Driving west from Flinders on the
Mornington Peninsular the road dips down and crosses Main Creek and
enters a small corridor of native bush all that remains in this area
of otherwise cleared farm-land. Doug let me out here at Bushranger
Bay Picnic Area and continued north to St Andrews Beach (or actually
Rye Beach - but that comes further along in the story). I headed off
down the track to Bushranger Bay along a narrow track cut into dense
coastal scrub. The density of the bush is a bit illusory here,
however, as this corridor of bushland is only a few hundred metres
wide and every so often cleared fields are visible to either side.
The track was surprisingly busy with
all manner of hikers, some looking moderately fit, others grasping
hiking poles (on a flat track?), others carting around the usual
Aussie metabolic belly. But, at least everyone was walking and
enjoying a sunny, if rather hot, Saturday. Soon, some pleasant views
of the coast open up and a side track to the lovely Bushranger Bay is
reached. It would have been nice to duck down for a swim, but Doug
always finishes these through walks (he starts from one end, I start
from the other) before me so I figured I should continue on.
Bushranger Bay
After about an hour I came out at Cape
Schanck parking lot and strolled around the half kilometre loop that
visits various viewpoints and also gives access to a stony little
cove. It was very busy with people everywhere. Unfortunately, there
is no connecting track to take you from Bushranger Bay track to Two
Bays track which continues up the coast, so I had to walk out along
the road to get to the track head. I strolled along this track -
bristling with people carrying eskies, buckets, spear guns and more,
so there must be many vehicle accessible locations nearby to the
track - passing the occasional lookout and soon coming to a track
that descended to Fingal Beach.
The Victoria Parks sign indicated that
this was an optional low-tide access to Gunnamatta Beach and seemed
preferable to walking through the dense coastal scrub so I took this
side route down to the beach. I did wonder if this would mean I
would, for the first time on the twenty or so occasions that Doug and
I have done through walks, not cross paths with Doug along the track.
Looking towards Cape Schanck
There were a lot of stairs descending
to Fingal Beach which explains why so many people were huffing and
puffing on their way up. The beach has nice rock platforms with rock
pools and very clear water and it was pleasant wandering north around
a couple of small headlands to the long sandy stretch of Gunnamatta
Beach.
Walking out onto the sand at the south
end of Gunnamatta Beach I thought I might have a bit of a slog ahead
of me as the tide was rising, a strong hot wind was blowing into my
face and the sand was a tad soft. But, it all wasn't too bad,
although it was hot, and I was soon walking past all the crowds near
the two parking areas set behind the beach.
Rocky beach near Cape Schanck
We had agreed that Doug would park at
St Andrews Beach which, according to my map was the next beach to the
north so I thought I had only a couple of kilometres - maybe three -
to go. I wandered around rocks at one small headland and then got to
Boag Rocks but the tide was too high to stay on the beach so I took
the short detour around to the south end of St Andrews Beach where,
thinking I was nearly at the end of my walk, I had a swim. The water
was gorgeous - crystal clear and wonderfully cool. Another half
kilometre along the sand and then I strode confidently up to the car
park where a sign said "St Andrews Beach" but no car
awaited me. Not to worry, I thought as a track led off to the north,
undoubtedly to another car park. But, no, it simply dead-ended near
some expensive looking houses.
I trudged back down to the beach,
continued north, trudged back up the dunes again at the next beach
exit - a small dirt road with a few cars parked - but no Hyundai with
two kayaks on the roof. Back down to the beach, trudge further
north, wondering what I would do if I couldn't find the car. About a
kilometre or so north along the sandy beach another dense cluster of
people indicated another parking lot although my map clearly
indicated this was Rye Beach, not St Andrews Beach. Off I went
feeling more confident that Doug would be parked at this beach as it
seemed to be the first beach he would have reached in the vehicle.
Gunnamatta and Fingal Beaches
I was feeling a bit hot, bothered and
frankly hungry (I've got into the habit of never packing food with me
as I don't seem to need to eat that often now that I'm not a
carbohydrate-crashing junkie) when I walked up the beach to the car
park and was happy to find our car parked in the first row. It's
always interesting when you drive the distances that you walk and
paddle as you suddenly realise that you have come quite a long way
self-propelled and it probably took me half an hour or more to drive
down to Cape Schancks where Doug was waiting in a hot and very buggy
car park.
We still had to drive all the way back
to Stony Point where we were staying and I was really feeling like a
bit of food, but, it was hot, and Doug hadn't had a swim so we
stopped at Flinders for another wonderful swim.
Pulling into Crib Point, we decided to
fill the car up with diesel as we were planning to take the boat to
Tasmania in two days and figured petroleum products would be a bit
cheaper on the mainland. I know I was hungry and a bit dazed with
the heat (it was about 34C and the once blustery wind had died to
dead still calm) and I guess that is why I put unleaded petrol
(almost 24 litres of the stuff) into our diesel vehicle. Luckily, I
did notice before the tank was full and stopped immediately, and,
that marked the beginning of a bit of a nightmare.
The service station owner could offer
no help other than "push the car out of the way" and call
the motorists association. Doug made numerous telephone calls - a
bit challenging as we had quite poor reception - to every mechanic he
could find but, it was almost 5.00 pm on a hot sunny Saturday and the
only mechanic we got hold off said he could not help us until Tuesday
and the vehicle would have to be towed to his garage. Eventually, we
gave up, pushed the vehicle off to the side and walked 3 or 4
kilometres back to the small caravan park where we were staying all
the way trying to come up with some solution to this problem.
Point Nepean beach
We had decided to ask the caravan
caretaker if he had a siphon hose and if so, I would walk back up and
try to siphon the tank that night. If that worked, we would take the
train to the nearest town and buy several gerry cans to contain the
siphoned off petrol the next day. Turns out, Gary, the caravan park
caretaker is a real stand-up bloke, very true to the typical Aussie
stereotype of being quite resourceful. Along with his good friend
Peter, he drove us back up to the service station, towed oir car back
to the caravan park and helped us drain out all the petrol from the
tank by removing the fuel filling hose and siphoning the two tanks.
Gary did not have a proper siphon hose so we all got to take turns
sucking on a piece of cut off garden hose. Unleaded gas is
disgusting.
Eventually, we got all the petrol out
we were going to (not quite empty) and Gary drove us back up to the
service station with three gerry cans which we filled with diesel
and, finally, about 9 pm, we managed to drive the car back to our
site near the caravan.
Doug on the beach at Point Nepean
We had been planning another sea kayak
trip the next day, but, when we finally finished with all these
shenanigans we were too tired and stressed out to think about that so
after a very late dinner we crawled into bed. I slept soundly but
Doug was awake worrying about the car.
Next day, we cancelled our planned sea
kayak trip as we thought it a good idea to drive about without the
caravan and make sure the car was running okay. Doug and I both hate
driving so the idea of going out purposefully to drive was a bit
confronting but drive we did. All the way up to Point Nepean where
we walked along the Coles track and out to Fort Nepean and Point
Nepean (very pretty) and back covering about 150 km. We managed to
burn up enough fuel to put another 10 litres of so of diesel in the
car and we figure the remaining petrol is now quite dilute and are
feeling cautiously optimistic.
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