Quickie to Breton

Sunday 10^th October 2021

Attendees:

Richard & Naomi – Pajero (Trip Leader)

Tony & Anna – Ranger

Simon & Jacob – Perentie

Matt – Pajero

Ivo & Caleb – Landcruiser

Lin – FJ

Jon, Kelly, Ryker & Linken – Pajero

Gary, Claire, Gabriel & Azriel – Landcruiser

Dave – Prado

            Time for another short laid back trip to the beach, for this one I chose Wilbinga Grove as the meeting point.

Its easy to find and cuts down the distance driving in a group to where we enter Breton. Whilst waiting for everyone to arrive I had a look around at the changes that have happened to help manage the idiot factor! The Shire of Gingin has made the rest area day use only (and I’m told rangers are actively enforcing this). Access to the conservation park is via bollard and fenced track, tbh I’m very supportive of this after having spent many hours over multiple years helping remove rubbish from the area just behind the tree line on the Wilbinga Clean-Up days. Coincidently it has just been confirmed that there will be another Clean-Up this coming May, please keep an eye out for information put out by the Wilbinga Shacks Crew who help manage this area as part of their adoption agreement with DBCA. As usual I will re-post info via our Facebook pages and I’ll also be up at Wilbinga Grove on the day in the morning to greet volunteers etc. Also as part of the changes DBCA has installed several information signs to hopefully educate some individuals on Wilbinga and how to correctly appreciate the area.

            With almost everyone gathered we headed off to our normal entry point on Greenwood Coast Rd where we caught up with Dave & Gary who had gone directly there as it was quicker from their places out east.

After airing down as usual to counter the corrugations we headed off. As we drove in you could see the leaseholder on the northside of the road had reinstated their fence line to stop illegal access. I had mentioned to the guys that at the end of the road there is a sharp right hand turn as going straight on puts you on leasehold land. By following the track around the edge of the leases you could get access through to the southern part of Breton. Well not anymore! Once at the point where we normally turn it was fenced off with signs advising not to enter, whilst frustrating I totally get that the leaseholder has had enough of idiots not sticking to the access track he had left to the beach and cutting his boundary fences in multiple spots to cut across his land. Never mind, it’s all part of the adventure, after turning around and having Gary remind me that my directions are shite, we were back at Indian Ocean Drive and airing back up within about 30 minutes of airing down, for the bitumen run up to Ledge Point where I knew we would still be able to get access.

Being a family friendly outing, we stopped off at the public conveniences in Ledge whilst I popped down to check out the beach conditions. I already knew that low tide had been just after 8am and high tide wasn’t going to be until after 11pm, thus we had plenty of time to recover any vehicles if we screwed up and got bogged. No dramas, the beach was in the best possible condition I think I’ve ever seen it, not too much seaweed and not overly chopped up. So, after airing down again we accessed the beach via the boat ramp area and proceeded south. As per normal to the southside of Ledge there was quite a few cars parked on the beach enjoying themselves, please be mindful of this as there are kids and dogs etc. in this shared zone. Please do the right thing and the area will remain open, be a knob and it might end up being closed to 4WD’s.

            After the nice casual drive down the beach with Gary stopping a few times to collect various bits of flotsam (Flotsam is defined as debris in the water that was not deliberately thrown overboard) for Claire’s projects we hoped off at the headland and headed into the dune system, this area is always changing with the sand moving north easterly in the consistent sea breeze and areas that were steep and difficult are now small humps. After grouping up on top of the northern most sand dune I asked everyone what they would like to do or see.

We then went on a bit of an explore heading south to a steep hill that is over the back of the big southern dune system. This particular hill is a good challenge and normally only a couple of cars will make it over it, however today there was no one able to get up and over.

After some more meandering around the area, we decided to head down to the actual beach for lunch as there was no wind which was a first for me in all the years of coming here. Normally we would be hiding behind a dune with our bonnets facing into the wind for some protection, well not today it was beautiful on the beach.

Dave was able to set up his awning with the Weber cooking away. The view up the beach was impressivefor its lack of humans!

Thinking about it, since getting off the beach we had only seen one other group who were camped up at the tree on the northern side of the dunes and I was starting to think the closure of the southern entry is maybe not such a bad thing if it means that the majority head up to Lancelin.

            With lunch done and dusted we drove around a bit more before I took everyone to a short track, I know that is quite technical to drive for sand as it has steep windy sections with not much room, this was the first time I’ve taken the Pajero through here and I was quite impressed how it handled it. A couple of vehicles fell victim to it, but all eventually popped out the other end back into the dune system.

With everyone regrouped we started to head north out of the southern dune system, normally I would be very cautious of the drop offs as we headed to the northwest corner, but the wind has basically flattened out most of the ridges so you don’t get the steep drop offs on the leeward side. Whilst on the narrow tracks between the dune systems we came across some other cars and they very courteously offered to back up off the track as there was only two of them and we had nine vehicles in our group. Once back through the northern dunes we headed down to the beach. There is a track heading north through behind the dunes to Ledge Point if the tide is too high or the beach is too soft, but please be aware it is very windy and overgrown aka pinstripe time! You also need to be sure where you are when you reach the townsite as some of the tracks exit into private properties so it’s worth running some sort of mapping system if you are not sure rather than annoying the locals.

Our run back along the beach was fairly straight forward and before long we had made our way back to the carpark, we normally use for airing up.

Everyone bid their farewells and going by the smiles it had been another successful outing with some new friendships between some ankle bitters.

All the best

Richard Cooper

If you would like to check out our Clubs Youtube vid from the day. Just click on the vid below.