GETTING UP TO THE CAMPSITE

     All told it took an hour for the R & R crews to get up the long face of the first high dune, wind their way west between the even higher dunes, and pull up at the camping spot. It proved to be a bit of a trial for everyone. The climbing techniques varied widely. Unfortunately all the photos I have seen of the first high dune don't do it justice. This was a deceptive and nasty heap of sand.

     The ¼ tonners and Lightweights had all sorts of approaches and many failures. Ana's drab Lightweight (with one dud exhaust valve) and Graeme's Sawmill (with one dud ignition circuit) were both manhandled the last yards up onto the level area. Some tried Low 2nd, some High 2nd, but neither worked if you found a soft-sinky sand area. And most did, time after time. The Series 2A's with bar treads seemed no worse off than the others. Of course all the action prompted the cameras to come out again and the photos taken show a line of short Land-Rovers spread across the top third of the slope all stuck in deep ruts of sand -and the crew members out pushing and shoving. Darrin driving Ana's drab Lightweight resorted to some spade work too.

     The Land-Rover 110 with the winch was still stuck below; Syd Crawford's 110 FFR was pulling a No.5 half-ton Army trailer all weekend and he was quite naturally had no success the first and second times. Syd's winch sure would have been handy at the top to help the others up. A couple of times Syd made it half-way and then retreated to the middle dunes again -like everyone else did. And like everyone else, Syd lowered his tyre pressures and tried again until he made it, trailer and all, without assistance. For the last 10m of the climb we all heard the big Isuzu donk slow down to something like 700rpm and chugg-chugg like a tractor. Just as well -I was beginning to question whether it would be better to winch the trailer up separately. The performance of Syd's loaded 110, making it unassisted with the big trailer, was very classy and it showed off know-how and the great engineering pedigree of these Australian military spec Landys. (I want one -please send money...)

     The Range Rovers had quite a few attempts at the dune as well. Surprise, surprise, they only made it up -in spectacular fashion- by using their wide-open-throttles and finding a hard sand route on the right side. The mustard one seemed to have to put in more effort and it's tyres slipped more I think. It was using LPG fuel and it had an overheating hassle. This vehicle launched itself in a hurry off a 1 metre drop on top of the level area and slightly dented a front guard.

     Castrol was reversed out of it's first ruts back down to the middle dune run up area where Syd and Ralph had adjusted the 110's tyre pressures. I watched the progress of the others on the left and decided to go to the right side. I gunned it to get a run up and stayed in High 2nd. Castrol was carrying a heap of jerry cans and all the -unnecessary- wet weather camping gear etc and started to struggle just like the first attempt. But it kept going up because I hit one less soft-sinky spot than before -blind luck. I parked and became a spectator as Chloe made an attempt with it's slipping clutch. Chloe came up without too much drama at all and made it to the toTTT first using Low 3rd I think. Dennis kept going straight along the gully and reached the toTTT at 1.40pm. That meant that Dennis was on the spot to video the other vehicles as they came along the gully and up to the toTTT. The rest of the vehicles reached the top of the main dune and then went on to the toTTT in dribs and drabs, the last Land-Rover arriving at 2.25pm. Sawmill got stuck again at the toTTT and was manhandled out of trouble by "the spectators".

     After talking it over we decided to look down the track a bit and go into the bush. We crossed the line between the moving sand dunes and the bush and went into what is set down to become a National Park soon. We looked along the endless row of tank traps placed side by side on the northern side of the track. The tank traps are so close that they make an effective wall. At the eastern end of the track you can see the line of tank traps continuing under the base of one of the high dunes and destined to stay out of view for fifty years perhaps.