Morgan Quary
Riverland, South Australia
10th November, 2018
This was a come and try trip that was arranged by the 4×4 Adventurer’s Club in Adelaide.
The entire day was very well organised and the club members were very friendly and helpful. I will definitely try and get along to one of their club meetings and find out more with a view to joining. They have regular trips throughout the year that are a little more suitable for someone working full time.
Morgan Quarry is located in South Australia’s Riverland. It is the place where I first drove off road and learnt how to drive off road with some friends I made at the Land Rover Register of South Australia. Some time around 2007-2010 someone had an accident and the story goes they tried to sue the local council. As a result of this, the local council fenced off the quarry and now access is only possible via an associated 4×4 club. Such a waste as this is a fantastic place to drive around. And I’m fairly confident that the local council had nothing at all to do with the accident.
There were well over twenty vehicles of all makes that turned up for the trip. Were were split into several small groups that had a leader a tail ender.
In the afternoon we headed in the direction the other groups went in the morning. This led us over some of the more challenging part of the quarry. The track we took is highlighted in purple on the graphic to the right.
You can see by the Hema graphs that there was a lot of driving at height which made the track very exciting. Again, lots of ups and downs which can be seen in the video below. I made the mistake of recording everything in super slow motion so there was no sound on the video once it was set to the correct speed. Apologies for the free music but I don’t think too awful.
In the morning the group we headed away from where most of the other groups headed meaning that we had many of the trails to ourselves.
Some of the places that we drove brought back happy memories of the last few times I was in the quarry. Some of the driving can be very technical and challenging. It is a little diffiult to see in the picture to the left but the track we did in the morning is shown in yellow. This information was recorded on my Hema HX7. The speed and changes in altitude are shown in the graph at the bottom of the graphic. As can be seen, lots of ups and downs.
Here is a video of part of the trip
It really is a shame that access has been restricted to the quarry as there is every type of terrain you can expect to drive on within South Australia there. It is a fantastic place to learn how to drive off road. There is a track or obstacle there for everybody’s level of skill. Hopefully some day it will be re opened to the public but I can’t really see that happening any time soon