After separating from my husband I did what many newly solo mums do, I looked into 4WD!
The extent of my knowledge and experience were memories from the early ‘80s of my dad’s long wheel base 1971 Toyota fully enclosed Land Cruiser. We drove all over New Zealand spending weeks in the bush with me, my little brother, our dog and a few other families with their old trucks.
When they got stuck it would be hours of recovery and building roads as they went.
So in our age of information I turned to the Internet, and before too long I came across a site called www.nz4wd.co.nz and looked up North Island Clubs, which was most helpful! 
I started e-mailing. They went along the lines of, ”Hi my name is Michelle, I have a 1999 Nissan Terrano. I’m a solo mum with very little 4WD experience and I want to join your club.” 
I didn’t get a lot of replies - funny that - but the wife of one club president eventually invited me to come along to a meeting. Excellent, I thought, this is it.
When I arrived, and after people had checked to see if I was in the right room, they asked what sort of truck I had.
When I replied “it’s not really a 4WD, it’s a Terrano,” (being a beauty therapist and not knowing much about trucks), well it turns out the club president drives a Terrano!  Oh no, I got a shovel, dug myself an almighty great hole and sat there with my foot in my mouth for the rest of the meeting.
It turns out my shiny Terrano is a beast off-road...but that comes later in the story.
After the meeting when people were just chatting I got talking to a guy about 4WD training and another guy about tow hooks - everything was going well then all of a sudden this woman who is of a commanding stature appears before me and while shaking her finger at me says, “This club is not for free loaders Hunny! You would have to put your own tow strop on if you got stuck and by the looks of you, you wouldn’t want to ruin your manicure.”
Wow, I was speechless so I just left.
I continued to e-mail the club as I thought I just needed to prove myself to be accepted, kind of expected that anyway. I still didn’t get any replies.
 I only had highway tyres on my Terrano so I got in touch with a guy about mud tyres.
 I was told to ask for MTRs  - of course back then I had no idea what MTRs were, so when I got my truck back with Hankook all terrains on I was a bit confused. I rang the guy and he told me I had no idea what 4WDing was all about and those tyres were all I’d ever need.
How wrong he was.
 I had grabbed the number of the guy who does the training for the club and he said he did private training too, so my little brother and I (he also has a Terrano) headed off to a training session.
I learned so much, I had no idea!
I also had my first encounter with problems, tyres, not enough air, and tubeless, coming off the rims, blowing CVs on a Cherokee (not on my truck thank goodness.)
All and all, money well spent and a very eye-opening experience for someone who previously thought Devil’s Gate was Hard Yakka. 
Now I knew I wanted to be involved with a club, so I kept e-mailing and
e-mailing with no response. I was running out of options, I had contacted as many clubs as I could.
Just when I was thinking maybe I should take up a different sport, I was introduced to a guy through a business contact who was a member of the Mighty Levin Club, and he invited me out on a trip with them.
He tells me in his club there are two young girls who drive: Casey aged 18 in her 1986 SWB Pajero who can show the men up, and Nikita aged 14 in her dads Suzuki 413 who came third in the Levin Club champs.
Girl power ‘n all that stuff, I thought, “Great this is me!”  I couldn’t be more right, and what an awesome bunch of people from Wellington to Palmerston North.
We did trips from Foxton Beach to Tangimoana Forest and they were great people, taught me as we went and the great white whale, as she’s now known, was brilliant on sand with the all-terrains on - I suppose the 3.3-litre V6 helped.
From here, and with the help of my new club, I have learned so much. The guys helped me get my Terrano up to safety standards - mounted my fire extinguisher, PRS radio, tow hooks, first aid kit and so on.
I had, after all, become a member of a 4WD club!    *