Myalup (WA) – Aug 13

Up and away at 7am – mmmmmm not sure this is the way a Sunday is meant to start out. However just under 2 hours later and the effort was well worth it.

I’ve been over here for quite a few weeks now, but other than some glimpses of the ocean I haven’t really spent much time near it. This all changed today thankfully.

Gom (Overlander forum) had caught me before I even cleared the Perth metropolitan area, so we travelled down to Myalup where we found Duke waiting for us.

By the time a meat pie was thrown down the hatch for breaky, Oli had pulled up and said g’day. Up over the hill and a great view greeted us – BTW did I mention what a great day it was weather wise compared to the last 2 weeks!

Entrance at Myalup

Entrance at Myalup

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I initially dropped pressures down to 20psi rear and 18psi front. The first part of the beach run was quite enjoyable. It was obvious that there wasn’t much traffic that bothered to come this far down. Due to the angle the left hand side tyres were consistently working hard, whilst the right hand side did stuff all.

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The other thing I found interesting was how soft it is down near the waters edge. Even with tyre pressures dropped right down, the vehicle still sinks down quite a significant amount.

10 & 12 psi in the tyres - front/rear

10 & 12 psi in the tyres – front/rear

We enjoyed regular breaks, initially because we weren’t in any rush. But later on because I noticed that Landy was running warmer than usual. I dropped tyre pressures down to 15 psi, but still not having much luck I ended up down at approximately 12psi. I really can’t say I’m a fan of these tyres in soft sand – much prefer the old Hankooks.

Gom's 80 series and my Defender

Gom’s 80 series and my Defender

Duke & Oli

Duke & Oli

Debating life's greatest topics - think this one was about beer!

Debating life’s greatest topics – think this one was about beer!

The last 1/2 of the run into Preston Beach showed significantly more traffic wear, which in turn made it less enjoyable – well for me anyway. The sand was quite chopped up and soft and you spent a lot of the time fighting the wheel. I actually enjoyed arriving at Preston Beach.

I put some air into my tyres as we were doing a slight detour out to Martins Tank (approx. 7km’s) to take a look around. Unfortunately it ended up being a waste of time as it was all closed off, and by the looks of it since March as well.

So we turned around and headed back to Preston Beach. Here we decided that Oli & Gom would continue up the beach. Duke was heading back home and I was going to travel inland a tad and meet back up with the fellas further up the beach. There was 2 reasons for this – the first was the heating issues I was having on the sand, and the second was I wasn’t enjoying the condition of the beach (e.g. cut up, soft etc).

We eventually found our way to Lake Clifton (great winery BTW) where the flies were more than annoying……

From here we cut across to Harvey Estuary and followed the shore line where possible.

Knowing that time was starting to move on, we headed back across to the coast to meet up with the fellas. Airing down again, this time straight to 15psi.

Gom & Oli tried their hand at fishing, the kids enjoyed playing whilst I enjoyed a nice bottle of local white.

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We tried to continue north, but it wasn’t worth the risk.

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Airing back up we said goodbye to the fellas and continued working our way up the coast. Having never seen any of this before, it was well worth driving the back streets trying to follow the coastline.

So we made it up to Garden Island as you can see by the photos. By then it was starting to get late, so we cut away for home. Hopefully at some stage I’ll go for a run down to there and work me way further north past the city – maybe something for a rainy day.

Again a very enjoyable Sunday drive and good to catch up with some mates.

Cheers
Chris

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