Newfound Love: Sandboarding

This past weekend I organized a day trip to go about an hour north of Newcastle to go sandboarding at the Port Stephens sand dunes. I went with 4 other Americans that I met in Teds and our friend Calum from England. Luckily I found a Port Stephens bus that went to Anna Bay, where we needed to go and the bus picks up from the Newcastle train station downtown. However, because of the time schedule of the train to get us into town, we had to leave around 6:45 in the morning, but we all still did it because we were really excited to go. So we stopped for breakfast at our favorite café in Newcastle and then we caught our bus and were on our way.

The bus driver dropped us off at the end of the street where the tours left from, but we were in a completely residential area. Ryan skeptically turned to me and said, “Kim…there’s no sand here.” I knew we were on the right street so we kept walking and about 15 minutes later we suddenly saw the beach and the sand dunes and we knew we were in the right place.

We checked in, paid, and then got into a huge 4WD truck that took us up to the top of the sand dunes. That was quite a ride. Our driver Bill was excited to hear that we were Americans because he’s traveled to 37 of the 50 states so he enjoyed chatting it up with us and trying to guess which states we were from. When we got to the top and got out of the truck I was completely blown away. I honestly felt like I was in the middle of a desert because I could only see sand in every single angle.

"The wind-blown sand dunes of Stockton Beach comprise the largest continuous mobile sand mass in New South Wales. The yellow grains have been washed in from the sea and blown ashore to form dunes up to forty metres high. Most of the sand was deposited about six thousand years ago. Despite the stabilising effects of plants such as spinifex, pigface and bitou bush, the wind-driven dunes move about four metres a year. The lee side of a dune is steep and loosely packed, making a perfect surface for sliding down.”

So after we got out, we grabbed our boards and were able to "have a go." We were met by our instructor Michael who just gave us some basic information about how to sit/stand on the board and where to walk back up the hill. He also pulled a candle out of his pocket and told us that if we wanted to “have a little bit more fun” to come see him and he’d put some wax on our board to make us go faster. I think throughout the day the 6 of us probably used up about 5 candles haha.

So I went down my first time and it was heaps of fun. The dune was about 40 metres high (about 130 feet) and also pretty steep. The best comparison I can make it that it’s sorta similar to sledding, but much better because you’re not wearing 30 layers of clothes and you’re not freezing your ass off. However, much similar to sledding, the worst about how going down is the walking back up part. As anyone who’s attempted to run on a beach will know, plodding through sand is extremely strenuous work. Let me tell you, trudging uphill on a large sand dune is absolutely murderous. Even more so after you’ve just wiped out and face-planted at the bottom of the dune and you’re still spitting out sand like a hyperactive llama. A few times I actually had to just sit down half way up and rest. Yet, despite how much we dreaded walking back up, we were all having the time of our lives and kept going down. Unfortunately, Calum got hurt within the first 5 minutes that we were there. He was going down standing up on the board and he was doing really well till he hit a bump and had an awesome wipeout. We were all standing up at the hill laughing hysterically for a few seconds until we realized that he was hurt. So we went down to check on him and he wasn’t seriously hurt but his knee hurt him bad enough that he decided he was gonna be done for the day.

Probably at least a 100 or so people came and went when we were there and most only went down about 1 or 2 times. However, we were having an absolute blast so we got our moneys worth and stayed for about 4 hours. Once we got bored with the basic ways to go down, we sat around brainstorming with the instructor various other crazy ways to go down as well. If you check out my pictures you’ll see that some of our genius ideas failed miserably, but we had fun anyway.

When we left, Bill offered to drop us off at the bus station and he took us an awesome ride in the 4WD where we were basically driving on Stockton Beach which was absolutely amazing and a great conclusion to our trip. When I got back to Uni I couldn’t believe how much sand I was still finding all over my body, even after I showered haha. Sandboarding was a huge success and we’d all really like to go back another time because we all had the time of our lives and it was a fairly cheap and easy trip to make (and quite a good workout!!).

On a sadder note, I went to the doctor yesterday and found out that I have strep throat. I got my prescription last night so I’m feeling a little better today, but I’m still contagious until tomorrow morning. So I’ve just been hanging out and trying to keep a safe distance from my friends. It’s kinda funny because when I told Australians that I had strep throat everyone responded, “What’s that?” I guess it’s not common here….but someone how I still managed to get it. Weird. Anyway, I’m currently planning a weekend trip for this weekend so keep checking back for updates on that and Autonomy Day this Friday. Be sure to checkout my Photobucket if you wanna see more pictures!

Cheers,
Kim