Everyone at 4WD24/7 has put their heads together as a group including all our friends that tag along 4WD driving with us and we reckon we’re experts even professionals you might say in the field of getting bogged.

UNTOLD STORIES from our top 5 recoveries! What REALLY happened behind the scenes!

We can get bogged pretty much anywhere, all around Australia. 12 months of the year you can bet that one of us will be bogged at some point. Now getting bogged that often means you also get extremely good at recovering yourself, we have done some recoveries around Australia that we have thought to ourselves at the time how on earth are we going to get out of this one.

So we put our heads together and we have come up with our five best recoveries from recent times, now we're going to count them down from five through to one and we won't let the cat out of the bag just yet but number one is probably the only time in maybe a decade that we seriously thought we may have to abandon the vehicle we'll get to number one in a minute let's start the countdown number five let's get stuck into.

Number five recovery top of the list here starts in Yalwal, New South Wales. We love this part of the world for one reason it home to some of our favourite low range 4WD tracks and guessing what it is none other than Monkey Gum.

It was on our way to monkey gum that we encountered an obstacle that wasn't supposed to be there, the access track to Yalwal is actually a two-wheel drive track. Early in the morning we were all heading out to start Monkey Gum unbeknown to us a bridge had been washed away causing a massive erosion hole and there was no way around it.

Once in the bog hole of course there were a couple of different line choices but none of them worked the only way out was to go directly up that very steep bank, I reckon we need to engage the Runva winch put a hell of a load on the winch but the old Runva did it without blinking.

Number Four of our top five countdown recoveries this one took place in the glass house mountains; we had a fantastic idea that we try and get a whole bunch of people together and get rid of as much rubbish out of the glass house mountains as we possibly could, and it was a huge success we moved mountains of rubbish out of there.

It was on one of the main access tracks that we found an old burnt out car it was a real eyesore and it was right on the main track into some of the best tracks in the glass house so we thought why don't we get rid of it the idea being to clear it out of the way and take it to the scrap heap nearby.

Logistically it was always going to be very difficult to remove that vehicle without a crane and all the associated bits and pieces that most people would use but we came up with a fantastic idea we get the car trailer that Jesse owns we try use the Runva to winch it onto the car trailer. Shaun and Graham try and get some static ropes, winch ropes, winch ring and soft shackles to lift this vehicle up.

We just have to lift the car up probably on a 45, the car trailer had to be reverse car trailer under the burnt out car with pinpoint accuracy we then lowered that old car down onto the car trailer ratcheted it down and in one of the more bizarre recoveries we've ever done. we managed to get all of that junk plus that car body out of the glass house mountains

Number Three on our top five countdown recoveries, this one took place in Tasmania on a very very little-known track Pyengana, we've driven it once before back in the day we made it through but we had to sleep on the track we broke a couple of snap straps, we broke some winch cables it really was an absolute epic to get through it.

So we thought why don't we head back and challenge ourselves a second time, well I'll tell you what a few of us in the convoy by the end of it probably thought we were absolutely nuts and we probably were as soon as we got onto this track, I could tell it hadn't been driven in years by anything more than a quad it was tight trees were over the track and the mud holes looked like they were as deep as they'd ever been but undisturbed by a 4WD and if that doesn't ring alarm bells well it probably should.

Now we've done a few of the bog holes at this point we'd had some success mostly failures all of us had had to winch. Shauno had to tow Rueben almost the entire way out, it was incredible to watch.

Graham managed to get himself through under his own steam for the most part, but when he had to winch he either had to use Ruben's winch off the back of his vehicle or used his Runva so sparingly that he could only just get through the bog holes. We've got a score to settle with the Pyengana and we're coming back bigger and better with a heck of a lot of recovery gear and 16 chainsaws we'll see you again Tasmania.

Number two of our top five recoveries of recent times, is none other than that epic river crossing on the Durak river in the Kimberley. Of course we were tackling the Oombulgari track in the Kimberley.

We were the first group through in a couple of years thanks to COVID lockdowns, it was very early in the season just after the wet, the river was still extremely high and of course being the first through in a couple of years the route across the river had all but washed away.

This section of river is still tidal and we tried to do it as best we could on low tide, but we knew high tide was coming, add to that the fact that the river is full of saltwater crocodiles you're starting to get the picture.

What does Shauno do? He catches a big barra, fillets it up, then he goes and throws the barramundi frame right at the entrance to the river crossing. Sketchy as it gets but one of the most memorable things we've ever done.

Number One recovery on our top five list of the best recoveries we have done in recent times. The western side of cape York, you see we were up that way in order to do one mission and one mission only Shauno had it in his head that he had to catch the legendary Saratoga.

We'd heard of a station that had heaps of them in these freshwater billabongs right out the back of the station now ordinarily the station owner doesn't go out there until well in to the dry, us being us we were out there right at the end of the wet season the water was still everywhere and the ground was like a sponge.

We have never seen a vehicle more bogged than the 79 series owned by Tim from Mits Alloy, tell you what it's literally the one scenario where we thought we might have to leave the vehicle there until the dry season, the mitts 79 is a big rig at the best of times, weighs quite a bit and as soon as he crossed over somebody else's tracks broke that crust and went down.

One thing you've really got to experience to believe is just how much suction there is in that black mud, when a vehicle gets stuck down into it, the only way to break that suction is to lift the vehicle up and then pull it out. Of course the only way to do that is to use jacks and the only way we're ever going to use jacks is to get on the shovel and start digging, we must have moved cubic meters of earth that day on film that recovery probably took a couple of minutes in reality we were on the shovel on the witches on the jacks for about eight hours from memory to get one vehicle out by the end of it.