My first encounter with beach driving was in hired vehicles in around 1973 on Frazer Is., just up from there.

We were the first of our traveling party up the beach to our camp at Indian Head, no problems.

The second contingent were a bit late so we went back to check on them.

Found them where they had just been dragged off a large coffee rock on the incoming tide.  Lucky.

It seems that they had been driving up the beach in the failing light & on an incoming tide.  After lots of dodging around dark spots on the sand (holes?) they took a chance on one that turned out to be a large coffee rock that hung them up.  Oops!

Fortunately after removing much of the load, a large group of passers by helped them lift the vehicle up and off the rock on a surge & off they went, much wiser & with little damage.

We novices also learnt the lesson of tyre pressure after spending several hours trying to get up the dune just north of Indian Head.  An old hand advised us to drop the tyre pressure & so with tyres down to around 18psi off we went straight over with little effort on the first go.  We enjoyed a night at the 'Rainbow Beach' (?) Resort bar as a reward & went back next day to get our mates still in camp at Indian Head.

We used to spend a week or so up there every year during the 70's ... no tourists or greenies in those days.  Just lots of fish, dingoes & brumbies.  Noisy generators powering our freezers & party lights were no problem.  Got a picture of a tree decorated with our empty XXXX beer cans, published in The Australasian Post.  Different standards to now.