ROBE DISROBED

An Outsider's Take on the Famous Beach Run

- WORDS BY KATIE HARRIS PHOTOS BY DAN GREC AND KATIE HARRIS

AEV's 2.5-inch DualSport RT Suspension performed flawlessly in the big dunes and soft sand.

Aw yeah, I reckon that'll take you about four hours", the lady at the visitor's center tells us—highlighter in one hand, tide chart ready to slide across the table in the other. She chomps loudly on her chewing gum as she looks over the counter, sizing us up. “Maybe a bit less depending on the tides”, she continues as she cracks her gum. “I've never done it."

We looked at her quizzically, and then down to the hand-drawn photocopied map she had presented us with— half the beach run on one side, and half on the other.

We're in Robe, an idyllic seaside town in South Australia, well-known in 4x4 circles as the beginning of the beach run to nearby Beachport.

The Robe Beach Run, as it's known, ticks a lot of boxes. It offers world-class sand driving, providing the perfect shakedown trip for the Gladiator and recovery gear. It gives a small taste of Southern Australia's gorgeous beaches, and at only 70 kilometers, it is supposed to be a pretty short trip. A full day should see us complete the run, but as usual we're just making that up, and have no real time limits. I get the sense the lady at the visitor's center knows about as much as we do.

Unexpected Skills

I spend my morning coffee fascinated by the litany of tracks encircling our swag— just like tracking a deer through a Canadian meadow of snow. Unlike Canada, where a morning of looking for snow tracks would likely result in finding those of a single squirrel or fawn, here I could trace goannas, wild cats, and about a hundred birds. The amount of nocturnal wildlife here was ten times anything I've ever seen in Canada.