A friend had told me about a spot to camp north of Dongara which is on private property. My mate knows the owner and has been camping there for over 10 years. We decided to give it a whirl and if we were told to leave, we’d head further north and try our luck at Ellendale Pool.
We got to the property, took a drive up a couple of tracks and came across a french bloke stuck in the sand on a track heading on to the beach. Being the nice people that we are, we offered to help him out and started to get the recovery gear out of rufn it. Just as I’m about to snatch him, his mate rocks up in an 80 series. Neither of them had any recovery gear.
We pulled him out with no problems and started having a chat with the two blokes. They asked how we knew about the campsite and I told them about my mate knowing the owner, only to be told that the owner doesn’t let people camp on the property, but that so many people know about it and they just “turn up”.
We said we’d head elsewhere as we didn’t want to cause a problem, only to be offered by the french bloke’s mate to camp on his property, which was next door and was about 1500 acres! We were also invited to share dinner with these guys and their families for helping pull John-Pierre out (I hope I’ve spelt that right!).
We took a drive for about 15 minutes, through some locked gates (they had the keys) and came to a limestone graded road. Gerard (John-Pierre’s mate in the 80 series) told us to head down to a cleared limestone opening, camp where ever we want and to head to their dongas around 5 which were about 5 minutes north of where we were camped.
We set up camp (pictures below) and headed off to a lovely dinner where we met Gerard’s wife Lina and daughter (whose name unfortunately escapes me!), her husband and their children Torey and Vinnie. John-Pierre, his wife and another couple were also there. Dinner was smoked salmon and salad with some Mauritian salsas and chutneys which were absolutely delicious!!
We had a few drinks and enjoyed the company and after telling them that the inflatable mattress we had bought with us was missing the plug (thanks dad!! ;)), they told us to take a couple of foam mattresses from their caravan to sleep on . We were so in awe of the kindness shown to us by these lovely people.
We made our way back to our camp and spent the remaining 2 and a half days relaxing, drinking gin and tonic, eating delicious camp foods (risotto, blue cheeses and bbqs!!) and enjoying the million dollar views we were blessed with. The weather wasn’t the best, with spots of drizzle occasionally over all days, ending with a fair amount of rain on the Sunday night / Monday morning, but the new OzTent held up well with no leaking and was dry within an hour of the sun rising.
Fingers crossed we get invited to camp there again! :)
