Salt, Sand and a Surpise

A 70km coastal run from Robe to Beachport delivers some of South Australia's best sand driving - and a few surprises - on a two-day 4x4 adventure

- WORDS KATIE HARRIS PHOTOS DAN GREC AND KH

The woman behind the Robe visitor centre counter eyes us over her glasses, highlighter in one hand, tide chart in the other. She's working over a piece of chewing gum like it owes her money.

“Aw yeah, I reckon that'll take you about four hours,” she says, sliding the chart towards us. “Maybe less, depending on the tides.” She pauses to crack her gum. “I've never done it.”

We exchange puzzled glances before looking down at the hand-drawn, photocopied map she's given us - half the beach run on one side, the rest on the back.

We're in Robe, an idyllic seaside town on South Australia's Limestone Coast, famous in 4x4 circles as the starting point for the legendary beach run to nearby Beachport.

The Robe Beach Run, as it's known, certainly ticks a lot of boxes. With world-class sand driving, the run provides the perfect shakedown for the Gladiator, our recovery gear and the team who need practice using it all in soft sand - us. It gives a small taste of southern Australia's stunning coastline and, at only 70km, should be a relatively short trip. A full day ought to see us complete the run, but as usual we're making that up as we go, with no real time limits. I get the sense the lady at the visitor's centre knows about as much as we do.

I spend my morning coffee fascinated by the litany of tracks encircling our swag - like tracking a deer through a Canadian meadow of snow. Unlike Canada, where a morning of following tracks might yield a single squirrel or fawn, here I can trace the wanderings of goannas, feral cats and what feels like a hundred different birds. The sheer volume of nocturnal wildlife is easily 10 times what I've ever seen back home in Canada.