Saturday, Dec 09, 2006 at 17:08
Hi Willem,
Yes, I remember reading your substantial missive earlier. Sounds like a great trip.
Might try to find
Wattle Camp from
the beach on the next trip. This was a maintenance
camp for the telegraph line, and I guess there was
water there. The maps are a bit vague on this one. I have some maps from the late 1800's, and tried scanning them for Ozi, but there are a few discrepancies. Obviously coords taken from a sextant were pretty vague in those days.
Did a bit of browsing on Google Earth, and managed to extract some coords, so could be interesting on the next trip. Interesting on your comments, as the Google map shows a track continuing right thru to where the line headed up thru the scarp. Occasionally it's lost on a
salt lake, and occasionally it seems to detour off the normal projection, so I guess it's pretty easy to lose track of it from the ground level.
Have done two summer runs and
the beach is pretty good, speeds of 90km/h are achievable in
places (did
the beach in two hours, incl a few stops along the way on the first trip).
But one trip was in October, and
the beach was still short and the sand was very soft. Nearly lost the Mav out near the cliffs when we bogged down on a narrow steep bit of beach. Heading west, the dry sand was firmer than the wet sand. As we got further west, the sand firmed up, but then the seaweed got worse. Occasionally had to wait for a wave to go out to get around a head of seaweed. Scary stuff!! Eventually the map on Ozi showed a track just behind the dunes, and we managed to get across thru the seaweed onto terra firma.
But at any time of the year it is still good to get tide times and wait for low tide.
At the bottom of the Bilbunya cliffs, dug a 500mm hole in the sand and found perfect fresh
water in summer. The
water at the bottom of the scarp
camping spot is pretty smelly and dirty. Ok for washing, but not drinking.
Cheers,
Gerry
FollowupID:
469493