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.
The Accent on Working Dogs at Bonalbo
It was a completely new event to all at the 2019 Accent Benchtops Working Dog Rally. A joint MTA NSW Rally Championship, Queensland Championship and East Coast Classic Rally Series event that saw 49 cars and crews take to the stages around the small northern NSW town of Bonalbo on a crisp July Saturday morning. The battle for the MTA NSW Rally Championship in particular was rejoined, as championship leaders Richard Shimmon and co driver [...]
4WD Winch Challenge Heats up in Cold Conditions
With overnight temperatures dropping into the negatives, about the only thing hot at the recent round of the Comeup Xtreme Winch Challenge (XWC) series was the winching action! 12 teams lined up on a bitterly cold Friday night at the Springvale property in the small country town of Wallabadah, just south of Tamworth for Round 2 of the popular series. With three stages set to challenge teams in the dark, it would be the Toyota [...]
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 [...]
Wyangala Dam – NSW
Located near the western NSW township of Cowra, Wyangala Dam is a terrific spot for a leisurely weekend of camping, or for the more active, a great water sports haven! It might sound like a pretty ordinary place to go camping, but Wyangala Dam has a lot to offer and makes for a very relaxing weekend away. The Dam itself can vary in water level from as low as only a few percent (it was [...]
Putting the new Kumho MT-71 to the test
For those who follow our YouTube channel or regularly read our articles, we recently reviewed the Kumho AT51 all terrain tyre that we’ve been running on the OTD Pajero for some time. We really like the AT51, so when Kumho released a new Mud Tyre, we asked them if we could have a set to test them out and they were generous enough to provide a brand new set of their MT-71’s for us to [...]
Redhead and Winwood-Smith Chase Mathematical Shot at NSW Title in Coffs Coast Finale
Josh Redhead and co-driver Ray Winwood-Smith head into this weekend’s 2025 Quality Accounting Coffs Coast Rally with a mathematical chance of winning the Shamrock Haulage NSW Rally Championship, but it’s going to take a near-perfect run to pull it off. The duo, competing in their Hyundai i20 G4 Rally Car, will need to win all three heats at the Coffs Coast event to claim the title, a tough but not impossible task given their recent form [...]
O’Malley Prepares for Rally of Bathurst After Breakthrough Season
Pictures by Roy Meuronen. After a standout first full season in the Shamrock Haulage NSW Rally Championship, James O’Malley is preparing to return to the stages in 2026, beginning with the upcoming Shamrock Haulage Rally of Bathurst. O’Malley enjoyed a strong campaign in 2025, securing first place in the NSW Rally Championship for the 1601–2000cc two-wheel-drive class, finishing third in the outright two-wheel-drive standings, and placing sixth outright. The results marked an impressive milestone in [...]
Outback challenger getting practice at AMH Automotive Group Rally Of The Bay
Michael Ward Rallysport is looking forward to getting back out in the dirt at the AMH Automotive Group Rally of the Bay. Driver Michael Ward and Co-Driver John Fraser will be using the event to start preparations for this year's Classic Outback Trial scheduled for later this year in November. "It's great to be able to get back into the driver's seat," Ward said. "We're using this event to start our preparations for the last Classic [...]
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 [...]
