Our seemingly endless trip finally came to an end. Hours of driving only to travel about 40km was not what we expected. Though the drive may have sounded boring and uninteresting, the scenery it brought us to was a beautiful view. We went sand boarding on massive dunes, saw windflowers, goannas (forgot to mention that in last entry) and eventually we reached the lighthouse where we intended to be. After dropping off the wooden planks and taking photos of the historic site we finished our journey and set up camp at a small shack.

 

The next day we were up with the sun. The shack just happened to be facing the right direction so the sun would glow right through it every morning. After staying in the house at the homestead for a week, we had gotten used to sleeping in, getting up early had definitely turned into a challenge.

Once the swags and single dinner pan were repacked, we hopped back into the home of the devil, the car. The only reason we three kids got back in the car was because we have a very persuasive father. A small chance of seeing baby turtles excited us all with hope.

Off we went to a bay which Dad knew would be a great fishing spot, and we all hoped to see baby turtles. Soon we were approaching Turtle bay. As we drove up alongside the top of the bay, we realised Dad hadn’t told us there might be some trouble getting down.

When someone says were going to a bay and we might see turtles, I picture a bay like one in Bali. Easily accessible, colourful, sandy and somewhat stunning, not semi cliffs first and then the stunning beach.

After my experience at the sand dunes, my fear of heights had grown so when I looked over the cliff I wasn’t confident to be trekking down. This time, if they wanted me to go down, they would have to drag me!

Dad moved the car closer to the track to go down to the bay, but it just happened to be at an even higher spot. Oh, but that didn’t matter to me anyway because I wasn’t going down at all.

Five minutes later everyone had something to carry down the hill and we… they started walking down the hill. But of course I didn’t, instead I sat on the tailgate of the car, face scrunched pretending to be angry, I even made an effort to cross my arms to show that I was not coming! But no one noticed.

By the time they walked five metres I was already getting anxious. I started to puff and sigh, started making any kind of noise that might draw their attention. Finally, Mum turned around and saw me still sitting on the tailgate. She asked me what I was doing and my answer was obvious, “I’M NOT GOING!”

I was expecting her to get angry or come over to me to pull me down the hill, but no, instead it was a simple, “Okay, suit yourself.” It shocked me, wasn’t she going to force me to come? Something could happen to me all by myself… isn’t she worried? Maybe she doesn’t care! The others got about another ten metres away when I couldn’t bear it anymore. I was alone, in the wild, stranded on an island far from help, I was going to die here! A few seconds later, I jumped off the tailgate and started to run in her direction…

“MUUUUM! WAAAAIT!”.

 

So my plan on not going down the cliff of death didn’t work. My mother overpowered me with the important need to be beside her at all times, and now, I was taking risks just to be there to protect her… or maybe the other way around.

In the end the cliff wasn’t even that steep, it was merely a hill with one slope. All hills look bigger and steeper from the top, especially if you’re a kid with an oversized and overdramatic imagination.

Finally, we reached the bottom, looking back it didn’t look scary at all, I felt like a fool. Then I saw what I would’ve missed out on if I didn’t come down. There were no turtles or any dugongs yet, but there was a beach like none I’ve ever seen. It was amazingly blue and shimmering like gold, clear and transparent, almost like glass. No pollution, no garbage, no people, no crowd. We were alone and that’s what made it beautiful, it was perfect.

Shortly, after taking in the beautiful surroundings of the bay, we picked a spot to drop the gear. Within seconds Dad was gone, off with his fishing rod, to a spot where gulls were diving. He was determined to catch a big fish.

Meanwhile I’d gone walking, I started building random sand castles and looking at unusual tracks in the sand.

All the tracks were heading towards what looked like a hole that had been dug up again. In the small area around the dug up hole the sand was soft and uncompressed, it formed a small trench around the middle. It had me puzzling what it could possibly be, I had never seen tracks that large or anything like that. But then, an idea popped into my head, I thought I had it, I thought it might be dugong tracks, on sand… yeah dugong tracks on sand, sounds logical. I was about to call mum over to see my amazing new discovery, when… “Did you find some turtle tracks, Tom?” Mum called as my imagination snapped in half.

 

I looked back at Dad, he was chasing a school of fish going up and down the beach. It was an amusing sight, not the spectacular, rare feeding frenzy going on with birds circling and fish jumping, no, it was amusing to watch Dad going up and down the beach, failing for a bite.

Finally, when his legs were tired and he was giving up, he decided to give Mum a shot. I would like to say she caught heaps and humiliated Dad with her luck at fishing, but that didn’t happen, it was no good. Just like Dad, Mum went up and down the beach but didn’t catch a thing, not even a snag… now that’s rare.

When Mum gave up no one else bothered to try, so we needed something else to entertain us. Then we remembered the turtle tracks, so we kids decided to run up and down the beach counting them all. I must have looked like we were chickens running around like our heads were cut off. But it didn’t last long after getting exhausted as we didn’t find it as amusing.

When we ran out of ways to entertain ourselves, we returned back to the view, the beautiful view… what a view…

…It was blue too… yeah…

…that view was nice…

Oh wait, I’m still writing…

Well, after we all took in the beautiful scenery once again, I remembered something. I realised that I have very dishonest parents, that they were big liars, that they told me a FIB to get me to come to this stupid place. No… Baby! … TURTLES!

So they were lucky they had a good excuse, that they said that there was a small chance of seeing baby turtles earlier. I should’ve stayed on that tailgate all along! I would’ve been safer and I wouldn’t have to climb back up that massive, annoying hilly-slopey thing. Ughh!

We finally made it to the top, after kicking my shins on a few rocks on the way, we made it. We packed all our stuff in the car again and we were headed home. Everyone in the car, Dad started to reverse out of the access track. Almost at the end to turn around, Dad reversed a bit faster as the wheels started to spin in the soft sand. The car was bouncing around, heads were clashing. Then a larger bounce spoke with a BANG, and then a screeching SCRAPE, and the car just stopped – harpooned on something. That didn’t sound good.

When we hopped out of the car we all saw a large, old, rusty tram track sticking into the underside of the car. Good it was not! The tram track had pierced into the crossbar underneath the car, almost wedging it in half. This meant we couldn’t go anywhere until we got it fixed or got something to hold it together. Luckily, my father is a trusty builder with a few ideas up his sleeves. He took a quick look around and grabbed some old steel lying around (lucky that was there). Then he pulled out his drill and he was back under the car. Within minutes our trusty father drilled the piece of steel onto the crossbar so that it would hold it together. That piece of metal and Dads skills saved us a car or an expensive emergency call for help. Lucky.

Soon enough we were back on the road to the shack where we were camped. The five of us were hungry and all ready for a sleep. The day was ending but at least we made good use of it.

 

If you were wondering why there were tram tracks on the road, its because there used to be a train that carried cargo to turtle bay where it would be taken down the hill to a jetty to load ships. If you look at one of the photos you should see the remains of the jetty that used to stand there.