ABOUT US
ON THE DIRT was created as a YouTube channel back in the first year that YouTube came into being, 2007. In those days, it was the personal YouTube account of John McCredie with a few little videos of some 4WD trips he had done with family and friends. John had always had a passion for gravel rallying and even won the Australian Rally Championship for pocket rockets in the front wheel drive 0-1300cc category. From there, this passion extended to four-wheel-driving and in 2009 John and his two sons Nathan and Jacob filmed their first 4WD Winch Comp.
The YouTube Channel soon started to grow in both popularity and size (number of videos) and was changed from the name OHM26 to ON THE DIRT. With more videos being produced and more 4wd and rally content being uploaded, the channel now has over 14,000 subscribers and almost 5 million views.
XWC – Winch Action from Xtreme Winch Challenge
A fine and Sunny Saturday Morning would greet the ARB Xtreme Winch Challenge competitors and it was off to Special Stage 4 to get things started for the day. Rod and Russell Rathbone would be the first to tackle the stage. Starting first and the fresh morning air must have helped, as the Rathbone boys would take the stage win with 100 points, leaving the rest of the teams fighting for the minor places. One of [...]
Redhead Motorsport Unleashes Evo 5 “Forest Weapon” for Rally of Bathurst
Front-running NSW rally crew Josh Redhead and Ray Winwood-Smith are set to debut an exciting new weapon at the upcoming Shamrock Haulage Rally of Bathurst, with the Redhead Motorsport team rolling out a freshly converted Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution 5 converted specifically for forest rallying. While the pair are best known for their rapid Hyundai i20 G4 rally car, the machine that delivered multiple podiums and victories in the Shamrock Haulage NSW Rally Championship, the car will [...]
Alpine Rally Partners with Breakthrough Ride
Media Release: By Event Media The organising Committee of the Alpine Rally of East Gippsland is delighted to announce that we are partnering in 2019 with The Breakthrough Ride to help raise awareness of PTSD in our emergency services personnel. “We have worked closely with all the Emergency Services in East Gippsland and have a number of long standing and valued relationships with many of the members of those services. This is a great way that our event can [...]
80 Series Landcruiser – stuck in a tree!
With Round 2 of the COMEUP Xtreme Winch Challenge series coming up on the 24th of June, we thought we'd take you back to round 1 for a quick re-cap. In this video, Luke McNicol gets stuck into the Saturday stages. Unfortunately he gets a bit too "stuck" and ledges himself onto a tree. The only way to escape the clutches of the undergrowth was to enlist the help of event organiser David Metcalfe and [...]
Toyota Prado 2003 Review
The second hand 4wd market is huge in Australia and today we’ll be reviewing a 2003 Toyota Landcruiser Prado Grande. In 2003, Toyota introduced this new model and it was a significant upgrade to the previous version and featured new styling from a design out of Toyotas European Design Studio. In addition to the styling, this 4WD comes packed with many other features, but not all the features of the Grande are available on the [...]
2026 Narooma Forest Rally – Live Blog
🕒 Update at 19:15 - 29.06.26 Gotta love a proper champagne spray shot from the Narooma podium 🍾💦 Congrats to the top three NSWRC crews yesterday at Narooma. Fast roads, technical forests, and now the small matter of getting that champagne smell out of the race suits. That is rallying. 👌 #NaroomaForestRally #NSWRC #RallyNSW #OnTheDirt 🕒 Update at 16:18 - 28.06.26 Winners are grinners at Narooma 😄🏆 Round 2 of the NSW season delivered the smiles on [...]
Irish Rally Icon Frank Kelly to Join Lazer Rally of the Bay Field in Spectacular Australian Return
The 2025 Shamrock Haulage NSW Rally Championship just got a serious dose of international flavour, with Irish rally legend Frank Kelly confirming he will contest the Lazer Rally of the Bay on August 2, bringing his legendary 1977 Ford Escort Mk2 “Baby Blue” to the forests of Batemans Bay. This exciting development follows Kelly’s standout visit to Australian rallying at the Forest Rally in Western Australia, where he competed in Round Two of the EROAD [...]
Sunraysia Safari 2025: Australia’s Great Outback Rally Returns for 1200 Kilometres of Brutal Beauty
The 2025 Sunraysia Safari Cross Country Rally is locked and loaded, with the final route mapped, entries closed, and the excitement building toward its September 10–13 showdown. With close to 1,200 km of competitive stages spread across four intense days in the rugged NSW outback, this year’s edition is shaping up to be one of the most competitive and captivating in the event’s history. Rally Revival with a Legacy: Launched in 2017, the Sunraysia Safari [...]
Arnhem Land – NT
By John McCredie In the North of Australia is a land area called Arnhem Land. It is an Aboriginal reserve that covers almost 100,000 square kilometres and has some of the most remote communities in Australia. You could say that the Aboriginal people own this land and whilst that is essentially true, the idea of ownership has quite a different meaning in their culture. Recently I was privileged enough to be able [...]
