We did pretty well. The kids were fed and we were on our way by about 8:10.
It was overcast and we had a few little showers, so we decided beach camping was out. We should be able to drive from Beachport to Robe in a day, if conditions are less than ideal, we can bug out to the inland track and finish the drive.
We drove down the hard packed road to the "Three Mile Rocks", turned off to the left and put up with the "whoop de doos", compacted bumps similar to corrugations but much larger and further apart. To take them too quickly was to shake everything apart. Warren's Landrover seemed to cope much better with them.
After a while we stopped to air down, and I engaged the front hubs and selected 4wd, locked centre. Down to 18psi in the front and 20psi in the rear, we made our way down to the beach and the softer sand.
Brad was on the beach first. He'd driven down, gone right, then reversed up to the left, so I did the same. Warren came down and we had a talk about the soft sand and the way out, so he gave it a go, and dug lots a few trenches and chewed it up.
After a while he decided to let out some more air in his tyres, so Brad and I did the same, and we headed back out the way we came. a little later, after following the track a bit further North, we headed back towards the beach and headed up into the dunes.
We saw lots of rubbish on the beach, including a shovel on the sand around the high tide mark. I didn't stop as I was last and a little nervous about being able to get going again if I stopped in the soft sand.
From here our adventure headed further North, over some dunes, a beach too soft to drive on and some interesting runs up steep and soft little sand dunes.
While searching for the inland track we had some fun, but eventually worked out that it was underwater, flooded by the recent heavy rains. So we headed back towards Beachport with a wrong turn that turned out to be a short cut to the "not yet flooded" part of the Inland Track. We were a bit behind the others as the camp chairs on the roof rack came loose, so we missed where they stopped, had some mis-communication over the radio and nearly drove all the way back to the beach before turning around and finding the others only a little further down the track from where we'd mistakenly turned. We pumped our tyres back up and headed back into Beachport for some chip sandwiches for lunch.
It was travelling time again, North to Murray Bridge. An interesting land mass to our left that turned out not to be Kangaroo Island, some interesting little shacks down by the water and a missing wilderness retreat.
The camp ground at Murray Bridge was quite nice. It was time again for laundry and a bit of a yack with Brad while Katrina took the hard job of washing and getting children to sleep.
For tomorrow we plan to head to Port Augusta, shop for provisions and then head to the Flinders Ranges.
It's after 23:00, laundry should be done, time for sleep.
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