Sand and fun and certain death

So my Darling Bf decided to take us Beach 4WDing up at Stockton Beach near Nelson Bay. I thought-Great! That sounds like fun! He always seems to have a good time when he does that. So woo! So Saturday morning we set off up the coast. We get to the spot and he jumps out of the car to lock in the 4WDing bit and to let the tyres down a bit, as he told me the less pressure you have in your tyres the greater the surface area. While this makes sense to me once explained I was interested to hear it, and would never have thought of it myself. I was feeling a little hung over from the previous night at The Mean Fuggler so I had already consumed a bottle of juice and some water, and while he was doing this I considered jumping out of the car and having a squat behind some spinifex, but decided against it as I was not confident of privacy!
So He jumps back in the car and off we go down the trail. We hit the sandy part and theres lots of bumps and I'm considering putting my seat belt back on cos we're gettting some air! So I'm being tossed about like a sack of potatoes and I say to him, So the trick is really just to keep on moving? Which he affirmed, yes.

I should never have spoken. I believe this was the kiss of death for us, as only moments later we got bogged. He didn't seem overly concerned however and jumped out to do whatever it is you do to get us un-stuck. I was slightly concerned as its all single lane and was worried people would come up behind us to get by and get bogged themselves, but it was all cool.

So my lovely man keeps getting in and out of the car, doing stuff, kicking the sand away from the tyres, letting the pressure down a smidgen more etc etc, gettting the car to move just a bit backwards, we're not really going anywhere but when he jumps in and indicates we're now in position!
Pointed straight at a tree.
I wasn't feeling confident until a realised he intended to winch us out. So phew! Relief!

Short lived however. Until this point I was happily sitting in the car, not much I could do, and the arrangement worked fine as it was really hot outside. But I needed to get out and help with the winching, so I jumped out without my thongs because I didn't want them getting dirty. BIG MISTAKE! After a few seconds in the sand my feet we're scorched! The sand had dirt through it and so was a darker colour and attracted more heat. So while I was trying to be helpful and keep the line taut I had to keep jumping around trying to find shade. Needless to say he wasn't terribly happy as I wasn't really helping. So I got told to get my thongs but they didn't really help much and my feet hurt sooooo much.

I jumped back in the car and another car passed us going the other way, asked if we were right, and (we) said we were fine so they went on their way. We wrestled with the winch for a little while, then unclipped it from the tree which I saw as progress, thinking this meant we were on the way. But no. We went forwards, we went backwards, we ended up way back from where we started. Darling Bf was dripping with sweat from the stress and heat. Then he asked me to jump in the drivers seat (eek!) and just "do what I was doing-Rev the fuck out of it and try to take off in first-" so I did this, he stood outside and tried to see what was happening, if the wheels were actually moving and what have you. It seemed to be going well, I was revving, he was trying to push the tyre, then he moved around the Left side of the car and suddenly-Whoa Whoa Stop stop Something's smoking! And I'm like, SHIT why does this happen the moment I get behind the wheel!? It smelled really bad and he's talking oh shit have we broken the Diff (-Zogg Jones)
And it seems something maybe seriously wrong. Crap.

Then another car came up to pass us except he didn't have enough room as we'd moved from our original bog-spot. So he had to stop and ended up being a lovely gent who helped us and we asked what pressure his tyres were on and ours were ten pound higher than his so we let even more air out of them (with this really nifty looking hand held pressure gauge thingy-I felt very Indiana Jones/Bond-y) and HEY! we were moving again! This whole debacle took approx 30-45 mins, so we weren't off to a great start.

I wasn't overly worried though as I always thought someone could tow us back out the track if it was really neccesary. After moving through the track effectively we moved into the dune area which looked ok, except it kept rising and falling alarmingly and we had to keep reversing and going forward and reversing for a long way and as you know, I don't exactly have nerves of steel to begin with, so after the bogging episode I wasn't feeling great about the expedition and then....

we were doing the driving thing and I look out the window and see this massive embankment/dune and there were tyre tracks going vertically up/down it and I'm thinking Dear God please don't take us down that I will positively shit my pants
-thankfully we didn't, but we headed up over a small rise and what goes up must come down so we were going down the other side but we were sort of driving at a side angle when the car got stuck and everytime we tried to move the wheels would sort of slide down the slope and I'm thinking Shit, we're going to roll down the hill And unbeknownst to me, HE'S THINKING THE SAME THING! Bf was leaning right over to my side of the car but was handling things nicely and so I was trying to keep calm for his sake and thankfully we got out again, but after that I'd pretty much had enough excitement for the day.

Thankfully we had no more episodes after that and got on the beach near the water, out of the dunes and had a fun time driving along on the nice hard sand. Any more dune shennanigans that might have been were put to bed before they even started.