A 4x4 Day At The Beach

Experiences of a newbie 4x4er on Stradbroke Island

Editor's Note: Our new member had fun but the lesson is obvious - don't drive on the beach alone - and that means preferably with another vehicle in company

The day started for me at 5am. It was going to be the first time I've taken my recently acquired '86 L-series stock Suby wagon off the black stuff, and into the soft stuff. I was as prepared as I wanted to be. My recovery gear consisted of a 1.5 tonne Fuji puller, several lengths of wire rope, and numerous, various-sized D-shackles, two sets of willing hands for pushing, in the form of my parents, and a determination not to come to grief anyway.

After picking my folks up, we headed down to Cleveland to catch the 7.45 am barge, reaching it with plenty of time to spare for a read of the paper, and a chat to some of the truckies going over on our trip. The barge took exactly I hour and 2 minutes to traverse the distance, and then we were off and rolling up to the bakery for a larder stock-up. I was back waiting in the car with two Straddie meat pies long before my folks came out loaded with all sorts of culinary delights. We decided to head for Amity point to ingest our breakfast, and after a quick drop-in to the tourism office to acquire the obligatory 4x4 beach permit, we were on the way.

There were a group of our boys in green fatigues lazing about on the beach, their medical truck parked in the shade of a convenient tree. We pulled up beside them, and tucked in. I recommend the Straddie pies; they were delicious.. While sitting at one of the picnic tables, I noticed a lady doing a spot of fishing by the water, and ambled over to see how she was doing. If I'd been a bit quicker, I would have got a photo of her landing a decent-sized bream, her first catch of the day. I helped her open her bucket/seat and we had a chat about how they were biting. She reckoned that she'd been living there 10 years. I envy her. It was a beautiful spot.

Our repast complete, we decided to head up to the first 4x4 access point onto Flinders beach, and see if the tide was sufficiently out to allow some beach driving. Fortunately, it was. Unfortunately, the mud-hole preceeding the actual sandy bit was deeper than I'd anticipated, and thus the front of the car was liberally covered in a coating of red gunk after I charged forward into it. Lesson #1 - Look before you leap.

I paused after the mud bath, shifted it into low range, looked for a good line over the bumpy entrance to the hard packed beach, then went for it. Keeping it in 2nd, Mother hanging on for dear life, we easily negotiated our way out onto the firm sand, and then we were away, on our very first beach drive.

Apart from some regularly spaced soft patches, the car was pulling well in 3rd. I kept a cautious eye out for the wash-outs, and followed other tyre tracks as much as was practical.

Our first bit of minor trouble came when we hit some particularly soft sand. 3rd wasn't handling it, so I tried to drop to 2nd, and we came to an abrupt halt. Oops! Lesson #2 - Read the road ahead, and choose a gear to suit, BEFORE you get to it.

I dropped to 1st and gingerly tried starting off, and down she went. Hmmmm. My folks were encouraged to alight from the vehicle and volunteered to assist by doing the aforementioned pushing technique. If that had failed, I was going to lower some tyre pressures, but luckily, we got out of that with little drama. I was still running on road pressures at this stage. I didn't feel inclined to lower them unless the situation called for it, as I'd forgotten to add my compressor to the cargo that morning.

With everyone back aboard, we continued up the beach passing the occasional other parked 4x4, and pedestrians. We stopped on some hard stuff, nowhere in particular for a photo-shoot of a flock of birds further up the beach. While Mother was off doing that, Father and I went in for a swim. There was a bit of a trough running there and was about thigh-deep, so there was no danger of being carried away. Water was pleasantly warm, and we stayed around there for about 20 + minutes. I took a couple of photos of my pride 'n joy sitting there on the sand with the ocean and maybe some of Moreton Is as backdrop.

Getting back into gear, we headed for the 4x4 access/exit point. I cruised past, looking for a good line through. I found one, and still in low range 2nd did a U-turn on the hard stuff and charged up and over the rutted soft stuff and out. We headed back onto the black stuff for the trip to Point Look Out, stopping for photo opportunities on the way.

Point Lookout, now that was an adventure in itself. My main reason for going on this trip, was to take some more pictures of North Gorge. Last time I was there, several moons ago, my camera had only the stock 50 mm lens, and the photos I'd taken then were rather ordinary. Now I've got a supa-dupa, whiz-bang 28 - 200 mm zoom lens for the Cam, I decided to return and do the landscape some justice.

I started from the surf-rescue end of the track, and worked my way back. I did my impersonation of a mountain goat by clambering over and down the rocky outcrops, seeking that special angle for a great shot. I got lots of great shots along the way to my target destination, at least I hope they are great shots. Not yet developed as of this writing. I was nearly heading for the northern side of the gorge (my ultimate destination) when I noticed that I was down to about 3 - 5 shots left, and that I'd left my 2nd roll of film in the car D'oh! Well I decided to continue on, and kept taking pics as I saw something interesting.

I finally arrived at the tip of the Northern side, with 2 shots to spare. 2 shots just wasn't going to be enough for such a spectacular view, I grumbled to myself, envisioning a long haul back to the car, and a return trip. Well, I figured, this was what I'd come for, so stop yer bitching, use the two shots, and go get the other roll. Which I proceeded to do.

There was a nice young lady up there as well, drawing what I was photographing. Very skilled artiste too, I might add. We had a brief chat, in which I pointed out the dangers of a young woman, sitting alone, so close to the edge of a long drop, far away from other passers-by. She took note of the advice apparently, and by the time I returned with a re-charged camera, she was gone. Damn. I was hoping to include her in some of my shots. Oh well. She was cute too..

I reenacted my mountain goat trick, and clambered down to get the optimum angle for several shots. And this is where the fun started. I noticed some pretty mossy rocks down where the waves were splashing spray. I watched the waves for a time, seeing how much spray was happening, and figured that I'd be ok, if I was quick. Yeah. I clambered down into position, and started to focus on some rocks.

The spray wasn't bothering me, so I was taking my time, getting a good shot, in focus, when I heard the grand daddy of all waves starting to crash on the rocks behind me. Oopssss thinks I, and I get up to jump further up the rock face, when the deluge hit me.

I was never in any danger of getting washed off the rocks, if I were, I wouldn't have taken the chance, but in any case, I was drenched, and my camera along with me. Oh great, thinks 1, and I stand there dripping, and my camera taking it into it's head to start taking shots all by itself. It must have squeezed off at least 5 shots before I could turn the winder off. Feeling really impressed with the change in events, I started climbing back up. Once I'd reached the top, was when I noticed that part of the back of the flash was missing. Oh this is just great, thinks I, so I spend the next ten minutes climbing all over where I thought I'd been, looking for it, to no avail. This is the second item of my property that Straddie has extracted from me now. The first being my favourite folding pocket knife that slipped from my pocket as I was riding my bike along the Amity point road, many many birthday's ago.

But I digress, this is a 4x4 story...

Dragging my sorry drowned-rat of a butt back to the car, where my folks were sleeping from having to wait so long (God bless 'em), we headed for the access point to Main beach. Another low range 2nd gear approach saw us on the hard sand, and heading south.

After a short period, I stopped, put it in high range and started off again. This beach was different to Flinders. Nicely hard packed, rare soft spots. On the map we had, it showed the causeway, which I was heading for, to go to Blue lake. We noticed (on the map) a Boat wreck on the beach, and decided to go down to check it out... We drove and drove and drove, and then drove some more, and nary a sight of this boat wreck did we see. We finally arrived at Jumpinpin, realising that we'd missed it, somehow. This was where we saw the only other Suby on the whole trip, a late model Forester. We asked some fisher persons if they knew of this mysterious wreck, to which they answered with confused grunts, which sounded suspiciously in the negative to me.

We did a U-bolt at the Stop sign and headed back, eyes peeled, and still spotted nothing resembling a distressed formerly ocean-going vehicle. We gave that. up as a bad joke, and decided to head for Blue lake for a refreshing swim and rest. Again choosing a good line with the low range 2nd gear exit and then back to 2 wheel drive heading for the lake turnoff, and this is where the proverbial fan got busy with the proverbial stuff hitting it.

The first 50 metres was OK, and then the ol' ground clearance thing stuck up it's head and poked it's tongue at us. Lesson #2 was still fresh and being observed, but Lesson #1 was revisited and now welcome along Lesson #3 - Pay Attention. The ground came up to meet us, and then we were stuck. Everyone bailed out to assess the situation. Trying to get out with just me in it failed. Hmmm. OK, out with the recovery gear... I let the tyres down some. Once back at the nearest servo, I noticed, while refilling them, that I'd let them down to <10 lbs. Not having a tyre gauge along either, I had to judge how much air I was letting out.

We hooked onto a convenient tree, and began the tedious time consuming job of extracting my pride 'n joy from the hole I'd dug it into. I was 'minded of a saying I'd once heard, long ago. "Two wheels can spin, just as easy as one"

Once we'd pulled/driven it up onto the harder shoulder, it was easy to drive it to a good place to turn around and then take the previously unseen (see Lesson #3) side-track around the formerly deep rutted bit. It was no longer deep rutted, as in our recovery efforts, we had filled in most of the deep bits. With the car out, we filled in the holes we'd made, and seeing as it was getting fairly close to barge departure time, my parents decided against having another go for the lake, much to my disappointment.

I'd noticed, that in having the lower tyre pressures, the car had just seemed to float across the softer rutted bits on the escape route, so I was all for heading back for the lake. Oh well, sanity, and parental veto prevailed, and we headed back to Dunwich on the black stuff at a modest speed of 40 kph to replace the lost air in the tyres.

We still had a little time up our sleeves, so we decided to head back to Brown lake, for a last dip. We watched some of the baby frogs jumping along the shoreline (I hope they were frogs), had a long cool swim, which eased some of the pains from the glowing red skin I'd acquired midday a Point Lookout, due to not wearing a shirt. D'oh. You'd think at 34 I'd know better, huh?

The 6 pm barge was late, but I didn't care. I'd had a fantastic day. M parents were all aglow with having a great time. My old man was umming and erring about possibly getting a Suby 4x4 of his own too. I was proud of what my little Suby had achieved. They may be little cars, but they have big hearts. I love this country of ours, the wide open spaces, and places to go and see, and the (mostly) friendly people. Who'd want to live anywhere else?

Yep, I'm happy with my beaut little truck, and I look forward to going out on many club organised adventures and meeting you all.

Chris Linek SC468