Day 4 Seal Creek to Mt Ragged

Monday, 22nd December 2014

Waking at 5.20am we noticed we had some light rain overnight. Deciding not to hang around here ’cause it’s packed out we have breaky before heading toward Israelite Bay via Fisheries Road. We’re going to check out the ruins and camping there, if we find a good spot we’ll set up for the day. We are again treated to some lovely scenery along the way, the overcast sky dampening the normally brilliant blue water.

Hmmm…. by about 11.00am we haven?t found either so we’re going to head toward Mt Ragged via Gora Road. A bit further along the track we come across a sand goanna looking for some sun on this overcast day. As the day goes on it becomes evident that I’ve got a tummy bug (first time in many years of traveling 🙂 )

The road to Mt Ragged was very very corrugated and traveling was slow. Around Sheoaks Hill we get bogged having seen the go around a tad too late and find ourselves half and half when the boggy clay wins out and pulls us in. Oh well, we now have an excuse to use our max trax for the first time 🙂 .

The first try didn’t work, the wheels just spin gaining no traction. Fortunately though the wheel spin didn’t sink us further down. We grab some fallen bushes and lay them in front of the slightly repositioned max trax, and have another go. We’ve made a little progress but not enough, we still have about 40mts to go. Gee, even though it wasn’t too deep that clay sure is slippery, it’s like ice with suction! Even though there weren’t any trees around only small bushes we try a combination of max trax and winch but first we have to find and recover the max trax from the clay; that was hard work trying to break the suction of the clay which was phenomenally strong – and pull them out.

We use the max trax again and then connect the winch. We winch onto the max trax and gain some ground, do this again and finally get out. That only took about 45 minutes. I was surprised that the small bushes were rooted strong enough to be a good anchor for the winch and the bushes stayed in tack.

We continue on to Mt Ragged, and I?m feeling pretty crook now and doze most of the remainder of the way. Hubby was surprised I managed to doze at all with all the juddering of the corrugations. I remember waking at one point to see a large kangaroo jumping down the middle of track in front of us. We slowed and stopped to allow him to move on. I doze off again.

We have finally arrived at Mt Ragged , it only took us about 4hrs to travel the 60kms from Israelite Bay to Mt Ragged. What a lovely spot it is and no one else is here ? perfect! We set up our camp and then I rest. We have a light tea before heading to bed. As it?s a lovely spot we are going to hang around for a few days.

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