Wedge Island

For our first day of the long weekend We decided to go on another 4wd trip to Lancelin. This time with Nansi and Stuart Swain and their 2 children. Emma Broadbent, and Clair Carter and Nik Moreton who came before.

Clair, Nik and Emma went in one car and decided to meet us there, probably wise. Nansi and Stuart came to our house then We travelled up together. We stopped on the way up and needed to change the Swains tyres over, but I won't go in to that:) But it did put us about 45 mins later than planned, and with no mobile reception We couldn't let the others know. They were waiting in a bakery, so it wasn't all bad.

Once We finally arrived it was decided that We would try and get to Wedge Island again as We didn't make it last time due to a wrong turning!, then go on the sand dunes on the way back.

It was a good drive, (We let Clair lead as Emma had been before) However, it was a much rockier track in parts than We had imagined! This meant We had to go slower than We would have liked as Clair's car is slightly lower than ours and the Swains and kept bumping on the rocks!

2 hours later and We finally made it, I was desperately hoping it was worth it as all the children had had enough, and quite frankly so had I:)

It was a really beautiful day and the beach did look great, and the sea very inviting! However, before We could enjoy it We had to get lunch organised.

Emma had brought a table and trangia, We had our stove and kettle , and between us plenty of sausages and bread rolls.

After lunch it was time for a swim, I paddled for a bit holding hands with kiddies, but for some strange reason, Ollie was completely freaked out by the water!!! This is very unusual for him, I don't like it! I'm hoping he was having an off day as he hadn't had a full lunchtime sleep.

Jacob rarely goes in the water, so no change there when he said he didn't want to go in. But surprisingly, the Swain children, who hate cold water, spent most of the time playing in the sea.



Our two spent a lot of time making sand castles and running them down, in true boy fashion:)

Gareth then made tea and coffee which was great!

It started getting late and seeing as it took 2hours to get there, We decided to look at another route to get back to Lancelin. The only other route was to go back on the beach! This was so much fun!!! and so much quicker too, until we got a puncture! Thankfully we have a compressor and were able to put some air back in as it's not easy to change a tyre on the beach where it was quite narrow. and other vehicles couldn't get past easily. (We had been told by some guys that were camping there, that a few vehicles had already over turned trying to get round other people). We jumped back in the cars and decided to go as quickly as We could before we lost pressure again. We made it back to the sand dunes in Lancelin before we had to do it again. Which we were impressed with, but what we were more impressed with was that it took just an hour to get back!




Unfortunately, with that little hiccup, and being a lot later than we hoping, we weren't able to play on the sand dunes, But i'm sure there'll be a next time not far away.

Pizza and fish and chips for dinner, change over the tyre, more tea and coffee then it was time to leave. By this point it was too dark to take photos.

Now, a word of advice if you are going to travel out of Perth where there are limited petrol stations, and even less in the evenings and holidays, fill up before you leave!! Unfortunately for Nansi and Stuart they forgot, and so when we started to leave Lancelin they had a 1/4 of a tank left and the only petrol station there was closed. We started travelling and got down to Wanneroo road and knowing there are a few petrol stations along it, thought we'd be ok. We didn't realise quite how far we had to go before we found the first one, closed, by this time the orange light was on and Clair also needed petrol too. I had our map out which had petrol stations on, so i'm trying to work out how far we can get before we need to start towing them which was about 40km. We get to the next one, it's a few km's off Wanneroo road so we left them at the side of the road whilst we go and see if it's open, of course it's not! So we set off again, Nansi is getting more and more anxious, and it's just under 10km 's to the next one and we've already travelled about 30 since the light came on. Hmmmmm, time to start praying me thinks! Again, we left them at the side of the road whilst we went to explore. We went off down a road and there were street lights, we thought straight away that this was a good sign. Sure enough, good old 24hour BP garage came through for us.

We went back for the others, and we were then able to get home! Panic over:)