The Photo Friday topic is “smooth” so I thought I’d let this installment of my Australia posts do double duty. Dunes are generally pretty smooth looking mounds of sand, right? Well, this shot was taken at the dunes in Lancelin, where you can also see a white sand beach to the west if you’re standing high on a mound somewhere.

Now, I know this particular dune doesn’t look perfectly smooth, but that’s because of what our group and others did there, and what our group did there was very, very smooth. But first, I’ll explain.

After walking around in the Pinnacles, I thought I was dying of heatstroke. I was parched, lightheaded, nauseated, and totally convinced that I might faint. Riding in the air-conditioned bus didn’t help, but stopping at a convenience store and getting myself a couple bottles of water and an ice cream bar did. Then, we went from this bus…

…to this bus…

…and I was suddenly completely revived.

Desert Storm is the ultimate four-wheel drive adventure. BIG school bus on monster wheels, and my godmother and I? We rode in it. On the dunes. It was the bounciest, most fun ride I’ve had in years. Better than a roller coaster. We’d go up and down the steepest and smoothest of all the dunes there, and we’d go forwards and backwards, attacking the dunes straight on or sideways.

Then, THEN, we stopped for some photo opportunities. The others in the group posed in front of the bus while the Desert Storm bus driver, an enthusiastic adventuring sort whom the other driver called mad-mad-I-tell-you, took pictures for us. He was disappointed that no one took his suggestion to climb the tires, so when it came time for my godmother and me to hand him my camera, I headed straight for one of the front tires and climbed it. My godmother, being the good sport that she is, climbed up the other front tire with some help.

We were the first two people in the entire group game enough to do that, so the driver brightened up and took a lot of shots. He told us to ham it up—sit down, stand up, wave, stick your leg out, and jump. And yep, we did all those things.

Here’s an animation I made of the shots the driver took. (I’m the one in the pink shirt.)

After that, everyone else who was left seemed willing to go up the tires, too. Anyway, when we were done shooting, we all gathered round as he told us how to sandboard on the dunes. Yes, sandboard on the dunes.

Here’s a shot of me sandboarding while facing foward:

And here’s a shot of me sandboarding backwards:

I have my mouth closed in that shot because I didn’t want to eat sand, but the ride was so exhilirating that I ended up open-mouthed laughing and squealing anyway as I watched the driver shrink in view.

I don’t know if anyone else went twice, like I did (no one went three or more times), but the driver kept insisting that I go four times … because he got me confused with another girl there (named Rhea or Ria) who was from Hong Kong or Singapore—he had told her he expected her to go four times because she kept nodding her head, indicating that she understood his strict instructions, even though she could barely speak English.

And, you know, I would have gone another two times, but I wanted to give my godmother a chance at sandboarding while I held the camera and took shots of her, and I wanted a serious rest myself from climbing back up that steep, steep dune, not once, but twice. Remember, I haven’t had any exercise in a decade, and I’d nearly had heatstroke at the Pinnacles only hours before. My thighs and lungs were killing me!

But anyway, here are some of the shots I took of my godmother. This is her getting ready at the top:

This is her, sitting on the board, ready to go:

And this is her, ready to climb up the dune to rejoin the group and the bus:

See how steep it is? After I’d needlessly exerted myself climbing up that thing nearly twice, I finally learned a trick from another sandboarder climbing up beside me: Use the board as a wide walking stick to help you climb the dune; dig it into the sand above you and pull yourself up by it.

Wish I’d known that sooner. I might have gone down the dune at least one more time. It was the smoothest, most fun ride down a hill I’ve ever had.

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