Cape Le Grande and Cape Arid – a Final Extreme Off Road Adventure (post and photos by mary)

Overlooking Lucky Bay in Cape Le Grande National Park located east of Esperence.

I can’t move on to New Zealand stories until I finish up with the last adventure Matt and I had before heading north to Alice Springs.  This is about a true 4WD adventure into our most remote and rugged area yet. 

Meet Michael Gilbert, 4WD’er Extrodinaire at Coober Pedy with his road beast.


Lunch with Michael at his lovely home in Perth.

And we owe it all to our dear friend, Michael Gilbert, who we initially met in Coober Pedy at the beginning of our trip.  Michael was on his way home from a four month 4WD trip that had him travel from Perth to the very north east cape of Australia.  He had just crossed the Great Simpson Desert on his own, having parted company with his 4WD mates.  I think he had found the depths of his soul as he traversed the endless sand dunes and isolation.  He was very happy to share our company and exchange stories and give us plenty of good advice on places to see.  It was on his encouragement that had Matt and I headed off to the Painted Desert as our first off road trek as we left Coober Pedy.

The other side of Lucky Bay.  It was like a perfectly round turquoise/blue body of water.

We met Michael again for lunch in Perth, where we again shared stories of our travels, had a lovely BBQ feast and once again found ourselves pouring over maps and 4WD track books.  He had just finished a rekke and mapped out a route for his 4WD Club into the very remote Cape Arid.  If you have heard about the very south  highway, “The Nallabor” and have heard that it is a remote, isolated endless journey, well, Cape Arid is just south of that bleak highway and is the very essence of isolation.  With a basic map, and Matt’s chicken scrawled notes on the bottom of the map, we were given detailed instructions on how to make our way through this unmarked track.  Michael’s biggest worry was that we would attempt such an adventure without a GPS device!  Over and over he remarked that he couldn’t believe we would travel without one!  Nope, not us intrepid explorers!

Ooo la la!  The lovely Beach babes!

And another lovely beach babe!

We were able to get a handout form the Department of Environment and Conservation in Esperence which gave us a bit more information, including a hand drawn map of finding the second camp at the end of the 120 kilometre track.  That seemed a bit dodgy as an official government document!  The first part of the journey was easy.  Cape Le Grande was an easy tarmack road not far from Esperence.  We were warned to expect to find the most stunningly beautiful beaches of pure white sand and deep turquoise waters.  This was no exaggeration; they were beyond words and the photos may convey only a fraction of their beauty.  We camped for two nights at Lucky Bay and roamed around the coast of numerous bays and beaches.  Our campground was tent city; many travellers from all over the world.  Time was pressing on us to keep moving so we left those lazy beaches and headed on to Cape Arid.

The granite hills gently rolled into the ocean, a golden glow at sunset.

Red granite boulders perched on slopes about to tumble onto the brilliant white sand.

We spent the afternoon on a dirt track for 110 km to Isrealite Bay, our first camp site.  The road soon dwindled down to a narrow sand track and it was dark by the time we found the camp.  Not a soul to be seen.  Set up camp in a nice shrubby tree canopy and were surprised to be awoken early the next day by the sound of a 4WD sand dune buggy.  We jumped out of the tent to meet this crazy old guy and his red muzzled Auzzie dog.  They were doing the Arid track as well.  He was very familiar with the territory and gave us good advice and was off.  After breaking camp and a quick breakfast, we followed his tracks to the beach and headed up the shore.  Just as we thought the going was good, we had to climb off the beach over a significantly tall sand dune.  Matt and Rocky tried valiantly to get up and over that dune, but were defeated at the top!  Plan B, retreat back up the beach and take the Telegraph Track inland until we can find a way back onto the beach.

Matt and Rocky gaining momentum to get up the sand dune.

Attempt 16.  Matt clearly starting to loose it. 

At the top, just eight feet more and we would be clear.  Matt is now in his imaginary straight jacket!

The inland track was a bumpy but reasonable go, passing thru the dense green bush and a number of salt lakes.  These were dotted with really old wooden telegraph poles, remnants from the original telegraph services of Australia.  Just as we were getting comfortable with being alone in the most remote wilderness yet, three 4WD trucks come bearing down on us at high speed from no where!  Matt pulls over to let them speed past, and as they do, we see that they are filled with men drinking and driving, playing loud tunes and yelling like crazy!  Gulp!  Suddenly we did feel all alone in the wilderness with crazed lunatics!  We knew they were heading for the same camp (the only one) at the end of the track.  Our camping buddies!  Groan.  We catch up with them as they had stopped to pee, all waving their beer cans and hollering for us to stop and come drink with them.  Not on your life.  I have to say,  I suddenly felt very vulnerable as the only woman for hundreds of miles around.  Even Matt had the same worries.  Does the movie “Deliverance” come to mind?

Typical barren dessert terrain and a salt lake in the background with one tree to give a bit of shady shelter from the sweltering sun.

After several attempts to get onto the beach, we eventually found a route to the beach where it wasn’t clogged with three feet of sea grass beds.  Tide was still low enough for us to make tracks and we boogied down the beach in a cool, smooth ride.  No sight of the drunkards.  In the 50 kilometre distance we could see a significant large white cliff looming.  As we got closer we saw that these were no cliffs, they were massive sand dunes.  Pure white and the largest was at least 70 metres high.  They were spectacular as we got closer.  We stopped to have a look once we came along the largest dune and were dumbfounded on its mass and beauty.  We had found our camp for the night.  We pulled Rocky off the beach, pitch our nomad tent behind a small beach dune sheltered from the incessant wind and grabbed our cameras to go climbing the big dune.  This was way better than huddling up with those wild hill billies at Waddle Camp.

At last, clear beach with no sea grass beds blocking our smooth ride!

OMG!  The most incredible, high perfect sand dune to play on!

To the Top!

The wind howled at the top – the original idea of “sand blasting”.

Sunset’s last glow casting earth’s shadow on the horizon.

Starry, starry night.  Australian skies were so bright lit by millions of stars.

Sunrise view from our tent.  Absolute Magic!

What fun we had that afternoon, evening and again at first light in the morning.  We climbed to the top, well Matt made it to the top, the wind blew me off my feet near the top.  Matt took great pleasure in flinging himself off the top edge and climbing back up.  He even took one of our plywood boards to the top to try surfing down.  Sand is very grippy and the surfing was not so good.  We had fun playing in those dunes and the photography was awesome as well.  Had sand packed into every crevice of our bodies, clothes, camera gear and food.  I was still shaking it out of things here in New Zealand! Our poor cameras!

Ahh!  So this is what a conveyor belt road is!  Someone’s brilliant idea!

Time was still pressing on us and the tides were shifting to high by noon.  Alas, we had to leave that lovely place mid morning.  Just as we were pulling back onto the beach, we met the dog man.  He had endured camping with the drunkards.  He headed back with his unmuzzled red dog and we headed east on the shore.  Found the one and only marker for our turn off and stopped for one last skinny dip in the Southern Ocean and a solar shower to get most of the sand out.  Our next challenge was to find the conveyor belt road that would take us up the 500 metre cliff.  We had worried about that the whole way.  What was a conveyor belt road we wondered?  Exactly as it sounds.  The sandy road had great sheets of old conveyor belt rubber pegged down on the steepest part of the track to enable vehicles to get up the cliff.  It worked marvelously and Rocky pulled us up with no difficulties.  This was a good thing as Matt discovered he left his good Tibetan hat down on the beach from our swim!  Naturally we had to go back for it, so we got to climb both down and up the conveyor belt road again!

The view from the conveyor belt road. One last glimpse of that beautiful sand dune mountain range.

From there we were on a deeply scrubbed, narrow, bumpy track that took us through the woods for about 75 kilometres.  It was really slow going and seemed like we would never make it to the Nallabor Highway.  We stopped for a lovely lunch in the woods.  That marked the end of this most awesome adventure.  The revered Nallabor Highway seemed quite tame in comparison with the Cape Arid track.  In all we travelled 374 kilometres, had let the tyres down to 15 psi and three times had to fill them up as road conditions changed.  Another thing Michael Gilbert couldn’t believe was that we did not have an air compressor.  Just a $15 bicycle tyre pump.  It worked really well; we took turns with each tyre and felt we were getting a good upper body/arm work out!

Reluctantly we leave the Indian Ocean – colours so bright and cheerful.

This was by far for me, our best adventure.  Matt will assure you that I went through brief moments of anxiety and fear at the outset of practically every adventure we set off on.  This one too had me quietly wondering after the first 75 km of rough bumpy roads in the woods, why would anyone want to do this sort of thing?  How could it be considered fun, when you are bumping and rocking uncomfortably along feeling lost, alone in the the most remote place and concerned you may never get out if something was to go wrong.  Yet on this grand Australia trip, I had five months of such adventures behind me and knew that we had survived each one and that I had come to enjoy each as they were truly fun.

Matt Lambert, intrepid adventurer, brilliant photographer,  My inspiration to get past my fears.

Matt confirmed my question with the simple answer, ” we’re doing it because we wanted adventure!  A fun journey, figuring out the puzzle of where we are, and how we get to the end of it.” (without detailed maps and very few sign posts)  And he was right, it was fun, and a challenge.  And, like Michael promised, we found the most spectacular landscape in the middle of now where.  Few people have seen that awesome range of sand dunes along the sparkling clear turquoise sea.  Yes folks, that is what adventures are all about.  Facing your fears and pushing through them to find the most amazing things.  What a fine way to finish off our Australian road trip.  (Technically we still had 1000 or so kilometres to go before actually finishing off the trip and naturally had a few more final adventures!)