HIDE & SEEK IN THE SANDS OF THE BIGHT

     One third of the way down the bight from the northern end are a group of corrugated iron fishing huts referred to as 'Silver City'. The idea was to use Silver City as a landmark to help us locate an old artillery observation post (OP) a little to the north. Dennis and I had been to Silver City two months previously and hadn't been able to find the OP then. Now on the R & R we didn't recognise any of the dune formations from the reconn at all. Thank you Mr GPS (No.1).

     Thomas's Rangie went ahead and spotted the fishing huts and then returned with the news. The mustard Rangie was promptly checked as it was near boiling. We drove some distance further south beside the surfline and pulled up again. After a short chat we all set off again up onto the middle area sand dunes. Chloe tried the face of the first dune and got stopped half-way up. Dennis reversed out of trouble and tried again. Stopped yet again, Chloe proceeded with the others to backtrack a bit and use a lower dune instead. After cresting a few dunes, there was the metropolis called 'Silver City'. The small R & R convoy pulled up for photos. The cloud was thinner now and the sun was out. The sand dunes filled our horizons, north and south and west, white in the sun. So where were the remains of this old OP?

     To find the OP we allowed ourselves an hour. We crossed the middle dunes to the base of the high dunes and turned north. There were no old tyre tracks to indicate whether the sand was soft or hard. It was hard going for some vehicles especially when we tried to drive up onto the high dunes to get a view. More bogging quickly followed. Some tyres evidently still had more air than required and drivers were learning what gear ratios to use. In my ¼ tonner, I spent the weekend in High 1st, 2nd and even 3rd.

     Having gone about 600m north of Silver City all we could see ahead, besides acres of sand, were very old tree trunks which had been covered for years by the sand and were now -for the time being- uncovered by the wind. Finding the WWII OP 'Ypres' and recording it's position with the GPS was going to mean leg work and we decided to shelve the idea for now. Before turning back, the binoculars came out and we looked for any remains or relics of the OP. Then we went back past Silver City and about 500m further south we saw a group of rusty steel pickets (or what remains of them) and bits of barbed wire. In wartime the wire fences had stretched the length of the whole bight running parallel with the line of tank traps.

     Another 1.5km further south we spotted one of the more visible sights on the bight: the original end of Tank Trap Track which (nowadays) sits up on the high dunes. It is a different colour than the surrounding sands as the sand 'ramp' was topped by a layer of broken grey rock for reinforcement. From our reconn trip two months earlier we knew the spot also has some accompanying tank traps. We wondered how many of the tank traps were still protruding from the sand after the westerly gales of late.

     The Landys then turned west and drove across the middle dunes up into a gully some 200m wide with high dunes on three sides. Sure enough there were some 20 tank traps visible. Each end of the tank trap line emerged from under the dunes forming the south and the north sides of the gully. But there were not as many visible now as there were during the reconn trip. Each Tank Trap is at least as high as a Landy gearknob and now a few each side of the gully were buried again. The original end of the Tank Trap Track, looking like an over-large 'ramp', stood about two stories high on the sands and faced east. The cameras came out and some of the vehicles proceeded to the top of the high dune on the north side of the gully.

     The sand surface on the high dune had pockets of soft-sinky sand hidden underneath, surprising drivers with it's pot-luck distribution. The soft-sinky sand stopped forward progress in quick order. Syd's 110 and trailer got stuck first. Then Castrol got stuck in front of Syd. I was being pulled out by Thomas's mustard Rangie when Dennis declared that it was time to brew-up and have lunch. The convoy returned to the middle dunes just behind the beach and had lunch in the sun. It was nice; there was hardly even a breeze. All the signs of rain, drizzle, showers, storms, etc, etc, had magically gone away and the sky was a perfect pale blue. Yahoo!

     The R & R drivers and passengers were more relaxed and confident now about the capabilities of their Land-Rovers on the dunes. Things were going well. The next stage of the R & R was to find the best way up onto the high dunes and locate the top of Tank Trap Track (the toTTT). So after the lunch stop and some chit-chat the Landys headed south looking for the track across the middle dunes and westward up onto the high dunes. It had to be in the right spot or we could waste a heap of time checking every high dune to our west. Again a snafu despite our reconn notes. There was no track heading west and no telltale 6x6 Tour bus tyre tracks up the dunes. We had to find it as we planned to set up the R & R camp at the toTTT. The bushline somewhere up there at toTTT was harbouring our firewood and other conveniencies organised on our reconn trip.

     We kept going further south we saw another landmark, a crucifix in the middle dunes about 500m ahead; this meant we had gone too far south. We backtracked and looked over the dunes again with the binoculars. There was a stick with a rag in the sand dune next to the beach. It was an indicator for the drivers of the 6x6 Tour buses. But which gully through the high dunes is the right one? There was one barely visible set of tyre tracks going up to a gully and they were certainly not the telltale 6x6 tracks we were looking for. No doubt the recent gales had something to do with this too.