Phil’s Landcruiser as an anchor the Prado was winched to firmer ground.

The MaxTrax were placed under the wheels of the Patrol. No joy. The winch was used to get the Patrol onto the boards and then it was a simple matter to drive out to firmer ground.

How to deal with four MaxTrax covered in black ooze?

After the de-bogging we drove a further 500 metres along the creek to an open, firm, flat area and camped the night. Armchair bushmen who want to pontificate on the supposed dangers of camping in a watercourse may first consider the paucity of flash flooding in this part of the world and the lack of any great catchment at this location.

Our small bogging adventure at Lake Owen signalled the end of our Bullabulling Wallaroo Wangine Goongarrie Bush Trip.