10 years young

In the blink of an eye, 10 years has passed. This year we celebrate a decade of providing quality, specialised offroad driver training to individuals, groups, businesses, organisations and corporations.

There have been many changes and adventures in this time, some big, some small, and some that always bring a smile to my face. Over the next few months, join us for an offroad trip down the backroads along memory lane.

Our original bumper sticker, we still see a few of these getting around

It all begins in 2005, the year that a vision of building the nation's premier offroad driver training business became something tangible, and had many people realising for the first time that you could be not only trained but also accredited in safely and economically driving off the bitumen.

What was to grow to become the now nationally recognised Australian Offroad Academy was born of humble beginnings on March the 1st in 2005, with our starter company of P7Offroad Accredited Driver Training Pty Ltd. based on the Fraser Coast in Queensland.

Our First Logo

The first challenge: Designing a logo to remember.

Colours instantly recognisable by offroaders, representing mud and sand and the tyre track left behind, and who can forget the always intriguing question: "What does P7 stand for?"














The next challenge: Choosing the perfect company vehicle.
This was no easy task, but we knew that we had the support of our Local Fraser Coast TJM in helping us to customise whatever we ended up with so that it would not only go everywhere it needed to go in comfort and style but also get others out of there when they got into trouble.
From a fairly ambitious original wish list, ultimately the shortlist was a 100 series Cruiser or a Nissan Patrol. As history shows, and as those who keep up with our posts know, it was the P7 Patrol that came out on top and the original P701 is still with us, going as strong as ever today.

The Childers site featured some great natural and artificial terrain

Building the Wombat Holes at the Childers Training Centre

The final start-up challenge: Getting our piece of private offroad ready.
After securing an ideal spot just off the highway 10kms south of Childers, we called on our mates at the Fraser Coast 4wd Club to help us build our first ever training track. Lots of fun was had on days spent driving the tracks and scouting for obstacles, as well as digging and building purpose-made challenges around the 380 acre property.

Our first DL flyer, these went to 4x4 stores and Tourist Info Centres

Our 3-level wombat holes track was a favourite with all of our guests, with many of our clients standing in awe as their previously hesitant partners expertly traveled along the varied terrain into the most difficult parts of the track.


From a great little training centre on the Isis River, small classes of 1-2 participants have grown steadily to now often requiring two instructors for many of the corporate courses being held across 5 states. From humble beginnings ...


Our first course offerings were:
from the, now replaced, SRO units accompanied by our sand courses and camper trailer courses.

In our first year, commercial work had started to arrive but the vast majority of our clients were ordinary people from across the offroading demographic who just wanted to enjoy their offroad time.