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The Kid and I had a little bit of an adventure this afternoon.

Because she’s in the Girl Guides she gets to participate in all sorts of community events. The one she was in today was a tree planting event as part of their participation in National Tree Day.

We went out to a local farm and planted something like 160 trees. They were a mix of half a dozen different species, and all were planted along the embankment of the Tullaroop Creek as part of the farmer’s efforts to replace native vegetation. The plot was chosen for two reasons: first, it will help avoid erosion, and second, the trees will form a barrier between the crop areas of the farm and the creek so that excess nutrients will be used by the trees rather than run off into the water.

And speaking of water: there was lots. We got into the area ok, but the car (well, all 8 cars actually) did squirm around a little on the dirt tracks. While we were there, though, it rained pretty solidly for an hour. The tracks that we came in on were turned to mud.

The first car that got stuck was a Camry that slid into a fence. The lone 4×4 Hilux pulled him out. The next casualty was a Falcon sedan that slid into the same fence. Again, the Hilux to the rescue.

I was on a fairly firm track, but unfortunately it had a little bit of camber because it was the beginnings of the creek bank. As soon as I moved off the car did the same as the two ahead of me, and the back drifted down toward the creek. I didn’t end up in the fence, but I was clearly going nowhere. The Hilux did the job for the third time.

When we finally all got out of the paddock we still had to get up one of the tracks that we’d taken down to the paddocks on the flat area near the creek. All the rear wheel drives went ok, but the lone [front wheel drive] Camry again got stuck. The Hilux was used yet again to pull him all the way up the track.

I should note that no-one had any recovery gear at all. A few pieces of rope were found but proved useless; they all snapped really quickly. We ended up using a long length of fencing wire, and that did the trick perfectly.

We probably spent just over an hour planting trees, and then almost 3 hours getting all the cars back out to the highway again.