Sandstorm on the coast; a shocking afternoon at camp
I reckon if life didn’t throw you into some pretty average situations, you’d never appreciate the magic at other times. At least, that’s what I tell myself when we’re getting hammered by a sand storm at Hall Bay on the South Australia coast, whilst trying to cook a roast pork on the Weber, and keep the kids entertained.
We’d been at Hall Bay for two days, and during the day the wind got substantially stronger than the previous day. We’re no stranger to camping on the coast, and are well and truly familiar with sand blowing around with a bit of wind, but this was something else.
Outdoor kitchens certainly have their downsides (you can read our comparison here – Outdoor vs indoor kitchens), and despite the camper facing the opposite direction, we were getting fine sand blowing up, and swirling back into the kitchen.
A few times I wiped my finger across the induction cooktop, telling myself it had stopped, and I’d come back a few minutes later to it being completely covered. In between trying to entertain the kids and check the meat and vegetables, I cracked it and said that’s it, we’re moving.
We hooked up, and I dragged the camper about 30 metres away to a limestone part of the track, where I was sure that we’d be a lot better off. I left our mats, a heap of toys, the portable toilet and anything that didn’t need moving.
Upon arriving though, it hadn’t improved at all, and we were still struggling to even open the Weber to check anything without having more sand than food for dinner.
We set the inside of the camper up to eat at (which we never do, because its tiny, hard to do and not very comfortable), and we threw everything into a big bowl along with some cutlery, and shut the door behind us.
Dinner was pretty good actually, but we all had sand in our eyes and were feeling rather deflated. I debated moving further away, but it would have meant popping the roof down on the camper and it was getting close to bed time for the kids.
Thankfully the wind died down enough for us to do the dishes and clean up the mountains of sand that had found their way into our kitchen, and we put the kids to bed.
We’ve had very few unpleasant times on our Lap of Australia, but this was certainly up there with our worst experience on the coastline. The sand here is almost like dust, and the wind was clearly enough to pick it up and send it down the road at a rate of knots. Lovely!
Have you had some pretty shocking sand experiences on the coastline?