Tallarook Plateau Guidebook
The 4WDVic track classification course of 2015 planted the seed for the new Tallarook Plateau Guidebook. That one-day course finished with the distribution of track classification template sheets to everyone, and a quiet word to go away and try track classification somewhere. I contacted 4WD Vic and put my foot on the Tallarook Plateau.
Several days and weekends followed driving the Tallarook plateau and assessing each section of all the tracks, but without any clear picture of where the final product was heading. The first trial runs of the product were on Pajero Club trips using informal notes to gain some feedback from colleagues.
Rather than a simple track assessment map, the project evolved into a natural history guide covering trees, geography, geology, some history, 15 special sites with their own notes, and a highway log to Tallarook from Melbourne and from Benalla.
During preparation, issues arose with the accuracy of the track classification when bulldozing during the Mt Hickey fire made a black track into a modest blue, and someone objected when they found a blue track to be extremely hard (in heavy rain!). The whole track classification exercise exposed the confusing signage on the plateau, e.g. who could find their way off the Plateau in smoke and fire with only four exit roads?
All dressed up and nowhere to go! By Spring 2017 I had a completed track classification guide but no one was interested in it—or so I thought. A fortuitous discussion led to the guide being modified, refocussed somewhat on geology, and then produced for the Benalla 2018 International Granite Symposium in September 2017. Two conference field trips used this self-published guide, and then it has become available publicly; it is priced to be about the same as the cost of fuel one-way from Melbourne to Tallarook.
Available from Outdoor Recreation In Australia, PO Box 3 Central Park 3145, OR Pajero Club member Neil Phillips 0417 300 400. $15 plus postage.
Phillips G N and Clemens J D 2017. Geology of the Tallarook Plateau. Outdoor Recreation In Australia, Central Park, Australia, 58pp.
Neil Phillips 1744
pajeroclub.com.au
Vol 35 No.2 - Mar/Apr 2018
27