Sand dune madness

Some of the more long time readers may recall this post about our last adventure at Stockton Beach 4WD-ing and the disasters we faced, and it's follow up {which I see now was almost a year ago! Hasn't time flown!}.

Well yesterday we had another crack at the dunes, with much more positive results, {airborne car aside-more on that later}.

We went with Jerome, who is always going to be a fun companion, and Jerome's mate Carsy. We were in our beast, and Jerome bought a new Jeep thingy<<>(can't post video as yet unfortunately, if we figure out a way to get the tape into digital I will) so I was chief videographer. Unlike last time where we had issues simply getting into the dunes, our biggest hiccup was half way along the track in there were apparently 8 cars all bogged but we managed to reverse out before that became a problem. Jerome got a bit stuck at that point because he hadn't deflated his tyres far enough so they just kept digging in. But we weren't delayed too much there. It did mean going back out though, reinflating the tyres to drive the 23Km's to Anna Bay at the other end of the beach to get in.

(Waved to Uncle John's Gravesite as we passed) So we get in, hoon around a bit, because it was so incredibly hot there were a million other people there and millions of cars.

After a couple of trips up and down the beach front we moved into the dunes to tear around abit, did some videoing. We stayed down the bottom and video-ed while Jerome and Carsy went up the top of this big dune, then while we watched they reached the apex, suddenly stopped and the left side of the car started to lean precariously down, I was convinced they were in trouble and was really hoping we wouldn't have to go up and rescue them (to the point I was considering asking if i could stay down the bottom if that was required). Thankfully not long after that they seemed to gain control and slowly made their way back down. Carsy was apparently quite concerned when his head was mere feet from the sand hehehe. The problem the boys said was that the sand was so white you couldn't see any graduation to it, and as they were driving up they couldn't tell they'd reached the apex until BANG they were on top of it and about to tip forward!

The boys swapped cars after this, and after admonishing Jerome I was a nervous passenger it was fine, and no more bumpy than before. Jerome was more worried about M smashing his car around I think : )

The boys jumped back in their own vehicles and we found some different dunes, which we quite steeply graduated in sort of side- steps across the side due to the wind, Jerome went first again and found a flat section to travel up in, being more cautious this time round. We were concerned at the top, but they turned without trouble, and after negotiating some bumps seemed to find a large smooth section and Jerome gained speed until suddenly he hit a bump in the sand which shot the front of the car into the air, launching the entire car a metre into the air like some sort of hollywood stunt before the front came crunching down again at an alarming angle, and again i thought he'd tip the car, this time somersaulting it forward when the nose angled too sharply, but miraculously it was fine and they limped back to where we were, Jerome obviously having shit himself in the landing. Made for very cool footage on the video though!!

Our last excitement came right at the end when we both drove up a smallish dune and Mark thought it would be cool to film Jerome coming over the top of this dune from behind it, so they went to film and Jerome was almost at the edge when Carsy says "let's just check over the side to see it will be ok" and they got out and the angle was intense! It was maybe 60-70 degrees!!! So it was a good thing they stopped and didn't just plough on over the egde LOL

Then we got caught in the F3 closure due to the bushfires which was less than fun and we didn't get home until 9pm. :P It was a good day though