The Frontier Services RAFS girls came together to prepare for the New Year and got a crash course on 4WD survival, Rebecca Kennedy shares her experiences of the training week.

Arriving at the Longreach office in the morning, we were greeted by the Longreach team Kaitlin and Lisa, I had come from Mount Isa almost 650km away and the Emerald girls Renee and Vanessa, who was the newest of us “Newbies” had driven just over 400km. We were given the next two weeks, before all of our offices officially opened, to share ideas, help sort out offices and mainly create kit boxes, which are boxes we send out to families full of educational toys and activities.
 We had a very productive and fun week in Longreach chatting, creating Kit Boxes and getting ideas.

We travelled in convoy down to Charleville where we spent two days whizzing around the Charleville office, poking around resources and gathering ideas. We spent a lovely morning at the Charleville Early Learning Centre, playing with the children, speaking with the educators about the EYLF (Early Years Learning Framework) program and getting to know how our Frontier Services child care centre is run. 

We then had a big 750km drive from Charleville to Rockhampton for our 4WD course. We met our instructor Grant, who came down from Townsville, at a scout and 4WD camp on the out skirts of Rocky. As soon as we drove in the gates Grants first words were “G’day, lock your wheels in and go into 4WD gear, then follow me down that very (terrifying – our words!) steep, rocky hill!” We all did it with no problems but lots of racing hearts, the rest of our first morning consisted of wriggling on our bellies under our Patrols finding out what (and where!) a ‘differential’ is and what a ‘sump pump’ does for our car. Popping the hood and going over basic pre departure points.

By the afternoon we were out at Yeppoon on a lovely stretch of beach, attempting to get one of our Patrols bogged in the sand. It was comforting that it stubbornly refused to get bogged!! We ended up having to dig it into the bog so we could practice pulling the patrol out with a snatch strap! We all had a go at directing, driving and been the recovery car, it was great to know if we ever needed to do this for real, we now have the knowledge there to do it confidently.

It was an exhilarating experience and I felt we came away from it well prepared for anything the year and the road had to throw at us!