We drove from Sydney to Brisbane, dropped off the trailer, picked up Peter, Cara and mad dog Maddie with their Jeep - destination Stradebroke Island.
Straddie, or North Stradebroke Island, is 30km southeast of Brisbane. A tiny permanent population swells during weekends and holidays. The main industry is sand mining.
Pete and Cara almost live on Stradebroke Island, commuting back to Brisbane to their house and jobs Monday morning for the working week, so we had some good guides.
The Ferry crossing is painless and there are bitumen roads to the three main towns. We checked out some of the established camp sites and a couple of them look good, especially Adder Rock. But we knew to watch some of the sites - we'd been there before during holiday season and some of the sites are absolutely packed into 6x6 metre squares of flapping canvas, obnoxious teenagers and snoring drunks - keep clear.
This time Pete and Cara were taking us to their favourite spot down the eastern beach. The beach driving was pretty easy for the most part. We did have to judge the tides as the beach was narrow in some parts and during high tide you couldn't get through. Low tide was an east run.
As always the end of the road to the hard sand is the hardest part. A Triton ute was stuck trying to come off the beach through the soft sand onto the road. We stopped to help.
"It hasn't got enough power to get through the soft sand," the driver said.
We've taken our hugely underpowered 2.5L diesel Pajero through the Simpson desert so I knew power wasn't an issue.
"Have you let your tyres down?" I asked.
"Yeah, I let a bit out," was his flustered reply.
By this time a couple of other vehicles had pulled up and and were organising winches, snatch-straps etc. I knew it was no point trying to convince these guys that a simple solution was at hand when they had spent all that money on gear they had to use.
I got my tyre gauge out and quietly let his tyres down to 15psi.
"Just give it one more go," I said.
He drove straight out. See here as to why you need to let your tyres down in sand.
We arrived at our site and it is a ripper. No anemities, great shade and shelter from the wind, behind the first dunes, a 10 second walk to sit on the top of the dunes to sip a beer and watch the dolphins. We didn't catch any fish that weekend but Pete reckons his caught them from there before. Kids had a ball building tree houses and forts.
We'd rate this as a 9 out of 10, only because you can't actually see the waves from the tent window.
