There’s really only one word you can use to describe Swan Gully. When you consider it is only an hour and a half away from Brisbane and close to a large rural town with all the services and, fortunately, all the spare parts required for 4WD’ing there is little else around to compare it to.

Besides, we are a 4WD club aren’t we? So doing a trip to a 4WD park so close to Brisbane would be on everyone’s “to do” list right?

Perhaps not.

Located just outside Beenleigh, this 4WD park is a hidden gem with luscious green paddocks for camping on, toilets, showers and firewood readily available. Family owned and run, the service is friendly and their passion and effort is clearly visible in the way the park is maintained.

Yes, there really is only one word you can use to describe Swan Gully. The tracks are easy to challenging and if you don’t follow your map correctly they could be potentially quite frightening. But don’t let that put you off. Those hard-core 4WD’ers from the club that attended this trip kept everything safe and fun with only the most reliable of machines proving to be unreliable over the weekend. Yes, hard to believe I know, but it was the Toyotas that failed and one to the extent that driving on Sunday morning was curtailed with a genuine fear that it would not make it back to Brisbane.

Jeremy chose one track to test his new Patrol on and it quickly became obvious that there was little grip on the eroding steep slope. As is usually the case, he was past the point of return so we ended up winching him to the top whilst the rest of us went around another track. On another occasion we were testing the rating of another track but had sufficient time to realize that the condition of this track had moved over the barrier to “extreme”. So we made a hasty retreat and went around it.

Swan Gully is such a beautiful place you can understand clearly how you could only use one word to describe it.

The Gully splits a range with some easy to medium tracks and a casual drive around the entire perimeter is a great way to familiarize yourself with the property. Open space for campers and caravans with easy access, this park could well be considered for one of the clubs big annual events.

So for us to finish this story you will need to do a trip to Swan Gully yourself to find your word that best describes Swan Gully.

If you go, I’ll see you there.