In March 2016, I bought a car and took it on a month long road trip around the southern part of Western Australia. I bought everything I needed to turn the back of a the station wagon I purchased, into a mobile home and left without a plan.
The people I have met, the places I got to see and the things I got to do, made it an unforgettable trip. I can talk about that road trip forever. Honestly, I’m not kidding. I have so many great stories to tell, but there is one story that stands out a little bit more than the others.
This is that story.
After about 3 and half weeks of driving around, exploring and enjoying the life on the road, I was making my way back to Perth along the southern coast. I had just left Albany and was heading towards Denmark. A small but pretty town about 50 km away from Albany.
It was a town on my list of places to see, so I was planning to stay the night and spend the next day exploring. I was also supposed to meet with a friend of mine, who was on his own road trip, heading in the opposite direction and happened to be in Denmark at the same time as me.
I got to Denmark around 4 pm. After sending a text message to my friend and agreeing to meet in town at 7:30 pm, I decided to go exploring. First place on my list was to go see the Wilson inlet at the end of the Ocean Beach road which stretches from the town to the ocean. While driving there, I noticed that there were quite a few off-road trails and tracks. One in particular caught my attention. I checked it out on Satellite view of Google Maps and it seemed like a short and easy trail that lead to a quiet little beach that didn’t appear to even have a name. I figured that I would go on the trail after exploring Wilson inlet.
On my way back, because the sun was close to setting, I could not resist the idea of watching the sunset on the small secluded beach without a name. I turned into the trail. Through out my trip of the Great Southern WA, I have successfully driven on many off-road trails and beaches, this trail did not seem to be any harder than the ones I have conquered before. I continued, confident that I can make it to the beach.
After about half a kilometer of winding road through trees, between a bushy hill and a small ditch, I reached a corner that led to a sandy straight road. Without thinking too much about the sand I kept driving. “I’ve got a 4wd and I’ve already driven on beaches with this car, this can’t be much different.” I thought to myself.
About 50 to 70 meters into the straight, the sand started to thicken up and the wheels started slipping. I stopped to rethink my decision. “I am certain that I can get through this” I remeasured myself. I backed out of the thick sand and decided to give it another go. This time at higher speed. Big mistake.
The car had gone further than before but also sunk into the sand even more. Giving up on my plans to watch the sunset on the beach, I tried to reverse out of the sand. No go! The car moved about 30 cm back and sunk even deeper into the sand. I tried to go forward. The car did not move at all. I was stuck.
I learned to drive on the snowy road of Canada and have gotten stuck in snow banks and ditches before so the sand did not discourage me. I got out of the car, found an old wooden plank and started digging the wheels out of the sand. Turns out that getting stuck in sand isn’t as similar to snow as I thought. The more sand I dug out from under the wheels, the more sand poured into its place from under the car. After several attempts of digging, trying to put wood under the wheels and trying to drive out, I was fed up.
The sun had already set and it was starting to get dark. I left the car in the sand and walked back the road. I was hoping to be able to stop somebody with a Ute ( pick up truck) and a towing rope. I spent about 40 minutes on the side of the road, waiting. Several people have stopped to ask if I needed help, but none of them had cars big enough to pull me out. The few utes that drove by did not stop, even after I tried to wave them down. Soon the road became completely empty and I was all on my own in the dark.
I gave up on the idea of getting help from strangers and finally called a tow truck. I picked the wrong day to get stuck. The only tow truck driver, that served the entire area, was on his night off. He already had a few beers and could not come pull me out until the following the day. He agreed to come first thing in the morning, which would be around 6 am.
I returned back to the car, making a second attempt to dig the car out in the dark. It is at this point that I started hearing weird noises in the bushes around the me. Remember, this is Australia! The land of poisonous snakes and spiders. Not being an expert on either and being located in the middle of an Australian forest, I was not about to take any risks. I quickly gave up on digging, got in the car, wrapped myself in the sleeping bag and and went to sleep. I had no choice but to wait until 6 am for the tow truck. My motto for the entire trip was “Home is where you park it” and tonight that was going to be bogged in the middle of the forest.
I got woken up by a loud roar of a diesel engine and very bright headlights. It was 4 am. Was it this my tow truck? Nope. The lights turned off and so did the engine. Two bogans got out of what looked like a big Toyota Land Cruiser ute. With beers in their hands and still wearing their work clothes from the previous day, they walked up to my car, with a puzzled looks on their faces. I got out of my car and stuck up a conversation with them. Turns out they were coming from the pub and were heading to the beach to watch the sunrise with a few more beers. Since I was blocking their route, they offered to pull me out. Without any effort, their big, powerful ute, pulled my little car out of the sand. To thank them, I gave them the couple of beers I had lying around. They packed up their tow rope and carried on to the beach. I was saved.
Filled with excitement and joy, I got back in the car and went back down the trail, in the direction of the main road. The excitement had clouded my mind and I wasn’t concentrating on the trail. Driving between the hill and the ditch that I went by on my way in, I did not use enough caution and brakes on hard right turn. The car hit a big rock with the left tire, hopped up about 10-20 cm off the ground and fell onto its side in the ditch on my left. Not having my seat belt on, I ended up on the passenger seat, with my things from the back all over me. I have crashed my just recently de-bogged home on wheels. I am a total idiot!
My first thought was that this was all a bad dream. I really hoped that it was a bad dream, but the pain from hitting my head on the passenger window let me know that I was not dreaming. It took a lot of effort to get out out of the car and I really struggled to keep calm as I was really mad at myself. After getting out and assessing the damage, it turned out that there wasn’t really much of it. Lucky.
I was standing in the middle of the trail, staring at the car and trying to figure out what to do, when I heard a familiar, loud diesel engine. Yep, it was the bogans coming back from the beach. As the ute came around the turn, it stopped. All I could hear was laughing coming through the open windows. I cannot imagine what they thought of me at that moment.
When they finally stopped laughing and got out of the ute, they proposed to pull me out again. I was pretty certain that it was impossible even for their powerful vehicle to get me out of this. They insisted and I agreed. What other choice did I have? We spent about an hour trying to pull the car out. With every try, with every pull, it kept going even deeper into the ditch. There was no way we could get it out, this was a job for a tow truck.
It was a bit past sunrise now and the two still drunk guys that were trying to help me, gave up and left. I called the tow truck driver at 6 am to ask if he was still on his way. Another hour wait later, he finally got there. I guided him through the trail in reverse until we got to the car. When he saw how stuck I was and how close the car was to rolling further into the swamp bellow, he could not help but laugh. “This is a little more than being just stuck in the ditch” he said. I described the whole situation to him and we had a good laugh about my misfortune, before proceeding to attempt to save the car.
Luckily, the tow truck driver was very experienced and got my home on wheels out onto the trail with minimal damage. The fiberglass skirt under my bull-bar bumper was beyond destroyed. One tire was completely sliced through on its side, while another was just off the steel wheel. Lucky. I only had 1 spare and did not want to get town into town on the truck. It being Saturday morning in a small town, the only garage and tire shop was closed for the weekend.
I fixed the tires while still on the trail, then followed the truck into town. He guided me to an ATM where I was able to withdraw some cash for my tow. Being a nice guy and feeling really bad for me and my terrible Saturday night, he only charged me $150 instead of the $300 it would normally cost for the same recovery. I couldn’t be more grateful than I was in that moment.
I held up pretty well though the night and the whole situation, but once it was over it all finally hit me, that it could all have turned out much worse. If it was not for the little tree that caught me, I would have been at the bottom of the hill in the swamp. Not wanting to think too much about what could have happened, I drove to the nearest beach, had some breakfast and after reorganizing all my things, laid down to get some much needed sleep.
I finished my road trip without any other incidents and still had a great time after I met up with my friend and other backpackers. I no longer had the need to drive down every trail and put my car through any unnecessary obstacles.
I think I will stick to paved roads from now on.