Guilderton to Seabird and Return - August 2005

The day started bright and blue. What more could we ask for than a first rate day to visit the wildflower country of Guilderton. Not only did we have a great day in the dunes with great company, we also got up close and comfortable with the explosion of wildflowers in the area.

The day started bright and crisp. I arrived at the meeting place to find Rob holding off a bunch of LBPs that had taken over our traditional meeting place. We held tight to a small section and generously waved on those non-zook partipants who thought we were part of their convoy.

Quarter past nine came and we had four eager starters with Russell seen fuelling up at the Shell Servo. So we jumped the starting gate on the other tribe, picked up Russel and Liz on the way through and set off for Guilderton with Rob as sweep. The trip up was uneventful but very pleasant with the sun shining, the sky blue and the breeze a zephyr.

Guilderton has a road house which offers fuel, air and other niceties such as ice-creams and pies. While filling up on some of those niceties, a new set of faces greeted me in the shop: It was Rosa and Marchello (Angello was still outside catching his breath.) Angello told me that he read the club magazine at 8:45am only to realise he needed to be in Wanneroo at 9:00am. I wonder if we can get photos from Main Roads cameras along the freeway of a red streak heading north? So that made six of us, or as Rob counted, twelve. (Rob did say he was seeing double – must have been the paint fumes.)

The group decided that the road house was a good place to deflate tyres so, after the refreshments and deflations, we headed north past the tall lady in a red dress and along the sand track that hugged the coast. We took it very gently and spied many a wildflower. This caused occasional bursts of stopping and gently hopping though the bush to get the best photos of what was on offer.

But then we came to the challenge. A tight turn left up a reasonably steep slope with lots of LBP holes distributed up most of it. The Jimny had no chance and after three attempts I gave up. Matt was next and made it over on the second try (lockers!). Harry made a valiant effort but high tyre pressure and low momentum saw him only a third the way up and stopped. Russel nearly made it but the final few meters saw him with no wheels on the ground and no where to go except back down. Angello flew at the hill quite a few times. Even after offloading some weight, the best he could do was to dig one the holes another half a wheel depth deep in a vane attempt to stop Rob from showing us all up. Of course, Rob just drove up and over but did make Matt think twice about where to stand when taking photographs.

From there we headed along the fence line and back to the coast. One spot had many wildflowers so we stopped again to snap a few more photos. Every time we looked at the ground, we saw new wildflowers.

Eventually we made it to the perimeter of Seabird and our traditional lunch stop. What a delightful place. No flies and no gale force winds; just a beautiful view of the ocean and the gentle sound of the waves breaking while we casually ate lunch and chatted. Great company and a great environment! What more could one want on a pleasant Sunday afternoon?

The track back took us inland. There were not as many wildflowers as I expected in this area and it was a bit scratchy. None the less, we pushed on. We rejoined the track that we took northwards for a while and then continued south when it went west. The Geraldton wax was prolific over this stretch of track. In fact it was so prolific that we were literally surrounded by it – up close and scratchy. (Russell claimed it was a motor bike track we were on). At least we saw some flowers!

Once back at the skirt of the Guilderton lady, we made our way down to the beach. We stopped a few minutes, looked at the waves and then headed back into town to reinflate our tyres and, of course, buy an another ice-cream. But we didn’t make it – smoke was seen coming from Harry’s LJ and it stopped dead. After close inspection by Rob (and the rest of us), the diagnosis was that the positive battery terminal had shorted with the bonnet and the body to battery earth wire had melted. As well, the battery was dead and the bonnet had a dark black burn spot in the yellow duco. We actually managed to jump start it and, with the appropriate placement of a rubber mat to stop it shorting again, Harry was back on the road.

We stopped again at the road house, inflated our tyres, purchased our ice-creams, said our goodbyes and headed back home.

A great day was had by me, and I assume everybody else. Thanks for coming guys and making this a pleasant and enjoyable day.

Mike Leishman