Thinking outside of the box
Property diversification comes in all shapes and forms. Dave and Chrissy, owners of “Springvale”, Wallabadah certainly have thought outside the box when it comes to using their 450 acres in ways many would never imagine doing.
Rural Property NSW attended the second running of the Xtreme Winch Challenge, held on Springvale in late 2017. The challenge attracted 11 teams from NSW, the ACT and Queensland to Wallabadah to pitch their highly specialised extreme 4WD winching skills against each other. The teams are made up of a driver and a navigator. The “Navi’s” job is to guide the driver through the challenging, rocky and sometimes muddy terrain. Their most important role though is to set up the vehicle for winching over obstacles and steep creek and gully banks, some up to 8 metres in height.
Although Dave and Chrissy have only owned Springvale for three years, Dave admits that running such an event on his own property has always been on his “bucket list”.
The event itself has been successfully run over three rounds per year for the past 17 years on properties in Victoria, NSW and Queensland. Event organiser, David Metcalfe, can travel hundreds of kilometres each year to setup the rounds; sometimes taking a week in advance to map out the ten “stages” for a single weekend of team and crowd enjoyment.
The event, sponsored by ARB for the past 15 years and now by Comeup Winches, is an intense, dirty and self-described expensive sport. After all the dust has settled, however, the comradery is obvious. The teams help each other out as much as they can and were seen to even share crucial and expensive spare parts between each other.
Tamworth 4WD Club assisted over the weekend. The club have held many social get-together weekends on Springvale, being ideal terrain for 4WDing. Dave has even set up a designated entertainment shed on the property for such gatherings.
Along with the possible dream of one day running their property as a modest camping and recreational 4WD Park, Dave and Chrissy’s other aspiration is to improve upon their small alpaca stud.
"The place is already like a zoo, but our alpacas are the prized stars. They are such beautiful, intelligent, peaceful animals. It is a shame that the market for alpaca wool and meat in Australia is still limited" reflected Dave.
Much more limited than the interest in these extreme 4WD events it would seem.
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