(See the red text below for the exciting stuff).
Thought I'd share an interesting experience with the club. Being school holidays and absence of good camping weather, we decided in a last minute day trip to Stradbroke Island. Tickets were literally booked 9 hours prior to departure of the ferry Friday morning.
The beaches on Stradie were also badly eroded, so we decided to head down to the southern end at peak low tide. We had to go around many trees that had been fallen on the beach from the dunes. But it was peak low tide, so we had no problems. Lots of pumice stones the size of a tennis balls, ranging up to small scorer balls were also on the beach.
After lunch at Brown lake, we thought we will have a look at the keyholes, which are series of lakes and swamp just behind the eastern beach. I heard if was formed from when the area was mined.
I saw a video the night before of a women walking the puddles on the road leading to the keyholes. It was only knee deep. Here is the link to the video.
So I don't walk the puddles first. Look at the colour of the water. We didn't even take our camera out, but eventually grabbed our old phone and took a little video. Here is 19 seconds from our trip.
(sorry, no stabilsation as the camera angle was already too high, and stabilisation cuts out the water splashing up).
The water really did come over our bonnet many times. I tried to keep the right side up, i.e. the side with the air intake.
I just found some better video of a group who were there less than 3 weeks ago. Great video. This is how our trip was too. But I turned around half way down the track as we were on our own, and don't have a snorkel. I'm ordering one tonight.
Have a look at the 30sec mark. Conditions today were identical to 3 weeks ago.
Though most inland tracks are now closed on the Island, there still is one track open which had spectacular sencery. Definitely worth having a club trip ..... I'll aim to organise one for the summer months. It would be a "green square" trip, but still lots of adventure, and lots of sitting on the sand dunes with a beer or two.
Have a lool at the camping ground entry point. Hahaha ..... it took us a few attempts, but we made it. It had rained the night before so I didn't even let my tires down (yes - getting too confident on sand now
)
View from the top of the sand dunes. You can camp behind these, and they largely protect your tent from the winds. The ground is firm, or even grassy.
Here is South Stradie in the distance. So close, but without a 10meter snorkel, it's no recommended you attempt to drive across the channel.
