30/12/2018: Forget the bad news already. You are wrong, wrong, wrong: http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-persistent-appeal-of-pessimism/ & https://www.amazon.com/Factfulness-Reasons-World-Things-Better/dp/1250107814#reader_1250107814 – buy this book!

29/12/2018: They Shall Not Grow Old. This is a real audio-visual feast. I watched it yesterday and was stunned (Pirate Bay is wonderful): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXMhv7E0o7c & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Shall_Not_Grow_Old

29/12/2018: We will all drown (or be burned – or something) unless you don’t do as we say – on pain of death if necessary (or preferably): https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2018/12/leichardt-councils-catastrophe-on-sydney-harbour.html

29/12/2018: Oh how lovely, ‘Kasim Khuram, 23, from Birmingham admitted lifting the lids of 'multiple coffins…faces jail as he admits having sex with corpse in funeral parlour…Wearing a black hooded top and trousers and sporting a Palestinian flag tattoo on the left side of his neck, he stood with hands clutched in front of him as the charges were read’: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6512919/Pervert-23-faces-jail-admits-having-sex-corpse-lifting-lids-coffins.html?fbclid=IwAR2n2xuuOzQiYAWE8TQeVKL2stOVFOkiTk4YPhFb8oJyHr8rFIbt8BcOtDM

28/12/2018: Just so much junk (along with the hundreds of thousands of useless wind turbines which will have done nothing but kill millions of birds and bats.): https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/23/solar-panel-waste-a-disposal-problem/

28/12/2018: The Left will never admit they murdered 8 million people in SE Asia: https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/tim-blair/asylum-seekers-the-left-rejected/news-story/aadc230710c470b04837da877d066283

28/12/2018: And they will not admit responsibility for the African gang problem (or the Moslem jihadi problem) Such charming people (Thank God for the kebabs): https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/tim-blair/words-or-evidence-which-to-believe/news-story/3240975f95ceefddbb489f06223d6369

27/12/2018: Gully Walking: Most of the ‘great’ walking tracks (like the Alps’ for example) head along the tops where I admit the views outward and downwards can be truly awe inspiring. They do lack for water (and fish) however, are often windy and/or with very changeable weather that can be a challenge for tents and even survival. Often they even lack for firewood for a nice cheery fire too.

Myself I prefer the valleys though they seldom for some reason have any track at all. Mind you this means you can mostly have them all to yourself. I prefer the view looking up anyway. I am laid up at the moment but that does not prevent me from dreaming of just such journeys.

And as you can see, Spot is dreaming too:

Let me hint at a route you might follow up the Freestone Creek (Briagalong) from the beautiful ‘Blue Pools’ for example. All the way up. Here and there are walking tracks, 4WD tracks, old abandoned logging tracks, deer trails and just plain bush-bashing.

The beautiful ‘Blue Pool’:

Two dogs eager to start the journey – how young Spot was in May 2013:

But he was keen to lead on up the valley

Past a remarkable bird’s nest:

For just a journey of 3-4 days I guess you could (eg) leave your mountain bike at the top of the unnamed track that drops down from the Rim Track above Mt Blomford (above the Lees Creek Track) and return to your car (at the Blue Pools) via the Marathon Rd – quite a pleasant down hill journey.

The Freestone Creek is a beautiful watercourse (with trout, blackfish, crays, freshwater mussels, etc) and you will find many wonderful campsites along the way. I guess over the years (deer hunting, etc) I have walked pretty much all of it coming out at the top onto the Marathon Rd or the McDonald Gap Track perhaps.Many people who love the Blue Pools have never seen the Upper Freestone (which is even better) and is accessed by the delightful Lees Creek Track which criss-crosses it many times,

What a delightful stream the Freestone is. You can walk in or beside it for many, many kilometres.

The road used to follow the creek all the way but a substantial length now diverts from the river. The old road can still be walked however (as you will find out). Quite a lot of it I would have walked in the dark either trying to get to a twilit bail-up or attempting to round up stray hounds after just such a missed bail-up. I know I have a couple of times walked into a large tired stag the dogs still had bailed up in the dark.

The Upper Freestone:

This is a heart-starting experience I can tell you. Much like dropping onto the back of a large shark or porpoise body-surfing when you are a mile out from the beach on the ‘Groper Break’ at Nobby’s near the Newcastle Heads for example. Something which used to happen to me when I was a teenager. It’s a wonder I grew to be a man. There used to be a song about such growing up in Newcastle and working at the BHP steel refinery which then dominated the Harbour and city in the 1960s – what a decade! I worked there too pouring pig iron in the blast furnace, etc. ‘ Men grow strong as iron upon black bread and sour’ was the refrain. I certainly did.

A shark’s skin (called ‘shagreen’) is much more like sandpaper than a dolphin’s (smooth) so it certainly alerts you when to be scared if you should touch it. A mile out to sea there is not much to be done about it. Hard to believe that at 14-15 years old we swam out there to surf (and stayed all day in the water) to swim back in in the afternoon, then catch the train home (to Fassifern). Much better than taking illicit drugs, violent video games or whatever it is the youth risk themselves at these days. We also often rode our bikes up into the Watagan Mountains (behind Fassifern), climbed all over their wild places and camped out there by the light of he moon.

Once you cross the divide (McDonalds Gap Track) you would head down the Little River to the Moroka. This is likely to be tough going after the fires, but might be OK if you walk in the middle of the ‘river’. It is not much more than a gutter really, yet it still held live trout (miraculously) after the fires burnt to the very water’s edge – and even though every fish and eel in the Macalister died! We were one of the first vehicles in after the fires. That was practically the only life we saw in a hundred miles of driving – save for many deer tracks around the deepest waterholes. It is no wonder there are so many deer now – and so little else. Such (wildfire) management is a crime! You might find the going better on the ridges or even sticking to the roads. This is an adventure for you. I can’t do everything there is left to do. (I am 70). You will find out for yourselves.

Moroka Hut

There is plenty of fairly easy walking along the Moroka wherever you hit it – eg from the Moroka Hut down to Horseyard Flat. There is a fine track from Horseyard Flat down to the first waterfall at least. The main set of waterfalls further on is awesome, especially when there is enough water to canoe the river (if you are suicidal!)

You may find it more congenial to cross the river in the vicinity of the main falls and climb to the other side for a better view. Then you might find it easier to walk down the ridges aiming for the Moroka in the vicinity of Higgins’ old cattle yards above the Moroka Creek Track. There are some drops to avoid, as you will find out. However I have beaten my way down through the Gorge itself when I was younger crossing back and forth. It certainly is beautiful and entertaining.

The Upper falls:

The way gets a bit rougher from here on:

When you are walking along the Moroka (below the Gorge) ignore the so-called track. Criss-cross in such a way as to make for the flattest walking. From Higgins Yards to the Moroka Creek for example the ‘track’ is on the true left bank but it is choked with blackberries. You can walk along the clear ridge on the true right bank. From the Carey down it is pretty clear on the true left bank even though the ‘track’ is usually on the other side. Ignore the ‘track’ Parks Victoria will never do any real work – not so long as they have air-conditioned offices and 4WDs and can have meetings.

From the Moroka Creek Track (at least) the river is ‘canoeable’ (when there is enough water – perhaps 2 metres on the Waterford gauge) though intrepid adventurers have come down it all the way from the bridge on the Moroka Road! Truly. But it is not recommended to come over those falls (though people have)!

So it might have been a good idea to bring along your pack raft because when there is sufficient water (eg above 1.8 metres on the Waterford Gauge on the Wonnangatta) you can raft all the way down – to the Castleburn Creek confluence in this scenario about seven days lying about on your raft like Huck and Tom, say from the Moroka Creek Track down – which would be the safest put in, but there are some interesting rapids between there and the Wonnangatta – and some lovely grassy camps too. If you put in at the confluence (six days) it would be safest There are plenty of beautiful campsites on the Wonnangatta too. See (for hundreds of photos and precise canoeing instructions) eg:

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/2017/11/22/remote-wonnangatta-day-two/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/2017/11/15/a-wonnangatta-spring/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/2017/11/15/a-wonnangatta-spring-day-two/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/2017/11/15/a-wonnagatta-spring-day-three/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/2018/01/04/canoe-wonnangatta-kingwill-to-meyers-flat/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/2017/01/17/wonnangatta-kingwell-bridge-to-black-snake-creek/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/2017/01/17/wonnangatta-black-snake-to-hut-creek/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/2017/01/17/wonnangatta-hut-creek-to-waterford-bridge/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/2018/12/13/wonnangatta-waterford-to-angusvale-day-one/

Moroka-Wonnangatta confluence.

Of course you can walk all the way mainly on the true right bank, sometimes in the water,sometimes criss-crossing along over bends and loops, sometimes walking along on beautiful river flats replete with bell-birds, wood swallows and bee-eaters – and there are roads too in places.

Castleburn Creek Confluence:

If you walk up the Castleburn Creek (there is a lovely campsite at the confluence, but vehicles can get there) you will swing away from the main road till you hit the Black Range Track which you will follow till you hit the walking track that runs down from Pretty Boys Hill via the Lees Creek to the Freestone once again – thence down it as before in the opposite direction to the Blue Pools.

Of course I am assuming you will make this journey in the warmer months but still when the mighty Wonnangatta has enough water to make for an interesting pack raft trip from the confluence down. Some day you may even be lucky enough to find enough water in the Freestone to make it canoeable, or some other side gully might provide an adventure when the rains pour down – something which no man has ever enjoyed The Scorpion or the Castleburn for example. Who knows what delights await in some shady grove deep in the mountain’s heart? I know I have often thrilled to some unexpected ephemeral delight deep in the wilderness.

As a deer hunter I can never neglect the many side gullies which join the main stream. My journey would be likely to take much longer than yours as I spied my way up them. Often they contain hidden wonders which you would otherwise miss in this life: it might be a rare tree or orchid in bloom, or some wildlife or another caught in a surprising way: Baby deer frolicking like lambs for example. Watching a huge goanna fold itself into a miniature tree hole high in some forest giant. A beautiful miniature waterfall or just a perspective (maybe when a rainbow winks into existence) looking up or down the gully which brings joy to your heart. Take your time. You will not pass this way again. And you will pass surprisingly soon. I have seen so many good friends come and go. People whose faces come to me as I see a remembered path or tree in some hidden gully where we once stood, perhaps sharing an orange together long ago..

You would have to make a couple of food drops (along the Wonnangatta – Moroka Glen and Castleburn confluence perhaps?) somewhere perhaps if you intended to do this trip. The old fellas in the C19th would have traveled the land like this with just an axe, a billy, a bag of flour, some salt, a fishing line and a rifle – and mostly lived off the land. Of course you could too (barring legalities!). I favour a .410 myself for its lightness and versatility. Some models such as Rossi’s ‘Circuit Judge’ can be dismantled so they will fit in your pack but can also take a .45 calibre pistol round or a solid in .410 – either big enough to take surprisingly large game. A sambar would have to be quite close and carefully targeted. A wallaby would be easy. Just across the way in Tasmania it is legal to kill and eat them. I can’s see what is the difference myself. Many animals starve to death in winter because they were not harvested before the days start to close in.

Ducks are plentiful along our rivers. Likewise native pigeons (though illegal) are a culinary delight. People tell me lyre birds are as tasty as any bantam. And so on. The game will still be there long after the laws and the people who made them are dust. Some years you will find rabbits plentiful, echidna, brush-tailed possums, goannas, water dragons and so on. A PS: The ‘Tea Tree which is found in various spots along the way was so named because the early settlers used to use an infusion from it as a substitute for tea.

I guess it would take me nearly a week (on my 70 year old legs, but enjoying the trip immensely as I go) to reach the Wonnagatta-Moroka confluence from the Blue Pools. I would then have about a week drifting down the Wonnagatta then 3-4 days making my way back to the Blue Pools, so it is not a weekend trip by any means. You are no doubt much younger (and perhaps in a dreadful hurry to get to the grave!) so you can/will be much faster. I only hope you learn and enjoy along the way…

A couple of other ideas:

First a short one: Sandy Creek to Morris Creek, down the Welington, then a short section of the Mitchell Gorge (bring the pack raft), then walk up the Sandy Creek to your camp.

Up the Nicholson (from around Bairnsdale) to say Marthavale (some bastards burned down the wonderful hut there but it is still a lovely place to camp (although vehicles) with fresh trout in the river nearby. Over (via ‘Steve’s Track’ – Yes!)’ into the Wellington, then down the Mitchell to the beginning (perhaps at the wonderful ‘sand jetties’ at the mouth of the Mitchell. This one would also take weeks and require resupply.

I used to love walking up the Deep Creek – a tributary of the Thomson (years ago) then down the Aberfeldy to the Thomson, sometimes by boat. I could raft down the Thomson to Deep Creek and exit via the (now closed) D10 track which used to take me to within a chain of deep Creek just upstream from the Thomson confluence.

I’m sure if you have read this far, you get the point. There are many wonderful valley walking/pack rafting trips to be enjoyed in the Gippsland mountains. All I can say is: ‘Get out there’. Soon you too will be 70 – or worse!

Can I recommend Rooftop’s Dargo-Wonnangatta Adventure Map for this (and many other like) fascinating expeditions?

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/2018/12/20/their-torn-and-rugged-battlements-on-high/

25/12/2018: Why These Umbrellas Will Last Forever: Davek Umbrellas. They are confident: ‘Unconditionally Guaranteed For Life: Every Davek umbrella comes with an Unconditional Lifetime Guarantee. If, during its lifetime, the umbrella should fail to function properly for any reason whatsoever, the company will gladly repair or replace it for free.’ https://au.davekny.com/

The lightest appears to be: The Davek Mini: https://au.davekny.com/collections/umbrellas/products/the-davek-mini under 1 lb ie 453 grams. Comes in lots of colours – at least seven anyway..

‘The Davek Mini is our smallest, most compact umbrella. This incredibly convenient umbrella fits in literally any compartment, from a handbag or clutch to your pants pocket. The stylish Mini is the perfect “just in case” umbrella, hardly noticeable when it’s not in use. Keep it with you always—never be caught without an umbrella again. Measures less than 7 inches when closed. Pocket-sized protection, with style to spare. Manual open/close system.’

It costs $A75 (Dec 2018), so it is certainly worth finding out. You are always better off to have good things than cheap things. This is a piece of wisdom which seems to have been lost. For example we drive 1995-6 cars which we expect to last us for the rest of our lives. Most everything we own is like that. We are proud of that fact. We never wanted to be a part of the throw away society.

Coverage diameter	38 in (arc-diam); 34 in (straight-diam)
Closed length	7 inches
Weight	Under 1 lb—ultra lightweight
Open/close system	Manual system
Shaft material	Steel
Frame system	Fiberglass reinforced 6-rib frame system
Fabric	190 thread-count microweave fabric
Warranty	Unconditional lifetime guarantee

I carry this Montbell one for emergencies which weighs 85 grams, but I doubt it will last me for life – though I admit the last few weeks have made me think that might not be so long as I might wish! So perhaps it would! It might be more sensible to carry this rather heavier one which I could be confident would never fail me as a roof – so I could perhaps dispense with a raincoat altogether – so the weight difference would be negligible – but how much weight is your life worth in grams?

I have seen a man dead in the rain when I was comfortable nearby. I would not want to be the one who is dead. Rain is deadly. You must have shelter. You must have a roof. There is no such thing as a safe walk. Following a defined trail is really no safer than forging your way through the trackless bush, which I would rather do anyway. How often have I ‘found’ walkers who have followed a deer trail off into the bush and who then can’t find their way back to the marked trail. Some I don’t find!

On a lighter note, here is a genius idea for any hiking umbrella: http://www.theultralighthiker.com/2017/12/14/a-hands-free-umbrella/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/2018/09/28/a-wind-shell-and-an-umbrella/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/2017/08/18/raincoat-shelter/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/2016/08/14/hiking-in-the-rain/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-importance-of-a-roof/http:/The%20Importance%20of%20Roof

25/12/2018: The neighbours we have - yet we have done nothing since the 1960s: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/2018/12/22/exclusive-chemical-weapons-dropped-papua/15453972007326?fbclid=IwAR0Wh87AeIp0Eq--UvvGj9TApHjHceutvlbdf7P6mV1brkkNm9K5wccc7rU

25/12/2018: Easy 35 lb PVC Longbow: How-To and Test! No Fiberglass or Heat Needed! Kids are great! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOcjkReZiig&feature=youtu.be

25/12/2018: 5G and the ‘Five Eyes’. We will be hearing a lot more about this in future. 100 times faster than 4G (or the NBN – what a complete dead duck it will be – even before it is completed). It is inconceivable what ti ill be sued for. I imagine that is much more information than your senses can provide per second – so that artificial reality will seem more ‘real’ than ‘real' reality! https://nypost.com/2018/12/22/how-arrest-of-chinese-princess-exposes-regimes-world-domination-plot/

25/12/2018: We should have voted against this evil bullshit: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2018/12/why-didnt-australia-vote-against-uns-global-compact-for-migration.html Get rid of the UN!

24/12/2018: $180 billion: Even here in Australia we have already spent more than the Apollo programme or the Snowy Scheme – and we have nothing to show for it save a wrecked economy. Certainly there has not been nor ever will there be any Canutean effect on the so-called ‘climate’: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/19/where-did-the-money-go/

24/12/2018: How one thunderstorm (or maybe a little wind) can take out your entire grid. Renewables. Greatest dumb ideas in history. http://joannenova.com.au/2018/12/sydney-hail-storm-just-how-hailproof-are-those-solar-panels/

24/12/2018: A great big ‘Thank You’ to the guy who invented Scotch Tape (or “sticky Tape’ as we call it here in Oz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Gurley_Drew

24/12/2018:

23/12/2018: Forty years and still nothing to worry about: ‘Preliminary results suggest that the resulting linear warming trend over the 40 years (+0.13 C/decade) will not change substantially, and thus will remain considerably cooler than the average rate of warming across the IPCC climate models used for energy policy, CO2 emissions reductions, and the Paris’ Agreement.http://www.drroyspencer.com/2018/12/2018-6th-warmest-year-globally-of-last-40/

23/12/2018: Wild Journeys: https://www.amazon.com.au/Wild-Journeys-Bruce-Ansley-ebook/dp/B07BVHRZLZ#reader_B07BVHRZLZ

23/12/2018: A couple of Hazelwoods taken out by a single storm. How good are renewables: http://joannenova.com.au/2018/12/sydney-hail-storm-just-how-hailproof-are-those-solar-panels/

22/12/2018: Why not buy a Tesla? They are really hot: ‘Crews on the scene waited six hours for the battery to cool, but even then, after transporting it 10 minutes away, the car reignited late Tuesday night. Talk about your renewable energy’ https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/tim-blair/guess-that-car/news-story/6cb784c28e11a7e7f5b0bb4072ffd4c6

22/12/2018: You will no doubt remember how wonderful Moslem people’s democracies such as eg Guinea sent over 400 delegates to the latest ‘climate conference’ or ‘trough’ in Poland (paid for by the UN), where Australia sent 30 paid for by our Government (too many and too much), but you maybe hadn’t caught up with the full extent of this immense fraud. This greenie nonsense is without doubt the largest crime in world history, but will anyone, ever, be brought to justice over it? I doubt it. Let us at least stop funding it and that dreadful misnomer the ‘United Nations’: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/opinion-post/the-very-model-of-a-global-green-rorter/

22/12/2018: Getup is only a dozen people! The eternal totalitarianism of the Left:. https://www.heraldsun.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/getup-is-just-12-people/news-story/06f57f3ce28bea981738f4a632b7f4e6 & https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2018/12/clintonpodesta-linked-sunrise-project-donates-500000-to-getup.html

21/12/2018: We need to start doing this whether it is legal or not. Our immigration and justice systems have just been making our country too dangerous: https://www.shootingillustrated.com/articles/2016/9/27/it-s-not-a-carry-gun-if-you-don-t-carry-it/

21/12/2018: Animals are people too. What a delightful Facebook page. Thanks to Andrew Ferguson: https://www.facebook.com/Animals-are-people-too-1725188497530709/?__xts__[0]=68.ARD3txhl4gE4eJmTahiiTt0iiQS5p4WkXozrXDZ6E4vodVXHjYJLlUslRjKelLMvC8he47WY-PG4nfp9rMDB9o3z1KTdgVm1tqcKEZqULYnUqvKfMDB4ywpcXqhIqk1iyXSACd6e_oyrGOGUP9C0OjYvm5oUhN3RFKfk4djxZNPo76bz4EvR0__8nJFPqE7lTgi6EGqc93YAn7rnpoWuIKZS0ziT8q64PBgesNMrXOH_19l6JQZuAXv8yD4yvk6fPZSbwYTckd7xa9a4DeppGXqM2fgxSXYCdJd-LoPNjMi0NDotGKYdcA-BF68OS9EyJwBif2d7_N9pRks6HagvjaDkp95jnPOd8Zd0ZeL3b1TqQ-e21w&__tn__=k*F&tn-str=k*F

21/12/2018: ‘There is no Economy B. Once we have wrecked this one…’ http://joannenova.com.au/2018/12/want-to-hurt-the-competition-send-in-climate-protestors-91-billion-cost/

21/12/2018: Their Torn and Rugged Battlements on High : ‘Where the pine-clad ridges raise

Their torn and rugged battlements on high,

Where the air is clear as crystal, and the white stars fairly blaze

At midnight in the cold and frosty sky’

'The Man from Snowy River', Banjo Paterson

As you know I am a bit laid up at the mountain, but a young friend of mine has been out and about, and shared this guest post for you:

Kobie Notting: 'Dear Victorian Alps, you really cemented a place in my heart this weekend. Your bipolar weather makes me love and respect you even more, even though you tried to kill me Saturday night. How lucky we are to live within a couple hours drive of this. P.S. Go hike the Crosscut Saw people.

You start from the Mt Howitt carpark. You can do a day trip or an overnighter.. there’s a hut an hour in from the carpark that you camp at the night.. so basically drop your bags there and keep going to the crosscut. It’s a section between Mt Howitt and Mt Buggery where you’re just walking on the top of the ridge.

Views are just epic; just make sure it’s not going to be windy as there’s some sketchy sections like half a footpath wide with sheer drops, wouldn’t want it to be gusty. You could easy get to the view part and back in half a day. It’s only an hour to the hut, then from the hut another hour to the start of the crosscut saw. With a light day pack you’d kill it. It’s hilly but if you took your time you would be fine.

A reader writes: ‘Got stuck on the cross cut saw in a total white out and had to sit it out behind a rock for several hours. The clouds can move in on you very quickly. Take care. The drop below is called the Terrible Hollow for a reason’

Yeah it changes soooo quickly up there! See eg: https://www.trailhiking.com.au/crosscut-saw-mt-speculation/?fbclid=IwAR10nHuvI9Cb7lfLxLRvpCKLs3OoSXgNi3EPNkNoszvhKQovTdmJisrTGFY'

The High Country is always ablaze with wldflowers:

Kobie also posted this video to give a bit of an idea of how a living 360 degrees up there is like: https://www.facebook.com/kobie.notting/videos/10157010309837658/

Chilling out on the roof rack of the Troopie:

Don’t know the full poem? One of the best ever written. Here it is:

The Man from Snowy River

There was movement at the station, for the word had passed around

That the colt from old Regret had got away,

And had joined the wild bush horses - he was worth a thousand pound,

So all the cracks had gathered to the fray.

All the tried and noted riders from the stations near and far

Had mustered at the homestead overnight,

For the bushmen love hard riding where the wild bush horses are,

And the stock-horse snuffs the battle with delight.

There was Harrison, who made his pile when Pardon won the cup,

The old man with his hair as white as snow;

But few could ride beside him when his blood was fairly up-

He would go wherever horse and man could go.

And Clancy of the Overflow came down to lend a hand,

No better horseman ever held the reins;

For never horse could throw him while the saddle girths would stand,

He learnt to ride while droving on the plains.

And one was there, a stripling on a small and weedy beast,

He was something like a racehorse undersized,

With a touch of Timor pony - three parts thoroughbred at least -

And such as are by mountain horsemen prized.

He was hard and tough and wiry - just the sort that won't say die -

There was courage in his quick impatient tread;

And he bore the badge of gameness in his bright and fiery eye,

And the proud and lofty carriage of his head.

But so slight and weedy, one would doubt his power to stay,

And the old man said, "That horse will never do

For a long and tiring gallop-lad, you'd better stop away,

Those hills are far too rough for such as you."

So he waited sad and wistful - only Clancy stood his friend -

"I think we ought to let him come," he said;

"I warrant he'll be with us when he's wanted at the end,

For both his horse and he are mountain bred."

"He hails from Snowy River, up by Kosciusko's side,

Where the hills are twice as steep and twice as rough,

Where a horse's hoofs strike firelight from the flint stones every stride,

The man that holds his own is good enough.

And the Snowy River riders on the mountains make their home,

Where the river runs those giant hills between;

I have seen full many horsemen since I first commenced to roam,

But nowhere yet such horsemen have I seen."

So he went - they found the horses by the big mimosa clump -

They raced away towards the mountain's brow,

And the old man gave his orders, "Boys, go at them from the jump,

No use to try for fancy riding now.

And, Clancy, you must wheel them, try and wheel them to the right.

Ride boldly, lad, and never fear the spills,

For never yet was rider that could keep the mob in sight,

If once they gain the shelter of those hills."

So Clancy rode to wheel them - he was racing on the wing

Where the best and boldest riders take their place,

And he raced his stockhorse past them, and he made the ranges ring

With stockwhip, as he met them face to face.

Then they halted for a moment, while he swung the dreaded lash,

But they saw their well-loved mountain full in view,

And they charged beneath the stockwhip with a sharp and sudden dash,

And off into the mountain scrub they flew.

Then fast the horsemen followed, where the gorges deep and black

Resounded to the thunder of their tread,

And the stockwhips woke the echoes, and they fiercely answered back

From cliffs and crags that beetled overhead.

And upward, ever upward, the wild horses held their sway,

Were mountain ash and kurrajong grew wide;

And the old man muttered fiercely, "We may bid the mob good day,

No man can hold them down the other side."

When they reached the mountain's summit, even Clancy took a pull,

It well might make the boldest hold their breath,

The wild hop scrub grew thickly, and the hidden ground was full

Of wombat holes, and any slip was death.

But the man from Snowy River let the pony have his head,

And he swung his stockwhip round and gave a cheer,

And he raced him down the mountain like a torrent down its bed,

While the others stood and watched in very fear.

He sent the flint stones flying, but the pony kept his feet,

He cleared the fallen timbers in his stride,

And the man from Snowy River never shifted in his seat -

It was grand to see that mountain horseman ride.

Through the stringybarks and saplings, on the rough and broken ground,

Down the hillside at a racing pace he went;

And he never drew the bridle till he landed safe and sound,

At the bottom of that terrible descent.

He was right among the horses as they climbed the further hill

And the watchers on the mountain standing mute,

Saw him ply the stockwhip fiercely, he was right among them still,

As he raced across the clearing in pursuit.

Then they lost him for a moment, where two mountain gullies met

In the ranges, but a final glimpse reveals

On a dim and distant hillside the wild horses racing yet,

With the man from Snowy River at their heels.

And he ran them single-handed till their sides were white with foam.

He followed like a bloodhound in their track,

Till they halted cowed and beaten, then he turned their heads for home,

And alone and unassisted brought them back.

But his hardy mountain pony he could scarcely raise a trot,

He was blood from hip to shoulder from the spur;

But his pluck was still undaunted, and his courage fiery hot,

For never yet was mountain horse a cur.

And down by Kosciusko, where the pine-clad ridges raise

Their torn and rugged battlements on high,

Where the air is clear as crystal, and the white stars fairly blaze

At midnight in the cold and frosty sky,

And where around The Overflow the reed beds sweep and sway

To the breezes, and the rolling plains are wide,

The man from Snowy River is a household word today,

And the stockmen tell the story of his ride.

Have you seen the film? Here is the short version to whet your appetite

Can you imagine galloping a horse down these precipitous slopes. This view (featured image) all used to be Wonnangatta Station type country and not so long ago stockmen droved cattle and horses all over it - just as I used to did when I was a youngster.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=jo51fIu_fjk

How could you not love these mountains?

20/12/2018: The Sinister Yellow Vest Movement: https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/tim-blair/rise-and-expansion-of-the-yellow-vests/news-story/43eeaf6d5d0367a9f44c9bf721d0063a

20/12/2018: Failure, failure, failure: ‘The 30,000 alarmists gathered in Katowice, Poland expected to slam-dunk their report proclaiming a planet-threatening climate crisis, finalize rules for implementing the Paris accords, redistribute infinite billions of dollars from industrialized nations to “climate victim” countries, and solidify their control over people’s energy, jobs, living standards and liberties. It didn’t work out quite that way’ .https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/17/we-are-still-in-totalitarians-flunk-basic-reality/ & https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/12/17/delingpole-another-un-climate-summit-ends-in-failure/

20/12/2018: Lesson#1: Don’t go to a Moslem country: https://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/incidents/two-female-backpackers-found-killed-at-morocco-hot-spot/news-story/ee3ece874cc646a77d9aad6e938a92d6

17/12/2018: Lest we forget (the police strike 1923): https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/news/when-an-australian-city-went-mad-the-unprecedented-chaos-that-engulfed-melbourne-for-three-days/news-story/6285b87b97f55a22a0b8a8e3a56bfe46 & the Botanic Gardens Massacre: https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/news/when-an-australian-city-went-mad-the-unprecedented-chaos-that-engulfed-melbourne-for-three-days/news-story/6285b87b97f55a22a0b8a8e3a56bfe46 Life was so safe way back when!

17/12/2018: Something to look forward to: First Islamic Country to Ban Christmas: https://freespeechpoint.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-first-islamic-country-to-ban.html?fbclid=IwAR2jlkc1JxuTvNdzmZ5GdNnUIN9hqtWQXS3LEgym0NZPwpc_xcX8y1jSiP0

17/12/2018: Deeds. Not words. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian mentions talking with a triumphant Daniel Andrews at the Council of Australian Governments meeting... 'I said "why did you get re-elected?" and he said "because I’m getting things done".'Yes.

16/12/2018: All the bastards are treasonous scum: https://voiceofeurope.com/2018/12/macron-accused-of-treason-by-french-generals-for-signing-un-migration-pact/?fbclid=IwAR186IPPKVxzeG2St9Je8dNHnI3riNQw8R7CSSh85J9JWkfEAMCcd3CYmAQ#.XBQg9ukKkH0.twitter

16/12/2018: They told you so. Surely this proves the Bible is literally true. Prepare for Doomsday now! Or to be swallowed by a flying spaghetti monster! https://nypost.com/2018/11/24/turns-out-all-of-humanity-is-related-to-a-single-couple/

16/12/2018: You just can’t imagine how this mistake went unnoticed for 500 years. It has always been pretty obvious to me that God would not ‘lead one into temptation’. That would have to be the Devil. But wait. God created and is responsible for the actions of the Devil. Oh, this religious stuff is such evil rubbish: http://www1.cbn.com/cbnnews/cwn/2018/december/pope-francis-enacting-change-to-lord-rsquo-s-prayer-lsquo-lead-us-not-into-temptation-rsquo

16/12/2018: We just don’t know everything: https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/opinion--the-central-dogma-of-mitochondrial-genetics-needs-rewriting-65204

15/12/2018: The Loop Alien: This is a really great idea for tightening your guy line or tarp suspension. No knots. Will slip through a loop on your pegs to make a very secure guy line system on particularly windy nights. I like it. It is not intended as a weight bearing device. I think you can see from the picture how it works. Ingenious. Available here: https://loopalien.com/products/aluminum-rca US$5.00 (Dec 2018) 2.4 grams ea.

Youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AZl_N4Q5Io

Other people's opinions about it: http://theultimatehang.com/tag/loopalien/

Many other items of interesting hardware are out there, such as this one: https://dutchwaregear.com/product/fleaz/ which weighs less than a gram. There will be a future post about cord knick knacks.

Of course there are plenty of copies out there from US$ .29 cents each.

I am still using the micro clam cleats for my guy lines: http://www.theultralighthiker.com/2014/12/14/the-perfect-guy-line-for-a-hiking-tenttarp /

and I am using whoopie slings for many other uses such as attaching my hammock, centreline and tarp, eg: http://www.theultralighthiker.com/2017/06/02/whoopie-slings-what-a-great-idea/

14/12/2018: Telstra’s Go Repeaters: Your mobile connectivity problems solved: You need: https://exchange.telstra.com.au/new-telstra-go-repeaters-bring-mobile-coverage-to-more-places/ plus https://www.telcoantennas.com.au/antennas/home-office/outdoor/

14/12/2018: Size of World Economies by GDP. Watch China surge this century. Remarkable: https://twitter.com/i/status/1072763227337977861

‘

14/12/2018: Dr. Jane Clare Jones on Twitter “We've seen this before. But this might be the clearest version yet. Trans women are better able to represent women that women. Because trans women are female and trans, and hence, they possess the only universal experience of womanhood. Colonization singularity complete.” https://twitter.com/janeclarejones/status/1054883446072467456?fbclid=IwAR1G-qRtJTj2V7KonWWpVCSuCZX4-R4jrnvk5MnPfThh0oNQuWw057Pvyko

13/12/2018: Those were the days my friends

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12/12/2018: I was given a Lithgow .22 myself (which I still treasure). I only hope the art of making a boy into a man is not completely lost.

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05/12/2018: A very special thank you to all the wonderful people who have sent me Birthday greetings. I apologise for not having been able to thank you all personally for your thoughtful good wishes, but life has been extremely hectic and worrying over the last week. I have been in Melbourne since last Tuesday supporting Steve while he has been having complex 2-stage back surgery. We had thought to at least be back home by yesterday, which would have been in time for my Birthday, but Steve has had a serious post-op infection which has laid him very low. He is recovering now, thankfully, but will still need at least a further 2 days of antibiotic infusion. So - it was undoubtedly the worst birthday I have ever experienced, as you can well imagine. I look forward to sharing happier days with him when he is home and well again, and will postpone my Birthday until such time. The one advantage in this plan is that I won't feel that I have really turned 65 yet....

30/11/2018: At Last an E-ink Smart Phone: I think e ink is all you need in a hiking phone as long as it has a reasonable camera (or perhaps none at all) and can display maps and books well enough. The trade-off of not having to charge for say a month is enormous value.

This one weighs only 47 grams:https://www.e-ink-info.com/e-ink-devices/mobile-phones

HiSense A6 is a new smartphone with an E Ink screen: https://goodereader.com/blog/smartphones-2/hisense-a6-is-a-new-smartphone-with-an-e-ink-screen

This one’s main screen is e-ink (which probably means the battery will last you a month: https://www.pcmag.com/feature/313023/hands-on-with-the-onyx-boox-e-ink-smartphone/1

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/4/16/17242014/sony-digital-paper-dpt-cp1-e-ink-tablet-announced-japan

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/02/the-remarkable-e-ink-tablet-is-way-too-good-for-its-software-and-price/

https://www.e-ink-info.com/e-ink-devices/mobile-phones

More about this when I get out of hospital!

29/11/2018: Spinal Fusion: This week I am having four-level spinal fusion on my lumbar spine (irrevocably damaged by tough hard heavy work from when I was only a child). However, the surgeons have found one disc which is sound so I can have this done, be free of pain and just be a little stiffer getting out of my sleeping bag in the mornings – indeed I might even move to a quilt as the docs are limiting me to 5kg for the next couple of months. That will certainly make me the ultralight hiker! I will find an X-ray of my spine to illustrate this post, but I am in hospital suffering all manner of indignities and cruelties just now so posts are a bit light. Sorry.

I have two of the best spinal surgeons in Australia working on me: Dr Caroline Tan and Dr David Edis. I had the discs removed on Tuesday and replaced with plastic inserts through my side in a procedure known as OLIF. This is apparently the best way to do it. Then on Friday the surgeons will go in though my back to insert the rods and screws which will hold the vertebrae until they fuse. They paint a highly sophisticated artificial chemical construct on the area to create this bone growth and fusion (which will take up to about 3 months).

By the time the moose are calling in Fiordland (28th February) the back should be healed enough to carry 8-10 kg so I can hopefully go there with Della and try to get a photograph of that elusive moose.I will keep you posted…

PS (15 Dec): After the op I had a fortnight of absolute nightmare. I will never go anywhere near the Valley Private Mulgrave again. They literally made every effort to kill me and to torture me they could – all this accompanied by deliberate sleep deprivation. Day after day with no (or too little) pain medication. It was awful. I will be making official complaints about my treatment. Finally (we) discharged myself, went home and put myself in the hands of my own reliable GP Fred Edwards here in Churchill whom I have known for thirty years. Finally home, with family to care for me, without (much) pain and learning to walk again.

I still hope to meet the moose deadline though. (Very) slowly cranking up the steps per day. A long while yet to get to my usual 10,000+ per day,but I will make it. Plenty of work to do here on the farm which should substitute for physiotherapy! Wish me luck!

PS: The trees which Merrin and I have been planting (over Spring) are starting to peek over the tops of the tree guards (1.5 metres tall). We will have a sheep forest before many years have passed: https://www.theultralighthiker.com/2018/10/13/electric-drill-earth-auger/

http://drcarolinetan.com

https://vicorthospine.com.au/news-dr-david-edis/

27/11/2018: At last an e-ink smart phone: https://goodereader.com/blog/smartphones-2/hisense-a6-is-a-new-smartphone-with-an-e-ink-screen

27/11/2018: All you ever needed to know about everything…what a brilliant essay: https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/11/modernitys-miracle-ii-practical-romantic-nations/

27/11/2018: South Africa is doomed. Apartheid was definitely better than what we have now: https://moonbattery.com/cannibalism-in-south-africa/

26/11/2018: Julie Burchill is a delight: ‘A vast amount of male Islamic conversion takes place in prison — suddenly thugs have the blessing of a higher power to torture, rape and kill — and with women I think it’s often a combination of grieving for fading physical attractiveness and attention-seeking: ‘Look at me in my lovely special modest costume, you sluts!’ https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/11/the-lost-joy-of-swearing/

26/11/2018: South Africa is doomed. Apartheid was definitely better than what we have now: https://moonbattery.com/cannibalism-in-south-africa/

26/11/2018: Dated but still instructive: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/05/the-fall-of-the-house-of-saud/304215/

25/11/2018: Have you just run out of the old free supermarket bags too? This is the answer $2 for 40 from Woolworths/Safeway in a handy roll that actually fits in your glove box or hand bag. Of course they are reusable like the old ones. It is annoying they cost 5 cents each but at least we will be able to get rid of all the 'reusable' ones which are choking up our car and house. Perhaps I will throw them out along the sides of the roads as the busybodies deserve to have happen.

24/11/2018: Shadowland – Fiordland Video:

shadowland

If you wonder why I return again & again to Fiordland (& the Dusky Track) maybe this excerpt from ‘Shadowland’ will whet your appetite. (Della’s favourite part, the kakapo @ 37secs in). You may have to buy the complete video as no-one seems to have uploaded it, but it will be worth it. Even more worthwhile is to tramp the Fiordland wilderness. If you feel you are not as fit as we geriatrics, treat yourself to a heli or plane tour out of Te Anau. I/we have been back again several times since I first posted this back in 2014 – but alas not this year. If my back fusion operation next week is successful we may yet walk the Dusky together in 2019.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF4ugISWMT8

First Published on: Jan 21, 2014

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/thrilling-tales-37-days-of-peril/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/woodcraft-george-washington-sears/

20/11/2018: Labor Offfers $150 Baby Hampers for $622. Victorian Labor is treating the election like a giveaway: A $150 baby hamper, with a teething ring, nappy bag and sleeping wraps, will be given to 35,000 new parents, under a Labor re-election pledge. The $21.8 million commitment will also include information for parents. But wait: divide that $21.8 million commitment by 35,000 and those $150 packages actually cost $622 each. Insane. Surely the advice doesn't cost that massive difference. Everything Governments build or supply costs more than it would if you did it yourself. Andrew Bolt. Much bigger savings could be made by not collecting the money from taxpayers in the first place!

20/11/2018: The greatest slingshot ever: ‘Hunt down bigger game with arguably the baddest looking slingshot without venturing into full on crossbow territory. This unit features a built-in magazine allowing you to pre-load up to 40 rounds of 8mm ball bearings or a single crossbow bolt.

The position of the front handle can be adjusted, allowing you to reduce/increase the level of power as needed. The rear handle includes a 12mm mounting rail so you can install a scope with laser sight or a tactical flashlight.

This slingshot has been built to withstand the toughest conditions. Full stainless steel construction with a matte black finish. How many slingshots have you seen recently with a steel cable attached to EIGHT sets of high tension rubber bands?

Weight 1.8kg / 4.4lbs
Size: 70cm x 20cm / 28″ x 8″
Range: 100+ meters
US$249.95 (Nov 2018)

See: https://www.hammersurvival.com/products/rs-x7-slingshot-crossbow?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI5eDKm_rc3gIVBYhoCh2HOwJaEAEYASAAEgLfu_D_BwE

They are obviously a lot of fun, aren’t they? And might even be enough to put a bunny or two on the table. They do ship direct to Australia, but good luck with customs and nanny state spoilsports.

20/11/2018: A pretty good thermostat really – one which keeps temperatures within less than half a degree Celsius: Notice that the (unexplained) .2C drop in temperature at the beginning of the observation period is as great as all the .2C rise that has occurred since approx 1990. Also note that the temperature had pretty much returned to its 1980 point in 2000 and again (nearly) in 2010. This could not happen if the large increase in CO2 over that time really was heating the earth. We were up .2C c2015 but were down .2C c1985. Nothing is to be made of that. These variations are natural. NB: As the sun has been extremely quiescent of late we can expect to see those temperatures take a dive again soon – and for a long while, probably going under the 1985 record. http://www.drroyspencer.com/2018/11/uah-global-temperature-update-for-october-2018-0-22-deg-c/ & http://joannenova.com.au/2018/11/climate-models-are-a-joke/

20/11/2018: The ‘social justice fascists: https://quillette.com/2018/11/17/the-institutionalization-of-social-justice/ & https://quillette.com/2018/11/17/is-it-sexual-harassment-to-discuss-this-article/

19/11/2018: Jordan Peterson’s Forward to Solzhenitsyn ‘s ‘The Gulag Archipelago’. This is a brilliant ‘must read’ essay which has disappeared behind a paywall as many good things do, but I have sought it out especially for you. If you have ever been caught out for a riposte to one of your Leftist friends, you will find it here. It is breathtaking: https://web.archive.org/web/20181101224701/https://quillette.com/2018/11/01/the-gulag-archipelago-a-new-foreword-by-jordan-b-peterson/

18/11/2018: Perhaps society would be safer without the bail system: https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/tim-blair/wrong-arm-of-the-law-victorias-deadly-jihadi-bail-fail/news-story/3197ef2ee2243d85e6e9f3e57ffe131e

18/11/2018: The ‘Crappus’ Touch: ‘Everything government touches turns to crap.’ Ringo Starr.

18/11/2018: Wind and solar nearly useless: http://joannenova.com.au/2018/11/white-elephant-solar-panels-force-feeding-high-voltage-raising-costs-breaking-things-shutting-themselves-down/

18/11/2018: The enemy among us: ‘I, an Australian Muslim, refuse to condemn the violence that took place on Bourke Street...’ https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/we-now-know-where-we-stand-with-randa/news-story/b0d2c4cce1e8a3177b69562ab07aaf61

17/10/2018: A reusable nuclear-powered launch vehicle: Looks like Russia has just won the space race it began with Sputnik – do you remember, back in 1957? https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/11/15/russia-will-shape-the-future-of-spaceflight-announces-nuclear-powered-reusable-rocket-programme/

17/11/2018: Lots of common chemicals can be used to make explosives: one of the oldest, sulphur carbon and saltpetre to make gunpowder for example. Iron and aluminium filings to make thermite; nitric acid and glycerine to make notroglycerine; Ammonium nitrate (fertiliser) plus diesel fuel; ammonia plus iodine, acetone and hydrogen peroxide to make Triacetone Triperoxide, the favourite weapon of deranged terrorists today…Should we ban chemistry books? I have known about this stuff (and much else in the home chemistry laboratory – how to make soap for example) since I was in High School over 50 years ago, but I have not been moved to make anything for anti-social purposes. We made ‘cracker-guns’ and cannons. Those twopenny bungers were awesome. Such weapons were capable of chopping down small trees, as I recall. I remember also my cousin Richard nearly blowing his eye out creating a makeship rocket when we were around 13! However, it really does take the addition of religion to create evil! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrUY8QbEcpM

17/11/2018: Unbelievable: ‘Forty of the 300 refugees who left Nauru to resettle in the US have contacted the island nation asking to come back because life in America was harder than expected, the Nauruan President has revealed.’ https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2018/11/refugees-pick-nauru-over-us.html

16/11/2018: The Coldest Temperature Ever Recorded on Earth: -97.8 degrees Celsius measured on the high East Antarctic Plateau at approx 4,000 metres elevation. ‘At that temperature, just a few breaths of air would induce hemorrhaging in your lungs and quickly lead to death.’ Come on CO2. Do your stuff: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/11/13/antarctic-temperatures-recently-plunged-close-to-the-theoretically-coldest-achievable-on-earth/

16/11/2018: Macron: ‘Nationalism is Treason’. What does this idiot not understand: https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2018/11/11/french-president-emanuel-macron-nationalism-is-treason/ Of course he might just be mad, but he is certainly dangerous: https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/imagine-a-brussels-with-guns/news-story/5914ea1a66bac24812e6ed2095033192 & https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/macrons-insult-doesnt-even-make-sense/news-story/af67b7dcd272ce2a25d093de41c4e84f

15/11/2018: Thindown: A new down insulation material. Thindown creates this fabric by adding an adhesive to the down after it has expanded which then traps the down between two ultralight layers of fabric so what it can no longer move around. This means that the resulting product can be used in many different ways to create a range of new down garments and products which do not require channels or quilting. It also makes the down garment much more washable or even dry-cleanable. It is a brilliant idea, and will seriously challenge synthetic insulation.

One of the first manufactures to use this product is Eddie Bauer. Below their beautiful ‘Evertherm’ jacket.12.64 oz. US$299 (Nov 2018)

LOW ACTIVITY RATING 40°F.
MODERATE ACTIVITY RATING -20°F.

See:

https://www.thindown.it/

https://www.eddiebauer.com/product/mens-evertherm-down-hooded-jacket/38832324

https://gearjunkie.com/revolution-eddie-bauer-launch-fabric

15/11/2018: Should you have self-esteem? Probably not, eg: ‘Sometimes patients would come to me and tell me that they had low self-esteem and I would tell them that at least they had one thing right...I suspect that modern education, which lays emphasis on the relevance of what is taught to children’s present lives rather than, as it should be, on its irrelevance, is partly to blame for the very large numbers of people who cannot lose themselves, and therefore are left to the vagaries of entertainment provided for them under our current regime of bread and circuses.’ http://takimag.com/article/lose-yourself/#axzz5WSoKUGFQ

15/11/2018: Can we even offer Asia Bibi asylum? Honestly if we can’t we should move quickly to alter our ‘immigration’ (and ‘emigration’) policy – and much else: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/how-immigration-changes-britain/

15/11/2018: An incisive comment from William: ‘I have a colleague who is a Christian Chaplain in a large jail in the USA. A new Muslim Chaplain was appointed who came to my friend and said "We worship the same God, let us work together". My friend said, "Your God tells you to kill me and my God tells me to love you. It cannot be the same God".’ https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/andrew-bolt/the-sheik-on-tape/news-story/c680b21ac3b03ecfbd95bada3d1fa041

14/11/2018: How men can live longer. This is for me: Stare at boobs; have more sex; get married…https://nypost.com/2017/03/27/staring-at-boobs-is-just-one-of-six-easy-ways-men-can-live-longer/

14/11/2018: Why the Left fails to understand the magic of the market: ‘One of the mistakes folks on the Left make about capitalism is to describe capitalism as mostly about competition. In fact, capitalism is mostly about cooperation, it’s a self-organizing process where people who don't even know each other cooperate to deliver products and services, facilitated by markets and the magic of prices. Sure, competition exists but it is not the fundamental feature, but an enabler that makes sure the cooperation occurs as efficiently as possible. Capitalism in fact is about zillions of voluntary trades and transactions every day that each make both parties better off -- or else both sides would not have agreed to it. Capitalism in fact is a giant positive sum game, a fact that many on the Left simply do not grasp.’ http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2018/11/does-the-zero-sum-nature-of-academic-success-contribute-to-the-left-wards-bias-of-academia.html

14/11/2018: Bourke St #3: Trooper Anon is right (as were many bystanders), the jihadi needed to be shot dead immediately (so too Monis). In such situations you always have to expect the worst – bombs for example. If people do not want to be shot dead by police they should just go about their lawful business, not threaten the public. I also maintain that the public should be able to arm and protect themselves (Yes, with handguns). These sorts of ‘incidents’ either don’t occur where this is the case, or are very quickly dealt with by the public: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2018/11/former-sasr-trooper-john-anon-frontline-police-not-ready-for-counter-terrorism.html Why did we do this to Australia: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/11/australia/

13/11/2018: The Fastest Hiker:

13/11/2018: What will the future be like? First of all we will (soon) have virtually free, virtually unlimited energy from nuclear fusion with generators sized according to need: ones maybe as big as a railway engine or two to power a fair sized city to ones the size of a shoebox to power a homestead. With such abundant energy we will be able to do and have anything we wish. We will not have to chase rich lodes of ore in inaccessible places to harness the resources we need. Any piece of rock, earth or water will be able to be broken down easily into its component elements to provide whatever resource we need, whenever we need it. Such unlimited energy will make growing food completely independent of seasons, indeed independent of available light, water and nutrients as we will easily be able to provide all these. There will be no shortage of food, and most of the land now used to produce it will be returned to nature. Indeed, we will rework photosynthesis. It is dependent on rubisco, the best that nature has evolved, but we will re-engineer photosynthesis with more efficient processes so that plants will yield many times what they are capable of now. Both these things will happen in your lifetime, possibly within a decade. Poverty and want will completely vanish. And this is only the beginning: we will have habitats at the L5 points and on the moon and Mars in the next twenty years. Life expectations will soon soar by 20-50 years! Old age and death will be seen as preventable diseases. The future will be much better than the past…

13/10/2018: The transition from unemployment to employment is a crucial step in moving people out of dependency and poverty. We should not put artificial barriers in the way: http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2018/10/some-thoughts-about-income-growth-and-mobility-part-2-hours-of-work-matter-more-than-wage-rates.html

13/11/2018: Gender Wars: I usually don’t buy into this stuff, but one aspect is definitely wrong: sentences for spouse murder. I would take the view that murder is murder – and nothing excuses it. Not pleas of ‘crimes of passion’ or ‘insanity’ for example. You don’t just accidentally murder someone. Very considerable intent and effort is required. You can step back from this. The law should value the lives taken equally and sentence accordingly. I think concurrent sentences for example are equally abhorrent. First you pay for this crime, then the next and so on. If you run out of life paying your debt to society, Tough! https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/tim-blair/only-a-wife-sentences-cut-down-from-life/news-story/744b80eece8cb98c3e118a5ff560d291

12/11/2018: Ultralight Cigar Case: Something for the ultralight hiker who has everything (with Xmas always coming up). But these might also be quite serviceable as ultralight glasses cases, if you can’t afford a plastic jar of Hormel Bacon Pieces at 33 grams (which I keep my spare pair in) or this free idea at 12 grams!

Massdrop price US29.99

12/11/2018: 100 Years Goes By So Fast, and How Things Change: When I was in Primary School (just the other day it seems) a good half of my teachers were WW1 men much younger than I am now. Later in High School most were WW2 men (mere boys it seems to me now). When I was in University most of the students were talking about how they could get out of serving in Vietnam or were opposed to a war I still support (the 8 million murdered by the communists after the Fall of Saigon just won’t stay silent for me). The last of the first cohort of world war heroes, an Australian Claude Choules (also the last veteran of both World Wars) marched away forever in 2011. The WW2 men are thin on the ground now, but I am proud that every week I get to talk to one of them as a valued customer of my daughter’s shop where I help out Sundays. Like so many such veterans he was a bit of a scallywag back then – and is yet. The servicemen of the two world wars fought to ensure that we could oppose such wars if our conscience so dictated. More than half of those serving in the trenches of Flanders voted against the conscription referenda for example. Despite political differences most of all three generations were nonetheless proud Australians who held a pretty general consensus of what that meant. However the events which we were only just fortunate enough to avoid in Bourke St last week reinforce the fact that there is now a huge cohort of ‘Australians’ who no longer support the ideals of Australia – indeed they are our enemies, yet we have not the courage to either oppose or eject them from our bosom; indeed the country is now replete with Fifth Columnists. There really does have to be some unifying spirit else a nation is lost. If we cannot rediscover that spirit and act on it we are lost. BTW: ‘The belligerents had agreed the terms of the peace at 5am that November morning, and the news was relayed to the commanders in the field shortly thereafter that hostilities would cease at eleven o'clock. And then they all went back to firing at each other for a final six hours. On that last day, British imperial forces lost some 2,400 men, the French 1,170, the Germans 4,120, the Americans about 3,000. The dead in those last hours of the Great War outnumbered the toll of D Day twenty-six years later, the difference being that those who died in 1944 were fighting to win a war whose outcome they did not know. On November 11th 1918 over eleven thousand men fell in a conflict whose victors and vanquished had already been settled and agreed.’ https://www.steynonline.com/8981/the-war-that-made-the-world-we-live-in

12/11/2018: This has been the problem with the AGW theory from the beginning: a complete lack of reliable data on either temperature or CO2. Just as the real temperature records have shown a steady decline in temperature world-wide throughout the C20th, the same has been true of CO2 records: they were much higher when I was born in the 1940s: http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2018/10/warmists-and-skeptics-should-agree-that-this-is-the-real-scandal-in-climate-science.html Some things you might NOT know: Ice core expert Jaworowski states, ‘The basis of most of the IPCC conclusions on anthropogenic causes and on projections of climatic change is the assumption of low level of CO2 in the pre-industrial atmosphere. This assumption, based on glaciological studies, is false.’ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/17/deconstruction-of-the-anthropogenic-global-warming-agw-hypothesis-2/

10/11/2018: Bourke St #2: We hobbled by that spot just five minutes earlier on the way from a back surgery appointment. I’m now thinking I should have bought a non-folding ‘Flipstick’. I can remember back in the 60s a Uni friend who was the sergeant at Cardiff Police Station Newcastle quickly and efficiently dealing with a guy with an axe by prodding him sharply in the solar plexus with a broomstick when he could just as easily have stood back and shot him. Impressive. I may buy a new walking stick now that these folk are turning our streets into another Baghdad, Damascus etc. Much better if we could carry a pistol for self protection. I have argued for a much more discerning (aka discriminatory) immigration policy for at least 50 years. When will we begin to send them back where they came from? Ban Islam now!

10/11/2018: Life in the Wild: ‘When Miriam Lancewood and her partner Peter set off to live alone deep in the New Zealand wilderness, they told their families they’d be back in a year.

But the couple came to enjoy their nomadic, off-grid lifestyle — foraging for edible plants and killing their own animals — so much that they’re still living it, nearly a decade later.’

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-07/miriam-lancewood-woman-in-the-wilderness/10460704?fbclid=IwAR1jeDyJdNHGWq4H6GKX4X6VF0IKNeMsBnlnIx364kqhMZDtGsybSm8G660

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/gorge-river-fiordland-2/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-mountain-gnomad/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/nzs-south-coast-track-westies-hut-to-cromarty/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-compleat-survival-guide/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/dick-proenneke-alone-in-the-wilderness/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/not-quite-alone-in-the-wilderness/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/what-to-include-in-a-wilderness-cache/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-lure-of-the-moose/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/hatchet/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/thrilling-tales-37-days-of-peril/

08/11/2018: I Just Love Hats: I guess you’ve noticed I am almost always wearing a lid of one kind or another. Here are two I think would be good for the outdoor life (hiking or hunting): Enlightened Equipment’ s Hooligan and Sealskinz’ Waterproof Beanie.

This is the Hooligan at .85 ounce (21 grams – A$76.24). It is very similar to the ‘Bomber Hat’ Della sewed me from a kit bought from Ray Jardine (the ‘father of ultralight’) many years ago – and which has seen excellent service over the years. Such a hat is the best weight-for-warmth investment you can possibly make. I am never without mine. Now you can buy one just like it – even the same colour as mine! On wet.cold days it fits snugly under your raincoat hood. Even if it gets a little damp the synthetic insulation dries ourt very quickly. Usually I reserve the hat for sleeping on cold nights or for keeping my head warm in camp. You have probably noticed the Icebreaker cap I usually wear during the day.

Their 1.3 oz (32 grams - $A83.17) Hoodlum below is their synthetic insulated answer to keeping your head and neck warm in your sleepiong bag or quilt. You just need a Buff to keep your nose warm and you’re good to go.

I also like these waterproof and windproof offerings from Sealskinz. I have owned their waterproof socks for many years. I used to wear them as night socks before I made myself a pair of ultralight booties. Thie beauty was that you could put your wet boots back on when you wer wearing them when you had to go outside to answer one of nature’s calls.

This waterproof beanie looks just the thing for going around he sheep eg when they are lambing on those cold, wet winter’s days they like to choose. Fortunately for me I have sold of the vast flocks we used to have and only keep a hundred or so for companionship and sentimental reasons! Someone who has been a ‘sheep husband’ for over thirty years has to have something to do in retirement! UKL25.

This waterproof cap may be even better than my Icebreaker obne (especially as they may have discontinued it! You need a peak like this on any hunting cap so that you aren’t dazzled by the light when shooting into the sun. You can guarantee that the best stag you have ever been will have the sun at his back – and soon be gone! UKL28.

This one is a real foul weather hunter’s hat. It’s going to you’re your head dry and your ears warm, as well as shading your eyes from sun and rain. What a beauty! UKL30.

Sealskinz’ Waterproof Beanie

Enlightened Equipment’ s Hooligan

Ray Jardine

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/are-you-beautiful-in-the-buff/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/19-gram-dyneema-camp-shoes/

Below is another great idea for a ‘sleeping hat’ - but you will have to make it yourself from a kit for US$14.95. This hat is also intended to keep your nose warm (like the Buff).

http://www.rayjardine.com/ray-way/Sleeping-Hat-Kit/index.htm

08/11/2018: Still punching above our weight. Graphic showing $ value and percentage of world GDP:

08/11/2018: Longevity only 7% genetics: https://www.wired.com/story/the-key-to-a-long-life-has-little-to-do-with-good-genes/

08/11/2018: What about all that heat from undiscovered volcanoes? 80% of the sea floor is more unexplored than Mars or the moon. Is that heat in any of the climate models? https://www.euronews.com/2018/11/01/huge-underwater-volcano-chain-discovered-coast-tasmania-ncna929881

05/11/2018: Liptrap to the Five Mile: Fit young people might complete this walk in a single day, but folks with more age or sense will take two or more. It is a beautiful, isolated part of our coastline which we plan to walk again as soon as/if my back is better. Then I hope for an extended foray to Mt Darling this time with my darling, Della. You will need to leave a second vehicle at the beginning of the Five Mile Track (or a bicycle) so you can return to your car at Liptrap lighthouse.

Nonetheless it can be walked, but going around the bottom of Liptrap can be tricky. People used to come up this goat track then down another one just below Evan Walker’s driveway – which can still be done. Lots of wonderful surfing ‘breaks’ used to be enjoyed down there on Maitland Beach in the past, campfires on the beach, etc.

You are looking to come out where that gully below meets the sea:

There is a path across that gully.

After you pass by the locked gate and a bit of dense shrubbery you will come to an open ‘lookout’ which used to be a camping area – one of many which have been closed as the public continue to be denied access to their lands. You can see the grassy path along the other side of the gully to your right from the top. You have to get down and over to it. There are only a couple of ways. The best is to take the path down to your right and cross high. If you take the path to your left and down you can still cross but it is steeper and thicker. If you are coming back, pay close attention, as it can be tricky finding the right wallaby track to ascend on! Hint: both could use a little bit of machete work (See: Nuts to Leave no Trace).

You were looking across the gully for a clear grassy walk like this.

As I explained in the earlier post, there is a goat track down to the beach starting at the locked gate 100 metres back along the road from the lighthouse carpark. Parks Victoria plan to have a continuous walk from Venus Bay along the coast to Bear Gully – and on, but it requires work - as well as planning! Thousands of employees are not sufficient to get any work done – though they can invent more and more rules. It may not be ‘legal’ to walk along this beach, or to camp, have a companion dog with you, catch a fish or pipi. I have long since lost interest in keeping up with the plethora of rules and regulations or paying attention to them. I will pay the fine as my price of admission if ever the day comes!

The Venus Bay coast teems with fish. I have enjoyed many fine feeds of bream and whiting for example and there are vast middens of pipi shells as you walk along the beach left by earlier travelers. They are best washed a couple of times in salt water to get rid of as much grit as possible - but they are delicious!

Once you are on the beach the going is splendid (even with a crook knee and back). To your left you will see a sea cave in the beetling cliffs. It contains a rock bivy you could use for an overnight camp (if you have brought water with you).

It is well above the level of the sea, as you can see:

And has a nice dry flat spot to hang out:

And beautiful views to the West:

Or like this:

The beach looked like it had been painted by a scarlet Jackson Pollock:

You see what I mean by 'beetling cliffs'?

They have spectacular synclines embedded in them.

The view around the corner to the east towards Liptrap.

You should check before you begin this through hike that the Ten Mile Creek which you cross just east of the Buffalo-Ten Mile intersection has water flowing in it, as you will need this water for an overnight camp. There is usually/often water at Mueller’s Creek and from rock seeps along the way. Some may even be found in the very small gully at the Five Mile in wetter weather. There is a patch of cumbungi about 150 metres inland from the beach which is a sure indication of underground water – but water cannot be counted on in very hot weather, so check the Ten Mile Creek before you begin!

We head West.

Lots of sponges in the sea wrack today. This one could have been the inside of a motor-bike seat.

This could be a leftover of one of Christo's wrapped coasts:

The sea has ploughed these furrows very straight.

Around the corner looking West

[embed]https://youtu.be/BI_GLI46HkE[/embed]

Still looking West

There is a lovely little beach here. Looking East along it towards where the previous shot was taken.

And closer up

The pigface was putting on a splendid display.

One of the seeps of fresh water I mentioned coming from the rocks. Such a phenomenon is common along the (Gippsland) coast and can be a lifesaver. You need to be prepared to harvest the water though. And maybe even filter it if it is muddy.

Another day when my back is better I will walk all the way again. There are many other delights to see before tracks end...

At the Five Mile looking back towards Liptrap:

Walking out the Five Mile Track:

I realize you could continue along the beach and exit at Venus Bay, but it is also a pleasant diversion to walk up the Five Mile Track to the Tarwin Lower-Walkerville Sth Road. There are many interesting creatures you might see as you do. There is also a (legal) vehicle camping site (without water) at the beach end of this track. You will have to be looking out very carefully for this (sand) 4WD track when you are dropping your other vehicle/bicycle off. You will know you have the right one because there is a sign forbidding everything just at the beginning - in the usual way.

Of course everyone comes home with a few trophies. The sea is depositing hundreds of semi-trailers worth every day, and we maybe take away a small bucketful. The most interesting thing I found was an old iron ship's rivet which had become encrusted on one end with barnacles.The plants which had used stones as anchors were pretty special too. And the coral which has no trouble growing in these 10C colder waters just as they have no trouble growing in the 10C hotter waters of the Red Sea. As I said before: Nuts to Leave No Trace.

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-five-mile/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-great-gippsland-circuit/

05/11/2018: What an election ad! The Reps deserve to win. When will we get leaders like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utyev4Im87o

05/11/2018: The hardest college course they have ever done, yet they have to turn students who want to do it away. There is hope yet: https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2018/10/a-remarkably-hard-college-course-proves-remarkably-popular/

05/11/2018: BOM Outlook Failure: 25% accurate at best. I have for years used the fact that the opposite of what they predict is what is most likely to occur to inform my own farm planning. However, given that they have 1-2 of the best supercomputers in the world (and know to a fraction of a degree how hot it will be in 100 years), their failure to predict the 3 months ahead is disquieting to say the least!

05/11/2018: Alex Honnold Free Solo Climbing Capitan. Just about impossible to watch – but then I’m not good with heights, or watching people die…The good news is he doesn’t. Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=53&v=urRVZ4SW7WU or here: https://www.nytimes.com/video/opinion/100000006186870/what-if-he-falls.html?action=click&gtype=vhs&version=vhs-heading&module=vhs&region=title-area&cview=true&t=21

05/11/2018: Beginning Hiking: (or hunting). Too many people are 'gear junkies' or 'gear snobs’. However, remember this: Grandma Gatewood completed the Appalachian Trail (twice - at 67 the first time!) equipped with a shower curtain as a raincoat, a home-made duffel bag (& etc). I'm sure John Colter and Daniel Boone crossed the continent with considerably less - though they may have carried a rifle. Many folks in the past coped splendidly with much less than what may be considered de rigeur today.

Often I see novices crying out for advice on various forums - usually in the form, 'What should I buy/'. They are almost universally answered with expensive alternatives which must at least work as a disincentive for many to begin the wonderful sports of hiking or hunting - which otherwise would be of such benefit to them, and great fun! Essential to both anyway is developing the skills required for camping out overnight safely, but what to take - not what to buy?

The traditional advice to young brides seems appropriate to me: ‘Something old something new, something borrowed and something blue’. (Incidentally, blue is a really good colour for small camping equipment as there is practically nothing blue in the bush - save things found in bower birds bowers - so that if you drop them they will be easily found, at least by bower birds anyway!) In any case don’t rush out and buy everything ‘new’. Your purchase decision is almost certain to be the wrong one. You will have wasted money, though you may have learned something about whose advice it is best to follow!

If you should visit a 'hiking' store' with such a question in mind, be sure to have a very full wallet - and a strong back, as you are likely to come out with a camel's load of expensive junk you almost certainly do not need. Few such shop assistants will know (or care about) how much the items weigh for example, or even have any extensive experience themselves with such equipment.

It is also quite true that you have something ‘old’ lying about which will do. Take Grandma Gatewood’s shower screen raincoat as a case in point. You really don’t need the latest ‘ultralight’ $500 rain coat when you are unlikely to venture out (the first time – if you are wise) when it is going to rain anyway! A pocket sized space blanket which you will find somewhere for $2-4 is quite waterproof (and warm) and will keep you quite dry – as well as doubling as a ground sheet. It is a bit of a nuisance holding it closed at the front – but so is parting with $500! You can worry too much. Still, you may prefer one of these: http://www.theultralighthiker.com/if-you-could-only-carry-two-things-in-the-bush-what-would-they-be/ You probably already have a $5 umbrella which will suffice anyway.

There are plenty of things in your cupboard will do fine for your first (warm weather anyway) hike. I camped for many years with just a wool blanket on the ground or in a hollow log if it was raining, and a billy. Not much else – and I am still here. The swagmen of yore rolled all their possessions in such a blanket and carried a billy in their hand – and there were once hundreds of thousands of them. Such a ‘swag’ was called a ‘bindle’ in the US.

One advantage of a wool blanket is how it will save your life in a forest fire if you roll yourself in it (and particularly if you can wet it down) and get yourself eg into a hollow in the ground - when all your friends with their synthetics will die horribly, poor dears! When the disastrous fires occurred here (I mean coming as close as 200 yards away from us) in 2009 (and killing lots of people) an old man in his nineties (just over the hill from us) saved his own life a second time in this way. In a street where several people died and all the houses burned down he rolled himself in a wet blanket and lay in the same drain he had in the incredible 1939 fires. ‘Live and learn or you won’t live long’.

We were better prepared than that. We were able to sit on the verandah, drink beer and watch it all burn. Lots of fire pumps, generators, dams, sprinkler systems and acres of short green grass surround our house once you move outward from our lush green garden of mostly introduced trees. Friends and children flocked around to help out, mostly with the beer as it turned out!

If you don't own a blanket, you almost certainly have a quilt. For a beginner's mattress try this idea or this. If you must buy something, try a search above right for 'quilt', 'bag', 'mat', or 'pad'. You will find many cheaper ideas which are also very light.

Shelter is essential. I have already posted about several cheap options starting with a blue poly tarp for $10, a very serviceable tent (for two) delivered for $50, and many other DIY choices.

For cooking, the 3 stone fire has worked fine for centuries. Where there is plenty of wood, it will still do, but be careful. Don't burn yourself and don't let it get away. People are always trying to improve it, people like me: http://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-egg-ring-ultralight-wood-burner-stove/ - and you have to watch out as some stones explode! Or, you can spend hours of fun and enjoyment playing around creating your own alcohol stove.

You can carry the alcohol in a used soft drink bottle (lightest option) or you can use a Platypus bottle as I do (more durable, less space). I saved a medicine measure from the hospital when I had my back operation in 2013 which I use to add just exactly the amount of alcohol I will need to boil eg 1 cup of water (7 mls when I use a windscreen). I tote up all my meals and cups of hot drink before I set out and take just the amount of fuel I will need. This measure replaced one I had borrowed from an unused pack of herbicide saving me a few precious grams actually. Both were free anyway - the best kind of gear!

DIY New Fancy Feast Stove

For free gear Jim Woods’ genius ‘super cat’ stove is a good place to start, as is Ray Garlington’s Yacc stove you can make from an empty soft drink can with just a pair of scissors. You can start with a billy made from a large used can (such as a coffee can) and a coat hanger as the swagmen and hobos did, or an inexpensive aluminium one for under $10 say from Aussie Disposals where I bought my first one - which I still have sixty years later (in a drum up the bush at one of my winter camps actually).

These caches are such a delight to me. When I open one it is a trip down memory lane. I find a teaspoon I used to feed my first-born - or my last! A poncho I bought thirty years ago. A worn enamel plate which dates back to my childhood and my parents' bee-keeping days, and so on. I often become nostalgic when I am camping alone in the bush a few days' walk from any other soul - I can't imagine why. Old is good. On every hiking trip I am still using the same plastic cup I bought over 20 years ago from a $2 store (for $1). I am yet to find a lighter one, though I could do this I suppose.

Only you know what you have in the cupboard or can ‘beg, borrow or steal’, so I will leave that up to your imagination. Most people already have a backpack of some sort, for example. If it is just an overnight hike (which your first should be) 25-40 litres is going to be quite adequate. If you do not, a duffel like Grandma Gatewood's will suffice, or even a simple bedroll - or swag.

I go away for 7-10 day trips carrying all my food and necessaries in just a 50 litre pack which weighs under 400 grams empty! If my wife Della is with me (as we both prefer anyway even after 50 years) she carries a pack of only around 30 litres. Between us we might have 15-18 kgs at the absolute max at the beginning of a 10 day hike (with no tracks or huts). I bought these quite serviceable 40+ litre packs from Amazon for under $20. If you do a search at the top of the page for ‘cheap’ and ‘budget’ and ‘DIY’ you will find many other ways of saving money. I just did, and believe me, you are in for some surprises! I have been busy! You will find several cheap lightweight shelter/tent alternatives, sleeping mats, sleeping ‘bag’s, etc, etc. Have a look.

It will certainly save you money if you don’t plan to hike/camp out when it is wet or cold. Once the temperature gets below freezing the danger obviously increases so that the level of your preparedness needs to be better. It is also crucially important to stay warm and dry – or at least warm. It is the rate of heat loss which is a danger, not the temperature or even how wet you are. And I cannot repeat too often you must practice lighting a fire in such conditions again and again until you are certain you can both light and maintain a fire in the wet.

I know an old (late) friend Ray Quinney told me that he spent a night marching in a river in near freezing water during the Korean War because his sergeant had worked out that our soldiers would be warmer and survive better there than in the monstrously cold blizzarding air inadequately clothed – as they were; Australia (everyone probably) has a record of sending their soldiers off in emergencies without quite the right equipment. Napoleon’s (lost) army in Russia (and Hitler’s) are cases in point. I found Ray's story hard to believe, as I would have thought that water would strip heat from you quicker than air, but I guess they were clad in wool which insulates pretty well when it is wet, so if perhaps the water was not very cold as compared with the air - and if they were wet anyway…Whatever, he lived through it. I did not!

It is preferable to stay dry. There is no reason to add yourself to a statistic by freezing to death, which is much less likely to happen in the warmer months. Still and all, I always prepare for sub-zero conditions, as I usually walk (off-track) and camp eg in the Victorian mountains whose changeable weather is notorious, and whose weather bureau’s forecasts are just as notoriously unreliable!

Where you live might be similar. I have encountered the coldest conditions (relatively) on a ‘warm’ autumn day at Wilson’s Prom Vic, coming back from the lighthouse where we were walking in shirt sleeves one minute and then in freezing rain the next. It was pretty much the only time my fingers have gone white with cold even though I have been outdoors in winter weather all my life (being a farmer), and frequently in snow. A quick slip under the tea-trees for shelter, a bit of a rearrange of gear (for one of us a change into my spare dry clothes and emergency poncho - an expensive 'guaranteed' raincoat failed dismally), a hot cuppa and we were right to go again.

I know my wife, Della nearly ‘froze’ in a light drizzle that came up one warmish day when we were climbing the South face of Mt Whitelaw on the Baw Baw Plateau across the valley from here. I had to get a shelter up quickly and a fire going to thaw her out. Again it was highly unexpected. Having a tarp or poncho which you can use for shelter, (or being able to construct one) and light a fire are essentials. I repeat you need to practice these skills in some local bushland in poor weather conditions before you venture too far from home – eg before you set off on something like the South Coast Track in Tasmania (which will take you 7-8 days). In an emergency you can use your raincoat as a shelter. It may save your life: http://www.theultralighthiker.com/raincoat-shelter/

Some places (like Fiordland) it is very difficult (if not impossible) to light a fire, so you have to be able to get a shelter up quickly and use body heat and clothing etc to warm up. This is one reason why I often travel (in such places) with a light tarp (150-200 grams) and a hammock of a similar weight. I always sleep on an insulated inflatable pad of some kind. Once you are under the roof, up off the ground, out of the wind, on top of the mat and snuggled into your clothes and sleeping bag you will be alright. I have encountered such conditions (and employed such a strategy on (and off) the Dusky and South Coast Tracks in Fiordland, for example in my search for the elusive moose. A blue poly tarp will do as a shelter, and a cheap hammock will also suffice. You need to learn how (not) to tie it to a tree, otherwise you will be leaving it there. (Check out some of my posts about hammocks).

If you already own some solid wool clothing, though it might not be ultralight it is also likely to be ultra-safe when you are alone in the wilderness. You do not need to overdo clothing. Here is an idea what to take: http://www.theultralighthiker.com/how-many-clothes-should-i-take-in-my-pack/

Choosing where to go. As you probably realise I almost never walk tracks or trails (with a few exceptions - as previously mentioned). I prefer off-trail travel which guarantees greater freedom and peace of mind (if crowds are not your thing). They are certainly not mine! I have been doing this since before I went to primary school - over 65 years now! My advantage here is that I grew up on a farm surrounded on all sides pretty much by trackless bush. From when I was a toddler I was allowed to just roam at will, and to find my own way home when I was hungry. The older I grew the further I traveled - and I always managed to get home by tea-time!

If you are just starting out you will have to learn a few skills that I mastered before I was in kindergarten! Not staying lost is the most important lesson. If you begin your explorations in a patch of bush nearby which has clearly defined boundaries you will (eventually) find your own way out at the same time as finding out a thing or three as well - one with a river or stream at the bottom will be best so you will have water for your evening cuppa

Sometime you should invest a little money in some topographical maps (our Vicmaps are only A$8ea to download to your phone and can be paired with the Pdf maps - as explained here). Other countries/states have other systems, but something comparable. In any case it is a good idea to get a feel for the lie of the land at the same time as familiarising yourself with navigating by map. Backcountry Navigator is another excellent App.

You might on your first trip plan to circumnavigate a largish valley, say one something like 3-5 kms long. If you can chose one which as a road or 4WD track at the top a stream at the bottom and a number of ridges running more or less straight down to the stream that would be excellent. There are millions of spots which fit this description.There is very often a tiny flat at the bottom of a ridge or adjacent to the main stream. The topographic map will indicate this.

If you start out with the hammock + tarp I recommended before you will be either able to camp in the trees or on the ground. You might take a small saw or a machete to make a clearing big enough for a tent. If the fishing is good, you will probably be back! Remember the water in your drink bottle is always level. Use that fact to select a (parallel) level(ish) spot to camp. You don't want to be sliding down the hill or rolling sideways all night.

How to carry a Saw

You might walk down one ridge the first day, camp at the river or stream at the bottom the first night (catch a few fish or crays - or both), then travel up or down the river to the bottom of the next ridge and walk back up it to the road at the top, thence back to your vehicle. This should guarantee a pleasant peaceful couple of days away from people and away from tracks. I hope you begin like this instead of starting out as a track walker. Too many never progress from track walking. If the weather is cooler and the bush not too dry, you can even have a cheery fire to warm your camp - and cook your fish. Do take some Alfoil to cook them in - much lighter than a frying pan!

Have a great time. PS: The links in the text are there for a reason, just like the ones below. They will lead you to many other posts with advice for the novice, or the person on a budget. I have been on a budget all my life which is one reason why I make so much of my own gear - besides 'making do' is both fun and character building.

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/poachers-moon/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/mattresses-i-have-known/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/if-you-could-only-carry-two-things-in-the-bush-what-would-they-be/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/humping-your-bluey/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/supercat-hiking-stove/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/diy-side-burner-metho-stove/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/ultralight-cups/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/ultralight-ultracheap-backpack/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-importance-of-a-roof/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/raincoat-shelter/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/hammock-camping/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/restore-pdf-maps-functionality/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-lie-of-the-land/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/a-gorilla-in-the-hand/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-ultralight-fisherman/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/60-diy-ultralight-hiker-ideas/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/from-dawn-to-dusky/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/poly-tent-by-the-ultralight-hiker-on-the-cheap/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/finding-your-way/

04/11/2018: ‘I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul’. These are the words which should be engraved above every school gate. I know most learned them there when I was young. No-one else, nothing else is to blame. You alone are responsible for what you are, what you can become. Today’s technology and wealth ensures that the possibilities are endless…
Invictus William Ernest Henley (1849-1902)
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

04/11/2018: Trump and Melania touring a Pittsburgh Hospital – and you think he can’t win the mid-terms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=76&v=pyXt8neuEyU

04/11/2018: Ten years since we lost Michael Crichton. The world has been a poorer place. There has not been much new that is good since The world has been a poorer place. There has not been so much new that is good (as there might have been) since alas – at least in fiction, the world of ideas. I guess you are all familiar with ‘Jurassic Park’, ‘Westworld’, but maybe not ‘State of Fear’, which you should read after you have read his wonderful essay, ‘Did Aliens cause Global Warming?’ : https://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Crichton2003.pdf & https://www.steynonline.com/8958/the-admirable-crichton

04/11/2018: These Down-Filled Quilts are So Light: Filled with hydrophobic down the Enlightened Equipment Enigma Quilts start at 272 grams for a 30F/-2C quilt in 5’6” Regular and cost from US229.99 on Massdrop. This would be Della’s size though she would go for a warmer version (20F) at 347 grams which would still ave her over 50 grams on the one she uses now (also cheaper) – which I find astonishing. In my size (5’6’ to 6’) it would weigh 287 grams (Regular/Wide) around 300 grams less than my beloved Montbell – or if I wanted a warmer (20F) quilt in Regular/Wide it would weigh 388 grams, still a saving of over 200 grams but with a temperature rating 10F (7C) lower. If I can get comfortable sleeping on my back again (if I ever get it better!) probably on a 4” mat such as this or this, I will buy one of these. A saving of 200 grams is not to be sneezed at, plus the added ease of getting in/out of bed which is an important factor at my age – as you will learn sooner than you think!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=CMS3ibJIPTU[/

It is hard to believe that manufacturers have now whittled a comfy summer weight hiking bed down to under 500 grams (quilt plus mattress) ie 40F quilt (Regular/Regular) 232 grams plus Thermarest Uberlite 250 grams. Total = 482 grams. Given that you can get a shelter under 250 grams and a pack of not much more, you can now have the ‘Big Four’ at under a kilo. Stupendous!

Specs

Enlightened Equipment
Shell: 10d nylon
Insulation: 850fp RDS-certified DownTek water-resistant down
Handmade in Winona, MN

40-Degree Quilt

Loft: 1.5 in (3.8 cm)
Down fill weight, short/regular: 7.2 oz (204 g)
Down fill weight, regular/regular: 7.87 oz (223 g)
Down fill weight, regular/wide: 8.2 oz (232 g)
Down fill weight, long/wide: 8.9 oz (252 g)
Total weight, short/regular: 12.1 oz (343 g)
Total weight, regular/regular: 13.08 oz (370 g)
Total weight, regular/wide: 13.7 oz (388 g)
Total weight, long/wide: 14.7 oz (416 g)
Packed size: 6 x 15 in (15.2 x 38.1 cm)

30-Degree Quilt

Loft: 2 in (5.1 cm)
Down fill weight, short/regular: 9.6 oz (272 g)
Down fill weight, regular/regular: 10.4 oz (294 g)
Down fill weight, regular/wide: 10.5 oz (297 g)
Down fill weight, long/wide: 11.9 oz (337 g)
Total weight, short/regular: 14.7 oz (416 g)
Total weight, regular/regular: 15.8 oz (447 g)
Total weight, regular/wide: 16 oz (453 g)
Total weight, long/wide: 17.9 (507 g)
Packed size: 8 x 16 in (20.3 x 40.6 cm)

20-Degree Quilt

Loft: 2.5 in (6.3 cm)
Down fill weight, short/regular: 12.07 oz (342 g)
Down fill weight, regular/regular: 13.09 oz (371 g)
Down fill weight, regular/wide: 13.7 oz (388 g)
Down fill weight, long/wide: 14.8 oz (419 g)
Total weight, short/regular: 17.3 oz (490 g)
Total weight, regular/regular: 18.7 (530 g)
Total weight, regular/wide: 19.6 (555 g)
Total weight, long/wide: 21.1 (598 g)
Packed size: 8 x 16 in (20.3 x 40.6 cm)

10-Degree Quilt

Loft: 3 in (7.6 cm)
Down fill weight, short/regular: 14.4 (408 g)
Down fill weight, regular/regular: 15.7 oz (445 g)
Down fill weight, regular/wide: 16.5 oz (467 g)
Down fill weight, long/wide: 17.8 (504 g)
Total weight, short/regular: 19.9 oz (564 g)
Total weight, regular/regular: 21.5 oz (609 g)
Total weight, regular/wide: 22.5 oz (637 g)
Total weight, long/wide: 24.2 (686 g)
Packed size: 9 x 16 in (22.9 x 40.6 cm)

Dimensions

Short/regular: 66 x 54 in (168 x 137 cm)
Regular/regular: 72 x 54 in (183 x 137 cm)
Regular/wide: 72 x 58 in (183 x 147 cm)
Long/wide: 78 x 58 in (198 x 147 cm)

Included

Silnylon stuff sack
100% cotton storage bag
2 elastic pad straps (removable)
Enlightened Equipment’s limited lifetime warranty

See: https://enlightenedequipment.com/enigma/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/how-light-can-a-tent-be/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/ultralight-hunting-daypack-update/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/thermarest-neoair-uberlite/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/backpacking-gear-advice/

03/11/2018: The Ultralight Comb: No longer happy with your old plastic comb to ensure you always look beautiful in the wilderness? ‘Vanity, thy name is man’ as Hamlet says. I know mine which has been in my pack for over twenty years has a tooth missing (courtesy of my daughter, Irralee on the Dusky Track c 2007), so perhaps I should consider replacing it with a true ‘Rolls Royce’ of combs.

The Chicago Comb Company Carbon Fibre #1 & 6 Combs:

Naturally I am attracted to their Titanium Models as I have become a titanium fetishist (as you might have noticed - much like the rubber fetishist in Spike Milligan’s wonderful movie, ‘The Bed-Sitting Room’ - Watch on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de0w8tU0j1U) However the carbon fibre model is much lighter, though in fact not lighter than my old plastic one, but 10X the price – you can’t take it with you! After a while you wonder what you can spend it on; your house is so full of amazing things you just can’t resist! Tip: Don’t let your pack go the same way though. You will suffer! BTW my ancient Priceline $1 comb weighs 4 grams (albeit with a tooth missing).

Model #1:

No automatic alt text available.

Weights: ‘For the stainless steel combs, the Model No. 1 and Model No. 3 weigh 1.7 ounces (similar to a candy bar), but they feel much more substantial in hand than any plastic comb. The stainless steel Model No. 2 comb weighs 1.1 ounces, and the Model 4 weighs 1.3 ounces. Model 5 combs weigh under one ounce. All of the Titanium combs also weigh less than one ounce. (For our international customers' reference, 1 ounce = approximately 28 grams). The Carbon Fiber Model 1 weighs 10 grams (about 1/3 of an ounce) and the Model 6 weighs just slightly more’. (NB Models 1 Top & 6 Bottom shown) https://www.chicagocomb.com/store/c25/Professional_Grade_Carbon_Fiber_%28Model_No._1_%26_No._6%29_Starting_at_%2414.99.html

BTW: Your fingers can be used to comb your hair and weigh nothing!

03/11/2018: It has begun. Prediction: Julia Gillard will go to gaol: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2018/11/court-attendance-notice-and-brief-of-evidence-in-the-gillardwilson-slush-fund-matter.html

03/11/2018: We both attended Sydney Uni and have been married now for nearly 60 years, but we would probably not pass now. I tried the sample questions and was flummoxed: https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/other-industries/uts-students-must-do-an-online-consent-matters-course-to-obtain-exam-results/news-story/db2011e043b41d1c1d75e6dab78c4e0b

03/11/2018: Send them back to where they came from. See video: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2018/10/victoria-police-believe-its-ok-to-write-this-off-with-no-further-police-action.html & https://www.news.com.au/news/national/st-kilda-chef-bashed-by-group-of-youths-after-refusing-to-hand-over-cigarette/news-story/e22189f33fdd59898b422da0aa0d8db4

03/11/2018: A fearful mystery certainly, but imagine our police force arriving at a rural residence in only four minutes. We have been lucky if they arrived at all: https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/the-bizarre-crime-story-gripping-america-and-baffling-police/news-story/225d25736e8c60591f6de6934eb919f6 It looks to me as if the mother was shot at 12:30 and believed dead by the perpetrators but managed to activate her mobile phone at 12:58 just enough to say, ‘Help’ before she died. This must have alerted the perps who fled in the critical 4 minutes. They obviously still have the kid/wanted the kid in the first place though. A very sinister crime.

02/11/2018: What a Beautiful Knife: The CRKT Eros K455TXP Titanium Gentleman's Folder available on Massdrop this morning for US$ 109.99 instead of the regular price of US$225 – over 50% off! What a bargain. Love this site! I know I don’t either need or deserve a new pocket knife but I am seriously temted (for Xmas perhaps?) It comes with a ‘flipper’ for easy one-handed opening and a frame lock (the model shown is right-handed).

‘The CRKT Eros earned a spot in the pockets of many due to its slim build, sleek appearance, and overall utility. Now it’s back, this time with a lighter, stronger 6AL4V titanium handle and a designation of Imported Knife of the Year at Blade Show. Blending the best aspects of a tactical folder and a gentleman’s knife, this new type of hybrid is larger than the original Eros, with a 3-inch blade. Made from Acuto 440 stainless steel, it features a satin finish to complement the handle. The blade’s elongated tip makes it great for piercing tasks and adds to its angular, tapered aesthetic. Deployment is a breeze, too: Just press on the flipper and it rotates open smoothly thanks to the IKBS bearing system. Also notable is the unique V-shaped pocket clip for right-handed tip-down carry.’

Specs

Blade: Acuto 440 stainless steel with satin finish
HRC: 59-60
Handle: 6AL4V titanium
Frame lock
IKBS pivot system and flipper
Pocket clip for right-handed tip-down carry
Blade length: 3 in (7.6 cm)
Closed length: 4 in (10.2 cm)
Overall length: 7 in (17.8 cm)
Weight: 1.4 oz (39.7 g)

02/11/2018: A spirited relationship certainly, but does not compare with the woman who believes she is married to a train station. BTW: I told you this would happen: https://nypost.com/2018/10/30/woman-who-had-sex-with-20-ghosts-is-now-engaged-to-a-spirit/

02/11/2018: The ancient evil from 5,000BC – how wonderful is it that we have this ancient writing (the author might almost ne talking about the dangers of ‘climate change’ today): https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-devils-and-evil-spirits-of-babylonia-1903/

02/11/2018: An excellent review by Geoffrey Luck, To paraphrase: “Before his death Muhammad could claim: ‘I have been made victorious with terror.’” What a lovely (perfect) man. ‘The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS’, Robert Spencer Bombadier Books 2018: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/11/muhammads-bloody-creed/

01/11/2018: Everest: Two years ago today. Facebook is reminding me, ‘First view of Everest. These lovely blue flowers were everywhere. Garlic soup for lunch and dinner. With Steve Hutcheson’: http://www.theultralighthiker.com/i-followed-my-footsteps/

01/11/2018: Thomas Paine didn’t mince words on Christianity. ”What is it the Bible teaches us?” he asked, and answered: ”rapine, cruelty and murder. What is it the New Testament teaches us?—to believe that the Almighty committed debauchery with a woman engaged to be married; and the belief of this debauchery is called faith.” Exactly! (‘The Age of Reason’ 1794-1807). A woman in Austria has had her prosecution for calling Mohammed out as a pedophile upheld by the European ‘Human Rights’ court. Of course the UN ‘Human Rights’ organization is dominated by such lovelies as Saudi, N Korea, Yemen etc, so maybe it’s no wonder. Still, if you marry seven year old girls and have sex with them when they are nine, and advocate it (as Mohammed did – also riding to Heaven on a flying donkey! People will believe any old crap!) yet still lay claim to being ‘the perfect man’ and an ‘examplar’ for 1.5 billion people, you can expect to be called out from time to time. The courts should not be defending pedophiles over people’s rights to call them out. It is no wonder that in the UK for example they are forever gaoling these ‘rape gangs’ of Moslem men who have been despoiling thousands of young girls (as Tommy Robinson was gaoled for pointing out just recently). I’m sure we have many such delightful characters here in Oz too being protected by the police, various Govt agencies (Human Rights, Equal Opportunity, Truth and Justice – No, we haven’t got that particular evil yet, but soon,) and defended by the Left. But to attack these sick cults is still blasphemy in some jurisdictions in Oz! People are apparently ‘entitled’ to ‘religious freedom’ but not the freedom to criticise religion. But what good has any religion ever done for mankind? https://quillette.com/2018/10/30/upholding-the-jihadists-veto/

31/10/2018: An important new book on how we get to be who we are; finally the truth: http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/the-genes-of-human-behaviour/

31/10/2018: ‘So, having spent years denying that there is any objective reality to racial classifications, liberals start sifting people into racial categories with an obsessiveness that puts South African policemen under the old regime to shame. Race, among other classifications, becomes a lens through which the whole of social life is examined. In short, there is no racist as fanatical as an anti-racist’ http://catallaxyfiles.com/2018/10/26/identity-politics-and-apartheid/

31/10/2018: Real people put living Standards above Virtue Signalling, says Alan Moran: http://joannenova.com.au/2018/10/80-of-australian-dont-want-the-government-to-put-renewables-ahead-of-costs-health-housing-jobs-etc/

29/10/2018: Anti Aging – Probably you should begin now with Metformin and NMN (increase your life expectancy by 10-25%) and wait for the next major breakthrough – which apparently will be along in about three years: ‘The interventions include: dietary restriction, exercise, mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitors, metformin and acarbose, NAD precursors and sirtuin activators, modifiers of senescence and telomore dysfunction, hormonal and circulating factors, and mitochondria-targeted therapeutics.’ https://www.nature.com/articles/npjamd201621

29/10/2018: A further alienation of the public’s lands from the public – and another step on the road to apartheid: https://amp.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/26/victoria-native-title-agreement-gives-rights-to-11-per-cent-of-states-landmass?fbclid=IwAR3NWPOMbhnO8ozgRki9ZLe6urDXyLLkueYKFT65bBFnRbCzHd5bvW4mJzU

29/10/2018: Locking it all up: Bans on mining and mineral exploration (even where major deposits have already been found – such as gas in Victoria or petrochemicals in the Great Barrier Reef region and the Great Australian Bight) are insane public policy: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/28/does-the-u-s-and-green-tech-have-a-looming-technology-security-minerals-crisis/

26/10/2018: DIY Air Frame Pack: This will make your frameless pack more comfortable, transfer load to your waist belt and help keep your back dry. You can still buy an ‘air beam’ from Granite Gear for US$50. You will need to make a 3D wicking mesh pocket on the back of your frameless pack (one like this or this for example) to help keep your back dry – and to make the load transfer from the air beam work.

For best results get a piece of mesh that is slightly wider than the air beam ( and slightly longer). Sew it as a pocket on the back of the pack so that it covers the entire pack. You will have to leave an unsewn space on each side for taking it in and out. In other words sew each end to the pack, then each side about 6” up at either end. Hope that is clear. You can buy the mesh eg here or here - see 3D Spacer Mesh: PS: You can use two layers of the 3ml mesh to get extra cushioning, drying, wicking if the thicker material isn’t available.

The Vapor Air Beam comes with a handy pump which will get it very tight, but you can do this to save a little weight. You can also cut it to the size you need in the same way you would with a sleeping pad. You can cut down this Air Beam to fit a Gossamer gear Pack such as this Gorilla. For best wicking results you will need to construct a mesh cover or modify the pack a bit.

Tip: I you are using a 3./4 sleeping bad such as the Thermarest Neoair Xlite at 260 grams, you can use the air beam for extra insulation under your feet.

See: https://www.granitegear.com/outdoor/accessories/vapor-current-airbeam-frame.html

https://ripstopbytheroll.com/collections/pack-fabric/products/3d-spacer-mesh-1-4

https://www.questoutfitters.com/mesh_fabrics.htm#POLYMESH1

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/air-beam-pad/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/pimping-a-gorilla/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/budget-pack-mods/

26/10/2018: Heinlein’s ‘Space Elevator’ just became real. This development will liberate mankind from the prison of earth’s gravity, and having a single home. ‘Tomorrow the Stars’ – as was the title of one of his famous books: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/26/space-race-game-changer-chinese-space-elevator-breakthrough/

26/10/2018: I have noticed this about glaciers myself. They NZ ones were at exactly the same point when I returned in 2000 as when I first saw them in 1974. Of course they grow in a wet year and shrink in a dry one. (They are made of water, stupid), so temperature is the lesser factor. They are obviously always somewhere damned cold: http://joannenova.com.au/2018/10/evil-nature-caused-swiss-glaciers-to-melt-faster-in-1870-see-solar-and-volcanic-effects/

26/10/2018: Wentworth Update: Dave Sharma would have won if the Liberals had not published a faulty ‘How to Vote’ card in the local newspaper (missing the number 10!) provoking a swag of informal votes. I wondered too why they were so high. This single folly probably cost them the by-election – and compares with their electing Turnbull as the Leader – twice – how many times do you have to play Russian Roulette? https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2018/10/the-liberal-party-genii-strike-again.html

25/10/2018: I was wrong: Sharma is toast. His percentage of the postal votes has clearly plummeted. I assumed that there would be a huge preponderance of Jewish postal voters (because the election was on a Saturday) which would put his percentage up, but the people who ‘held onto’ their votes until after the election date (this should not be allowed) have decided in favor of Phelps (her majority is increasing). You can see this from the AEC figures this morning: he is now nearly 1800 behind when I predicted he would pick up 280 per 1000: https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-22844-152.htm. What this means is that unless Scomo very quickly changes his ways, he too is toast. The pre-poll postal votes which were nearly 64% to Sharma show that before Scomo intervened in the by-election Sharma was set to win! This is a serious problem for Scott. Unfortunately he is beholden to all the Turnbull backers in the party room so he is unlikely to change (as evidence his continuing to send Turnbull to Bali – after he both caused and helped lose the Wentworth fiasco!) If he cannot win back the conservative voters we will have a Shorten Labor government and we personally will lose over 42% of our income! (The franking credits) Disaster!

25/10/2018: Trump is right about the caravan (just as he was right about the Russians) & etc: https://legalinsurrection.com/2018/10/video-migrant-caravan-has-people-from-all-over-the-world/ Bizarrely this writer thinks he has found ten reasons to vote democrat. Personally I am surprised he could ‘find’ even one: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/10/24/stop-donald-trump-10-reasons-vote-democrats-asap-midterm-elections-column/1733264002/

25/10/2018: Jo Nova: ‘Since 1995, the temperatures didn’t rise for longer than any of the modelers thought was it was possible for temperatures to not rise. Antarctic sea ice set new highs, Antarctic temperatures did nothing, and tropical islands grew instead of shrinking. The hot spot went missing, and never returned, despite multiple search parties combing the data in search of missing upper tropospheric redness. Thus we found out the core assumption driving most of the prophesied warming was wrong. We also found out CO2 didn’t lead temperatures for the last half a million years, instead, the hallowed ice cores showed the exact opposite. The evil pollutant turned up 800 years late to nearly every warming party there was. So much for “cause and effect”.

A thousand tide gauges showed sea levels rose slower than expected, and had even slowed down. Ocean heat went missing too and instead of being where the IPCC thought it would be in 1995, it’s probably twenty-three light years away, approaching Cassiopeiae. Predictions of methane growth failed dismally (see here) after the Russians plugged their leaky pipes. The IPCC did not see that coming. But carbon dioxide emissions grew faster than expected, yet had even less effect.

Meanwhile hurricanes over the US stopped for the longest time on record, and hurricanes all over the world became less energetic.’

Falling, climate sensitivity, carbon dioxide, IPCC, graph, Scaffetta 2017.

25/10/2018: Aliens at Work: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/23/nasa-releases-photo-of-weird-rectangular-iceberg/

25/10/2018: Beware of jinns! Maybe more women should take his advice? How primitive some people are – and still be allowed to vote: https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/tim-blair/a-freedom-sack-each-day-keeps-the-lovestruck-jinns-away/news-story/a6ca980a2f9dc5b155362a9afa536ef3

24/10/2018: ‘In the 620 cases of people who were wrongly imprisoned for rape, the median length of time that they spent in a cage for something that they didn’t do was fifteen long, endless years.’ Before you join the #IBelieveSurvivors look at the facts of these cases. The ‘survivors’ or other witnesses were ‘wrong’ 92% of the time! There are no doubt lots of other people still in gaol who were innocent. We must always give people the benefit of the doubt and let the law take its course: https://rosebyanyothernameblog.wordpress.com/2018/10/19/false-rape-accusations/

24/10/2018: Sharma is still in with a chance (and I for one hope he succeeds). There are (as of this morning) 1895 envelopes still to be opened, another 920 which will be looked at again as will the 4806 ‘informal’ votes, and 4442 postals still to come in. So more than 6000 votes and perhaps 7000 still to be counted. He has been running at as much as 64% (and it could go higher) so 280 more votes per 1,000 than Phelps. He was 1554 behind as of this morning (the gap has been slowly narrowing – boy these AEC staff take their time to count votes – as compared to temporary employees on the day!) As you can see he needs approx 6,000 more votes to be counted at this percentage to win, and there may be 7,000 to count or re-count, and his percentage may go up… We may not know until Nov 2 (the closing date) as there are still people voting who want to see that it was their vote that decided the matter. It should all be complete (electronically) at a second after the close of polls on election day. This system is absurd! inhttps://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-22844-152.htm

24/10/2018: Many dyed-in-the-wool ‘Liberals’ will be turned to Trump in the ‘Mids’ because of this: (Thank goodness): ‘I lived through the Clarence Thomas Wars, the Sarah Palin Wars, the public destruction of John McCain and Mitt Romney… This was different. This was murder — the first-degree, cold-blooded murder of a man’s reputation, his young family, and his entire future using the Soviet-style revolutionary tactics of vile lies in pursuit of power. This was a leftist mob backed by the billions of corporate dollars that flow through CNN, NBC, etc., throwing an innocent man, his wife, and traumatized young daughters into a volcano as a sacrifice to the cause, as a means to appease the hysterics stalking the halls of the Senate screaming, “Witch! WITCH! WIIIIIIITCH!!!!!!!!!”’ https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/10/06/nolte-winners-and-losers-of-the-kavanaugh-confirmation/

24/10/2018: Alps Walk: This short post is courtesy of Gerard White. I have meant to post it earlier. He and a friend walked this wonderful track a couple of years back. It is a long way from Melbourne to Canberra, but you can do this bit in a little over a week. These three wonderful shots fairly make one drool with longing. He reckons one of the best bits is this section – and I have been meaning to fit it in as a mini-adventure ever since – and we will! Here’s the ‘teaser’ Gerard sent me back when they finished it

‘It’s a shot from last year Steve…The Rolling Ground 20k NE of Kosci. Beautiful remote area and very exposed. Probably covered in snow after this cold blast. I’m home and just about to light a nice fire.

No deer on the Main Range Steve but quite a few horses in northern KNP and Dead Horse Gap. There were baits for pig and dog/fox eradication in some areas of Namadgi and KNP. Rabbits around Kiandra and a greeting party on the last day…

Kiandra to Thredbo is a great section Steve ~100k. Not as difficult as Victoria and the elevation graph is a lot smoother. Mostly follows fire trails but you can take alternate routes. There’s some good off-track areas to visit huts/mountains/waterways throughout Jagungal…If the weather’s good the Main Range from White’s River Hut to Kosci is like another planet. It took us 8 days but we did a lot of side trips and I placed a food drop at Derschko’s Hut near Jagungal and had a 1/2 day rest so you could probably do it in 6-7 days.

I think you will be checking out your schedule over the wamer months now you’ve seen these!

See:

http://www.john.chapman.name/vic-alpt.html

23/10/2018: Ramble On: I like the title. It sounds like something I would use myself! These folks have written a history of hiking. So far it is only available in paperback at US$18.95 from Amazon which is a bit of a problem for folks like me in Oz – but remember you can use Shipito. Perhaps there will be an electronic version available soon, because looking inside it you will find many interesting snippet – and some wonderful photos. Historical curios such as hikes by Alexander or the Emperor Hadrian intrigue me. I suggest you have a close look at this fascinating new book.

Some interesting historical photos to whet your appetite:

Book Cover

Three Musketeers

Orson Phelps

Civilian Conservation Corps workers

Fanny Bullock Workman

See: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1725036266/

22/10/2018: Turnbull chosen by Scomo to represent us at the Bali summit. I can’t believe this: https://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2018/10/pm-in-exile-malcolm-turnbull-to-attend-bali-climate-summit-at-morrisons-behest.html

22/10/2018:

22/10/2018: Wentworth still in play: The postal votes have already been running nearly 2/3 to the Libs. There are 4500 still to come in - which need not be posted yet. People have until 2 Nov to get them in! (Aside: I find this hard to believe that people can apply for a postal vote then wait until after the election day so that their vote can be the decider! This has to change). Phelps is 884 votes ahead. If these 4500 postals just fall the way they have been running Sharma will still win! Who knows which way the people who haven’t yet posted them will go…

21/10/2018: Did you see the huge drop in the Labor Party vote? Down from 25% to 10%! And the Green vote was down a corresponding amount. That was what won Phelps the seat. She won't win it at the General election. You could argue the total conservative vote was up massively: Greens plus Labor got only 20%. They had 35% at the last election in that seat.The rest of the Independent vote (nearly 8%) went straight to the Libs – which means Phelps secured 18% of the Liberal vote hopefully on a once-only basis. Conservative vote: 80%? Better than Malcolm ever managed. Now do you see why Scomo wasn't quite so upset?

21/10/2018: Climate change is crap: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/18/trump-is-right-to-question-climate-change-causes/

21/10/2018: With cops like this, they’ll soon take down ‘the bad guys’ – and you thought our police force was dreadful: http://pickeringpost.com/glance/sydney-s-sister-city-of-san-fran-or-is-it-brother-city-/8661

20/10/2018: Nuts to ‘Leave No Trace’: Leave No Trace Extremism vs Vandalism: There is a better way. I view this (mainly urban) ‘philosophy’ (‘Leave No Trace’) as yet another example of green extremism and of statist efforts to further alienate public land from the people. Prior to sometime in the C12th ‘the public’ owned the ‘public land’ where they had pretty much unfettered rights to roam, hunt, collect (firewood, food, flowers, materials, gemstones, etc), shelter, live and generally enjoy its amenity. The Crown Land Act basically appropriated all the public land to the King, and the public were ever after forbidden its every use on pain of death (so this was a big change, back then) – so that Robin Hood and his ‘merry men’ (who lived there) became ‘criminals’ and could be hanged for ‘taking’ one of the ‘King’s deer’ for example – as in the old Television show, available to download free on the Internet Archive. (They are gold!) I would see the Crown Land Law Act repealed everywhere – and the land returned to the people.

After the settlement of the various British colonies (Australia, New Zealand America, etc) the ‘Crown Land’ became the (State) Government’s land onto which the public might only venture under specified circumstances. Mainly (eg in Victoria) the majority of this ‘unalienated’ ‘crown land’ was in the form of ‘state forests’ (some crown land was leased to private landowners on 100 year leases). The public pretty much enjoyed the ‘freedom’ of the state forests until quite recently. Many other activities could be enjoyed there under liberal licence terms (forestry, grazing, mining. firewood collection, fishing etc).

Otherwise you could pretty much walk, camp, hunt, light a campfire etc almost anywhere within the state forests which were nonetheless preserved in perpetuity for public use as crown land and forest. The Government retained the right to make special rules as circumstances required, so that some such activities could be circumscribed in specially ‘sensitive’ areas or areas with heavy use, (or times, etc) – and were. For example, there were duck ‘seasons’ and rules on taking fish, crayfish, deer, native animals, wildflowers etc – so that the resource could be preserved for future generations. This system of management preserved all the creatures and flora we still enjoy today for over 100 years – I would argue much better than the present ‘system’ of ‘conservation’.

Then came ‘National Parks’, ‘State Parks’, ‘Reference Areas’ and other such alienations of the public lands from the public. Interestingly these things came simultaneously as fewer and fewer people lived , worked in or used these wild areas. I suppose ‘everyone knows’ that Wilsons Prom was ‘pretty much’ the first ‘National Park’ declared anywhere in the world. Probably the majority of citizens of Victoria know how onerous the rules and regulations there are – though some no doubt help preserve ‘delicate’ areas from too much human traffic. In very busy areas more rules and regulations no doubt are needed – whether the area be ‘National Park’ or ‘State Forest’.

There remain vast areas of the Park though which one might well want to venture (off-track) but may not, and which it is hard to see how the solitary hiker would/could cause much disturbance by wanting just to see them. One might well want to walk along the beach (for example) from the public access at Shallow Inlet to the Darby River (where there is also access), or along Corner Inlet from Miller’s Landing to Foster. Many more remote possibilities are obvious, but excluded by bureaucracy.

Most other ‘National Parks’ are more remote and much less ‘busy’ so that it defies all reason why they need to be ‘National Parks’ – or have any rules at all. However in the vast ‘Alpine National Park’ for example, it is illegal to walk off-track anywhere (unless you are a deer hunter) – or to camp anywhere other than at ‘designated camp sites’ (few enough of them anyway). Some places there are ‘designated walking tracks’ it would be impossible to traverse in a single day but without ‘designated camp sites’ – so that it is both ‘permitted’ to venture there, but ‘illegal’ at the same time!

There appears to be pretty much zero maintenance of tracks both walking and vehicular by the tens of thousands of state employees of those government bodies responsible for the State Forests, National Parks etc. Deer hunters, 4WDers, fishers and loggers appear to do the lion’s share of any work carried out. Instead every year more and more tracks and roads are closed to public access (or even all access – including so-called ‘Management’ – hundreds of kilometers pretty much every single year). It is clear what the intention of all these track closures is: the total alienation of the public lands from the public whose (future) enjoyment was the intention of their ‘preservation’.

This has been happening ‘progressively’ since the 1970s. The amalgamation of the Forestry and Land Depts into various new super Depts with ever-changing fancy names only heralded the take-over of these Depts by green activists particularly since the 1980s. The focus of all ‘management’ has shifted from managing the actual land for which they are responsible to managing meetings, the office and the 4WD vehicles with road tyres they use to go from one meeting to another – and of course to the creation of more and more rules to micro-manage or further restrict public access to ‘their’ lands. As an example, the spread of sambar deer was clearly explained and identified by Max Downes as early as 1980 (before he and anyone else who did not suit the new ‘green’ philosophy was squeezed out).

The need to manage that spread by increasing hunting opportunities was clear, yet track access has been closed to vast areas (making any management of anything at all impossible) access to huge areas for hunting remained forbidden. Now that the deer have increased very substantially (mostly due to poorly controlled wildfires that their lack of management basically caused), the deer are so numerous in places they are now being shot from helicopters (and wasted) rather than being the premium hunting opportunity for recreational hunters that they ought to be, yet there remain large swathes of country hunters still may not go (or be able to go – due to track closures). Hunters, hikers, campers etc are adjured to ‘leave no trace’ yet even if they acted like the worst yobbos and vandals you have ever encountered in the bush they would do much less damage than the new ‘green’ management has resulted in – with millions of hectares ruined for decades by out-of-control wildfires (in the absence of any policy of regular fuel reduction, for example – or just the ability to drive on tracks which no longer exist to where the fires started).

Any ‘philosophy’ which aids this rabid theft of public land (by the bureaucracy) is reprehensible. Rather than ‘leave no trace’ I think it is the public’s responsibility (as they use the public land) to make improvements to it for future users. Clearing and maintaining vehicular and walking tracks, (including re-opening closed tracks) building and maintaining huts and campsites is an obvious place to start. At the moment it is actually illegal to ‘cut or lop’ any native vegetation without a permit – so that when a tree or plant encroaches on a track or falls over a road you may not cut it with your machete, pruning saw, axe, or chainsaw so that you can continue on your way. You are obliged by law to ‘leave no trace’. This is a ridiculous situation – and is sensibly disobeyed by most users.

At the same time the so-called ‘managers’ of these areas totally neglect them so that they are over-run by pest animals such as foxes, rabbits and cats and weeds such as the thousands of acres of blackberries in the Alpine National Park. There is zero fire prevention or fire break maintenance – indeed there are no firebreaks or even fire access roads. They have all been closed – so that episodically the whole vast area is swept ‘clean’ by shocking disastrous bushfires which far from leaving no trace, erase all life within them. Yet this is what the Green extremists and the bureaucrats who have stolen the land from the public seem to want – so long as the public can be totally excluded from those areas!

It seems perfectly reasonable to me help keep any tracks or roads clear, fill any vehicular holes with stones, to whipper-snip the grass in a camping area, (tidy up any rubbish vandals have left behind), and improve the amenity of the site generally eg by keeping a (non-designated) walking track to the river/stream clear, spraying any invasive weeds which have grown up nearby, throwing the cursed rings of stones back into the river and so on. None of these sensible activities would be allowed under the green extremist, ‘Leave No Trace’ ‘philosophy’. It is just another deplorable ‘religious’ mantra – and should be avoided, like all the others!

The human interface between ‘man’ and nature starts as soon as we open our eyes wherever we are, and every interaction leaves a ‘trace’ – on both parts. In suburbia we have the swallows nesting under our verandahs or in our garages who ‘paint’ interesting designs down our walls and on our cars. Some folks are so annoyed by this they knock the swallows’ nests down or even attempt to kill them eg with tennis rackets. I know I had a friend who acted so. Bad karma got him in the end and he died young! So beware! Myself, I love the swallows and eagerly await their return. If they are a day late (around 20^th August here) I start to worry that someone in their other home (I guess in North Asia somewhere) has harmed them – but they must have nice human friends there too, as they return every year and help clear the air of mosquitoes over Spring and Summer.

Most folks have a small (or large) garden I suppose (or wish for one) where they can plant a beautiful tree (or a thousand) and watch with delight as insects, birds and other creatures visit their garden. Many have ponds for frogs and other creatures to enjoy, and also bird feeders so the local inhabitants can stave off seasonal scarcity and fill the air with wonderful birdsong. In helping construct the natural environment which begins right outside their bedroom window (as ours does), they are doing just the reverse of ‘Leave No Trace’ – and doing so quite properly. May all gardeners prosper – and the world become one vast garden which we share with every living thing!

The dams that beavers build, the bowers of birds and the termites’ mounds are all works of nature – just as our houses and gardens are. The line between ourselves and nature is not clear and stark but very blurry – as it should be. Nature is enormously resilient. We must all have seen photographs of ruined cities such as Ankor and Macchu and wondered at the way nature is ‘reclaiming them’ – or just melding with them, as it ever does. All the CO2 folks have produced over the last thirty years or so has created forests greater than two Australia’s somewhere. The area of wilderness is growing and growing. It will not be harmed overmuch if you should stoop to pick the odd wild daisy for your coat lapel – or your sweetheart! Neither will the world end if you should feed the ducks!

As we move further out from suburbia we begin to interact more and more with the natural world. Our farms and roadsides teem with wildlife which farmers are careful to nurture and encourage by building dams, shelter-belts and providing nest boxes for wildlife to live and breed in, for example. You can observe some of our own modest efforts here. If all we did was ‘leave no trace’ we would do nothing. Then there are the hordes of people who spend their leisure time in one way or another caring for the land. The duck hunters who acquire, create and re-vegetate swamps and fill them with nesting opportunities, for example, the thousands of fox hunters who spend every winter weekend out in the cold and rain attempting to reduce or eliminate the plague of these terrible destroyers of wildlife, and so on.

Most people venture out from suburbia every now and then to vehicular campsites, caravan parks, beaches etc where they interact with nature in various ways. It is common for them to pick wildflowers, or take a feather or pretty stone or piece of driftwood home with them. The kids build sandcastles, or gather sticks and driftwood and make cubbies (Everyone takes a few seashells, an interesting skull or a few pretty stones home). They children may dig pools in a stream or heap stones to dam it. Everyone plays at skipping stones (how wicked!) Various objects find their way into the stream to see how fast they will race. Many are lost forever. All also like to gather wood and have a campfire; they may even burn some rubbish in the fire – and may even feed the ducks! All this outrageous everyday behaviour is anathema to the ‘leave no trace’ brigade. How silly and authoritarian they are!

There are vast areas of wilderness where no-one is ever likely to live – but which one might visit. Here in the East of Victoria there are literally millions of wild acres – and ever will be. These Gippsland mountains have been my playground now for most of my life – though I came here from elsewhere long ago – from forests, rivers and deserts which now in my old age have become strangers to me. I have wandered the hills and valleys of Gippsland with one excuse or another now for over 40 years – and hope to do so for long yet – though I am in my seventieth year, so it might not be that long. There are many vistas still these old eyes have not peered into. Mostly I have roamed the trackless wilderness, but in doing so I have ever made my own ‘tracks’.

If I failed to return for only a little while (a couple of years is enough) my ‘track’ would be gone – and I would have to make a new one. I am speaking here only of opening up an existing ‘game trail’ so a person may walk without stooping overmuch. Sometimes others followed my ‘tracks’ and also enjoyed the camping spots I found and ‘improved’. Most folk are too blind to ever notice such ‘game trails’ at all. To make such trails and camps is a ‘public service’ and many more should do so, far from ‘leaving no trace’.

I would see a path leading down every ridge and up every valley, and a soft, pleasant camp on every cool, shady level spot. There are scarcely enough people in the whole world to simultaneously occupy every such path and spot as exist just here in the East of Victoria. Certainly there are not so many folk in Australia or in Victoria, or ever will be – or even many who would want to do so. Therefore largely every such route and pleasant bower will ever be deserted. When you venture thence you will have it to yourself as if it was ‘the first morning of creation’. What wilderness experience is all about! It will not be ill if folk do this everywhere there is a wild place.

I am talking here about breaking off the odd bough or sapling – with your hands is enough, so that a single person can freely pass, bending this way and that between the trees. I do not mean ploughing vast tracks under the treads of countless dozers. Where a level camp can be made beside a cool stream, it is enough to cut a half dozen saplings at most so a small pup tent can shelter one from a mountain storm. It would overgrow in a couple of seasons at most if left unused, or make a tiny clearing where wildlife might lie in the sun on a cool afternoon or nibble a sweet shoot or two. I am talking about removing a few twigs in a whole forest. Scarce anyone would notice my passing. The ‘butterfly effect’ is not reality. A broken twig does not shake the forest.

Mostly I carry a machete and a pruning saw to help me in this work. The two that I recommend here and here are mighty tools – plus light and inexpensive. Hand tools are best for this type of work so folks don’t become too enthusiastic! The tracks my Gerber machete has cleared though are very long – hundreds of kilometers are down to me. You might have encountered some over the years. I know I have encountered ones that others have cleared and breathed a word of thanks that they had so thoughtfully eased my way. Or enjoyed a night in a camp they made – and replaced what firewood I used in a pile leaned against a log to keep it dry – as you should.

As I canoe our rivers as I often do in summer , I stop to clear a path where there is an obstruction in the river, or sometime a side path where you can portage around a dangerous rapid. If there is an overhanging branch which would have you out on a fast inside bend (or possibly cause a drowning) I take it out. As I often camp overnight, naturally I chose a level spot which is already clear, but if it needs a nip here or there so you can put up a small tent and sit on a chair or hiking mat in the cool shade of a hot summer’s day – off it goes. These prunings will only be someone else’s campfire after all. I have cleared many rivers like this over the years. Of course it is only ‘stream improvement’. The work needs to be done again and again. I encourage others to take up where I left off. I also move a few stones betimes to make a rapid or a pebble race easier or safer to navigate. Sometimes, because things weigh less under water, the rocks I have moved are larger than myself – it is no wonder perhaps I have this back trouble which keeps me restively home of late. I love it when I come to a deep pool where someone has thoughtfully climbed a huge tree to tie a stout rope for swinging and perhaps cut some steps to aid your ascent. Or where people have thoughtfully cleared a path and/or cut steps down from some beautiful campsite amongst glorious shade trees.

Many remote waterfalls are marked on topographical maps, yet few have walking tracks to handy viewing spots so you can visit them. Such falls are surely a delight to all. Surely too it is a public duty to carefully make such a path, and create steps too to get folks down to lovely swimming pools or fishing holes? So too places with delightful views perhaps of yawning precipices or vast horizons. These wonders are being ‘saved for future generations’ but it would be bizarre indeed if the current one could not enjoy them too! I am certainly not going to be held back from doing so by some silly current law or absurd quasi religious belief! My handy machete will continue to go snicker-snack for many years yet, and open them up to searching eyes that yearn for wide vistas.

Oh, and mostly I take a dog or two with me wherever I go, whether they are allowed or not. I will pay their fine if I have to, as their price of admission. They pay their taxes too (on dog feed, collars, flea medicine etc), so they deserve to see all these wonders the Government (?) provides which otherwise would only be seen by their descendants whom the areas are being ‘saved for’. They enjoy!

A reader wrote me this letter – which provoked this post. He is obviously young and has been indoctrinated all his life – but he also needs to learn there are other ways of thinking, which are really not downright wickedness! I was hard on him I guess, but you must remember I came up through the ‘school of hard knocks’ not the cosseted insulated namby-pamby nonsense that has been the lot of young people today. I am used to ‘calling a spade a bloody shovel’ as my mother used to say,

‘Hi Steve,

My name is ——, and I am working on my final project for my Outdoor Environment and Sustainability Education degree. The goal of my project is to encourage outdoor activity and spread awareness for reducing the environmental impact while outdoors.

As an avid camper, I’ve chosen this comprehensive guide “The Big Green Guide to Responsible Camping” as the focus for my assignment:

https://www.vouchercloud.com/resources/big-green-camping-guide

I thought that it might be a helpful resource for your site and visitors.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.’

I replied: Hi ——,

Thank you for your input. Unfortunately the bits I agree with are time honoured truths; while the green religo bits are anathema to me, as I happen to think Greens are the most evil people on the planet – rather worse than the Nazis and Communists even – as they want to kill at least a third of the world’s people, probably more: they would take out 25% just if ‘organic farming’ was implemented everywhere, for example. I would not buy Patagonia just because it chooses to make its stuff out of ‘organic’ cotton which uses 27% more land, for example. Nothing could be more environmentally destructive!

I am saddened that you are wasting your life studying for such a degree when you could be doing science, engineering or business all of which have a far better chance of improving both the human and natural environment (and have) than silly retrograde and ‘distributionist’ notions. I hope it is not too late for you to change courses. You should not spend your life ‘preaching’ such evil nonsense!

I am an ‘avid camper’ myself though I almost never do most of the things in the guide. For example, I almost never walk on paths or camp where others have camped. I own this might be harder in the UK which has a plague of people (We have been given a free return ticket there, but I doubt I will ever go; just too many people) – nonetheless world-wide the area of wilderness has expanded by 20%+ over the last quarter century because of the success of Western farming methods freeing up so much land, so there really are increasingly more places to go.

Also, I almost always have a fire (I never camp in summer) and I have observed that it is better for the environment if you have fires on fresh spots each time, as this maximises interesting regrowth. I often clear a path for others to follow (I admit this is largely because my wife is partially sighted) and I think this is a good thing to do, as it is better entirely if people are more spread out, rather than localised in formal camping spots.

I notice the guide omitted the idea of making your own camping gear (which is what I usually do). Surely this is much ‘greener’ than nearly all the other options? It doesn’t seem to encourage hunting either (which I have always done). Surely hunting is much ‘greener’ than consumerism. I also always make, rather than buy my own meals. Why not try the Nepali Dahl meal I just posted about?

I know you will probably find the above awfully rude. I just hope that it is not too late for you to change your very wrong thinking. We were all young once, and if when we were impressionable we came under the evil influence of bad ‘teachers’ we might all have gone where you seem to be headed. However, I have known many who were able to see through the fog of propaganda they have been served, and who have mended their ways entirely. I hope you become one such.

Good Luck, Steve Jones.

He never replied. There is always still time. At least I tried!

PS: Just a sprinkling of our photos to illustrate what otherwise might be too much writing in one hit. Hope you enjoy. Cheers, Steve.

PS2: I see no reason why folks who chose to live in the wilderness far from any track or road should be prevented from doing so…Watch these films: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leave_No_Trace_(film) & http://www.theultralighthiker.com/dick-proenneke-alone-in-the-wilderness/

CO2 is greening the earth. Two new areas the size of Australia of forest cover added.

Australia has been able to meet all its Kyoto CO2 mitigatiion targets since 1990 by the increase in tree area alone alone! I daresay America too would go close to that – as would the rest of the world.

This great greening news even comes from NASA which usually warns about its ill effects. See: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth

& https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/04/the-most-amazing-greening-on-earth-thanks-to-increased-carbon-dioxide/

& https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/04/watch-how-europe-is-greener-now-than-100-years-ago/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2da17e43c799#comments

& http://www.thegwpf.com/matt-ridley-global-warming-versus-global-greening/

& http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/bumper-harvests-save-nature/

In another fifty years – when I am long gone, 3-4 more Australia’s of wilderness will have been added to the world for all you who come after to wander in. You will be able to tread a little less lightly. How wonderful it will be!

A Thoughtful Comment and Reply:

Nate: I think a lot of this controversy over land management has to do with differences in what is appropriate for different places and our failure (mine included) to recognize this. Clearly, what’s appropriate for Gippsland would not be appropriate for Yosemite Valley or vice versa. ‘LNT’ makes sense for Yosemite (at least on the part of the patrons) because of it’s huge number of visitors over a relatively small area; it’s the best way of minimizing the negative impact of so much traffic. Whereas, you are fortunate to live and play in places that are a lot more, truly, wild, and strict LNT doesn’t make sense there. Yet, we set these mental rules for ourselves that fit the places we are familiar with, and the philosophies bleed over where they shouldn’t.

I’m really appreciative of you showing me a different perspective than what I typically hear hawked over and over. Granted, I still won’t be bringing outside firewood to a state park, because rules like that exist for good reason, but maybe I won’t be so worried about cutting a few saplings or having a small fire outside of an established ring in rural national forest areas.

Steve: I haven’t been to the States but I gather there are a lot of wild places away from established trails and that these areas are increasing as land has been abandoned for farming etc and CO2 fuels their growth. (Further reading: Gossamer Gear Blog) Apparently lots of people other than hunters are ‘bushwhacking’ as you call it – or going off track and camping away from hard-pressed areas. I think this is a good thing. This policy of designating camping areas which then become over-run by people is questionable. Likewise trails funnel people who would otherwise be dispersed.

Of course I dislike vandals, people who leave rubbish, people who make rings of stones, chop down large live trees, leave campfires burning, light campfires in warm weather, chop up tracks with their 4WDs, let off guns unnecessarily or have poor gun safety, kill game and leave it to rot…Bizarrely some of these things are permitted or practiced by current land managers – even though they are clearly nothing like ‘leave no trace’ which they religiously preach at everyone else to practice, eg don’t move a stone in a river or pick up a piece of wood, or tie your hammock to a tree, etc, etc.

There needs to be a bit of rethinking, eg about people’s access to the land, fire management and especially fuel reduction, fire breaks, etc. In fact the natural landscape would benefit from more disturbance like logging, mining and grazing – if it prevents large-scale destruction from wildfires for example, or increases species diversity – which it does. There are more species in secondary growth than old growth, for example.

Most people have become far too religious in their attitudes to ‘conservation’. When I was young ‘conservationists’ were people who planted (thousands) of trees on their land (as I have done all my life – I must have planted out square miles by now!) I think this allows me to chop up a dead tree for my winter firewood for example – which is our only source of winter warmth, and has been all my life, or have a campfire up the bush.

I have never lived in a city or town. Most of my life I have never even lived where I can see another house, but instead where within minutes I can step into ‘untouched ‘forest either on my own land or adjacent to it!) I can show you a photograph looking up our valley in as little ago as 1983. You can pretty much count the trees in the (couple of square miles of valley behind us (which then used to be a large sheep grazing property – and before 1968 small dairy farms).

Now it is mostly unbroken forest from here to Yarram, about 40 miles away. Before 1968 it was all grassy paddocks. Over a thousand square miles of forest has sprung up right behind us in that (to me) short time. Now (evidently) I am being told by ‘conservationists’ that I may not even walk off the edge of my own property into that forest (I must ‘leave no trace’) when, as I pass through it, I can still recall the names and faces of people who lived and worked it (milked cows etc) in what to me is the recent past. Some of the (new) streets and older roads around here are named after them too.

I remember another area (near Barrington in NSW – which is now a National Park). At European settlement this area was clear grassland, and was ‘granted’ to the AA Company for (sheep) grazing (100,000) acres by Governor Macquarie (around 1815). My wife, Della had over a dozen relatives living in NSW back then, four of them having arrived on the First Fleet in 1788 (the family father was a soldier).

The company found it unsuitable after a few years. Copper deficiency in the soil rendered it poor land for sheep. They (successfully) applied to have their grant moved to near ‘Goonoo Goonoo’ near Tamworth in NSW where they still have the property (I think). After they left, it regrew to be a forest. Later, after the Second World War the Government ‘granted’ this forest to ex-soldiers as ‘Soldier Settlement’ blocks to clear and turn into dairy farms – which they did.

I can remember as a child visiting my father’s old mates on these blocks in the 1950s. Mile upon mile of ring-barked forest turning into grassland – which it did. After Britain joined the ‘Common Market’ in 1968 Australia could no longer sell dairy produce, so that all over Australia these dairy farms were abandoned to the bush (like the land behind us). It regrew to forest. I remember visiting my uncle at Barrington in about 1990. He had retired there because the Barrington River is great for white water canoeing (he took me). By then the regrowth forest was so ‘pristine’ that the Government had decided to make it into a National Park – yet I could remember it as clear land!

The Blue Mountains (including the iconic Blue Mountains national Park) were a barrier to the early colony of NSW. The sandstone massifs seemed to prevent expansion to the West for many years. The colonial Government offered a rich prize to anyone who could break through this immense wilderness of mountain and forest – and discover, as it turned out immense rich sloes and plains to the West that stretched forever – and made Australia rich in sheep, wool and wheat. The prize was eventually won in 1813, as every schoolchild used to know by Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson. They kept a careful diary of their route with observations taken every 15 minutes (as others had to be able to follow – with wagons and such).

Today’s road does not take their exact routs – as an even routes were found (Cox’s, Bell’s), however you can obviously still follow their route on foot – as many have. In their day the present tree cover over the whole area was largely absent, and you could see broad vistas of mountain grassland pretty much all the way. Of course there were some trees, but the scene was much more like early colonial paintings, ie park-like. Today, you can see none of the features their 15 minute diary entries richly described, as the whole route is covered by thick bush – which did not exist in 1788 or 1813. So, all over Australia, despite the most vigorous attempt to eliminate it, forest cover has continued to advance for over 200 years. We can forget about ‘leaving no trace’. The bush is extremely hardy!

I will give you another example: the Pilliga National Park near Moree is the largest in NSW (over a million ‘wild’ acres). I used to roam it as a boy, as my parents were itinerant bee-keepers who followed the ‘honey flow’ all over Western NSW. Then there was still a major logging industry (mainly native pine) which had been going on for nearly a century – and could have continued rotationally with sensible management forever – as is the case with forestry everywhere.

When the first settlers arrived there (in the 1840s) the whole area was a clear plain as far as the eye could see, with at most one tree per hectare/2 acres. It was surveyed and divided into 320 acre (half square mile) blocks for ‘selectors’ to farm, which they did, felling the few trees to build fences and houses. They and their sheep dogs quickly gobbled up the innumerable rat-kangaroos.

In the 1860s there was a drought which forced them to move away for 7 years. When they returned there was a forest coming up everywhere which every effort for 100 years failed to remove! They brought in huge traction engines from America and built vast sawmills, etc, but all their efforts failed and the forest grew. Eventually they declared it a National Park.

Just across the (Latrobe) Valley from us is the Baw Baw Plateau . I can see it out my study window as I type – Mt Baw Baw itself still snow-capped today. (It holds one of the best walks in the world, the Upper Yarra Track) The whole area is now the Baw Baw National Park (and I may not take my small Jack Russell dogs for a walk there, though I would likely never meet another person there ever).

In 1914 the Long Tunnel gold mine at Walhalla had cleared every tree for nearly thirty miles around Walhalla – ie most of the ‘Park’. today. Back then it looked like the surface of the moon as innumerable miners had turned it completely upside-down. There was a road right along the top of the plateau and much of it was clear land for grazing bullocks to feed the miners.

After the gold mine closed (after WW1) the land was abandoned and regrew to forest. The Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus Regnans – the king of the eucalypts, and the tallest tree in the world – over 300 ‘ or 100 metres!) can grow at an astonishing rate. Trees which were seedlings after the 1939 fire were logged in the 1980s. Each single trunk was more than a log truck could carry!)

We used to hunt the whole area with hounds for sambar deer until the Park was declared in the early 1980s – well, after that actually! The government eventually chased us out with helicopters! Now I may not even take my Jack Russell, Spot for a walk there. Stuff and Nonsense!

It gets worse: I have watched a much larger area, the size of Victoria (100,000 square miles!) grow to be forest in Western NSW after having to be abandoned by farmers in a drought in the 1970s. I think you can see that these are very large changes, so perhaps you can understand why I view the very small changes implicit in ‘leave no trace’ to be the merest ‘butterfly effect’ fantasies.

19/10/2018: Eric Holthaus is completely right – the IPCC is no different from the Cominterm, ie they are communists bent on destroying capitalism and installing their own world government where they get to live out of our pockets forever and bully us with things we neither want nor need: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/09/ericholthaus-new-ipcc-report-calls-for-rigorous-backing-to-systematically-dismantle-capitalism/ Hidden in all this is even a $240 per gallon ($80/litre) tax on petrol: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/09/ipcc-demands-240-gal-gasoline-tax/

19/10/2018: Watch out: Severe climate events could cause shortages in the global beer supply: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/15/climate-beer-goggles/

19/10/2018: Turnbull Junior is the best reason I can think of for people to vote Liberal in Wentworth: https://www.news.com.au/national/politics/malcolm-turnbulls-son-names-provocative-list-of-liberal-party-crazies/news-story/60d9f48c1cfa5d6cc423faa3cf191f08

18/10/2018: World oil supply and demand now at a record 100 million barrels per day. Petroleum Engineering is the highest paying major in college. Ain’t it just grand: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/15/oil-production-at-100-million-bbl-d-twin-peaks-straining-the-system-to-the-limit-or-just-another-day-at-the-office-in-a-highly-resilient-industry/

18/10/2018: Grisly details of Khashoggi’s murder begin to surface. (There is a tape). They took seven minutes to kill him, first cutting his fingers off, then cutting his body up while he was still alive! His killer identified as the head of Saudi forensic medicine. Hard to see how King Salman can wriggle out of this one (whatever you think of Khashoggi) https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/exclusive-khashoggi-829291552

18/10/2018: Wentworth is looking a mess, after all. The Libs needed Labor to finish second on the primary vote, bur Phelps is at the moment by a country mile, (4%). Whilst the Greens have preferenced Labor ahead of her, Labor has a lot of distance to catch up on before her preferences are counted ahead of Labor’s (she preferenced Lib), so it could well be a disaster for the Libs contrary to what I said back on 8/10. Morrison is desperately wooing the Jewish vote, which might work. Some polling has the Libs losing Wentworth 55:45. It would be hard for Morrison to seem anything other than a ‘lame duck’ after such a defeat. All down to Mal’s malice against the Liberal Party of course. Why did they ever choose him – even once?

17/10/2018: Kill Wasp Queens Now: Spring and the wasp queens are out and about. If you don’t kill them now there will be hundreds of worker wasps everywhere come summer to spoil your barbecue or sting your kids. Last year I managed to tread on a European wasp’s nest and was bitten dozens of tiems. Let me tell you it was not ppleasant, and the swelling and irritation from the bites lasted for many days. People who are allergic could easily be killed, likewise pets.

Simple milk bottle trap.

You can easily kill them with simple milk bottle traps. You can use the recipe below (btu you will kill some other insects too, such as bees. A poisoned meat baiot is better as it will only kill wasps and the occasional blow-fly (if the wasps allow it near the rotting meat. You can easily make a poisoned meat bait from mince and a readiy available spot-on (dog) flea chemical. If only one household per suburban block did this we would eradicate the wasp from our cities.

The Kiwis are wiping out European wasps. Let’s do it too: https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/wasp-wipeout/87865462/the-weapon-to-wipe-out-wasps-the-story-of-vespex--wasp-wipeout?rm=m

‘For those who would like queen lure here it is again
Use a 1.25 L soft drink bottle with 3, 10mm holes, approx. 150mm from bottom of bottle
Make up a solution 8 tablespoons of honey in hot water with a 2 teaspoons pure vanilla essence Queen red label 35% alcohol this will do 4-5 traps, divide bait between traps, top up with water to just below holes replace cap and hang in a sunny spot in garden, near water. Fruit trees with curly leaf is a good place, bait will take a week or so to activate. Shake every few days to let bait dribble out .keep in place until January. Strain out when full, reuse and top up bait with water. Replace bait every 4-5 weeks
Will also catch workers Jan-April plus flies.’ European Wasp Control Project Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/927515897312332/

I bought one 2.68ml pipette of Frontine (large dog) from my local Safeway store for A$17 (April 2018). Diluted 100 times (268 mls) with water this was (or will be) enough to prepare 52 x 20 gram minced meat baits (I bought 24 x 20 grams meatballs from safeway for $6) which I simply slipped into a used plastic milk bottle I had drilled a few 12mm holes in and hung in the garden after training the wasps for a couple of days with unbaited mince. That single purchase should kill very wasp within 200 metres of our property for several years!

Instructions for preparing poisoned baits here and here:

Male Queen and Worker European Wasps

European Wasp and (native) Paper Wasp

17/10/2018: What else about Khashoggi don’t we know? What an awful, awful place the Middle East is. We should build a great big wall around it (like the Israelis do) and let them fester in their own sewage until they are no more: https://www.spectator.com.au/2018/10/death-of-a-dissident-saudi-arabia-and-the-rise-of-the-mobster-state/

17/10/2018: It’s OK to be a Red Indian – particularly if you are just the same amount Red Indian as the average European American, ie .18 of 1%! Many of our so-called ‘aborigines’ are no doubt much the same as Elizabeth Warren – why, they may even be distantly related. Pocahontas indeed! Perhaps after all, ‘It is OK to be white.’ https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/tim-blair/the-worlds-fractionest-indian/news-story/d105cd53e9300e76d57509a6ca11b89b

17/10/2018: ‘Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen dies of cancer at age 65 He ranked 44th on Forbes' 2018 list with more than $20 billion. After the game, the pawn and the king go in the same box.’ Roger de Hauteville

16/10/2018: ‘There are three kinds of men: The ones that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.’ Will Rogers (1879-1935) Some others: ‘Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for… Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save… When you get into trouble 5,000 miles from home, you’ve got to have been looking for it… Letting the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier than putting it back.’

16/10/2018: How to Delete Facebook and Instagram From Your Life Forever. (It’s harder than you might think): https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/10/technology/personaltech/how-to-delete-facebook-instagram-account.html

16/10/2018: Looks like Trump has ‘persuaded’ the Saudis to ‘fess up’. (He is amazing). Do you remember when this guy’s Khashoggi’s uncle (?) brought down the Whitlam Government? Perhaps you are too young. Of course the Saudis also not only created Bin Laden but also financed him. So too the Taliban, Isis, etc. They are behind the whole Islamist/jihadi thing. They have built huge mosques all over, even in Nunavak! They have always been seriously worrying. I remember I said that when they doubled/ quadrupled the price of oil back in 1970 (?) that we should just get by entirely without them (the whole Middle East actually) Nothing that has happened since has changed my mind. We should turn our coal/gas into auto fuel and buy nothing from them. Everyone should. After a little while (of eating sand) they will just go away. And good riddance! https://www.news.com.au/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-will-reportedly-admit-it-killed-journalist-jamal-khashoggi/news-story/3469d3171885802738b1deacd15b2771

15/10/2018: Still at 53: 47 (error 2.4). Not nearly good enough. Hopefully after Wentworth is finished Scott will be able to sell some real conservative policies that voters will love. Otherwise: the deluge! : https://www.news.com.au/national/politics/coalition-claws-back-support-newspoll/news-story/146ef5ae77c5d35d6d516ee8c04ee39d

15/10/2018: Global area-averaged lower tropospheric temperature anomalies (departures from 30-year calendar monthly means, 1981-2010). September the coolest in 10 years up one tenth of a degree from the 1980-2010 average (a warmer period anyway). A whole one-tenth of a degree (yet it killed the Great barrier Reef? Stuff and nonsense! Nowhere near the temperatures experienced everywhere in the 1930s (or several times in the C19th): http://www.drroyspencer.com/2018/10/uah-global-temperature-update-for-september-2018-0-14-deg-c/

15/10/2018: Che: You may not recognize this guy without the cap and T-shirt, but yesterday was the 50^th anniversary of the death of the evil murderer, Che Guevara. He does look a little annoyed to have been executed just as he executed so many – shot up against a wall, without a trial. The guy pointing is obviously commenting on their good shooting.

To my astonishment when I was at Uni he was a hero to the benighted Left. He still is on a current Irish postage stamp. What a strange country Ireland is that it can yet make heroes of such monsters.

14/10/2018: Electric Drill Earth Auger: I have been substantially laid up with this back (slipped disc then back op. – basically since July dammit!). Slowly getting better I hope (?) Meanwhile however my daughter Merrin and I have planted about 300 trees mainly using this method which costs at most a couple of dollars ($A) and at least A$1 when you get to re-use the conduit a couple of years later when the tree has grown enough so that the sheep will not bother it any more.

This evergreen alder has already grown a foot in the month since we planted it. In the background you can see the tree guards we used to use (last year’s planting) which cost over $20 each instead of $2.

Some of those we have put in we will be able to re-use the conduit next autumn! Willows, poplars and evergreen alders (for example) really get up. We have growth out the top of the plastic guards (5’ up!) already in less than a month! We expect similar results from some other trees eg prunus (esp suckers), elm suckers, pawlonia (suckers), ash…I will add to the list). Mostly we are using plant material we can get for free eg from roadsides and other bits of rough or wild, so the total cost of those planted trees is $A1 and our labour – and it is fun planting trees with your daughter – when she can get a break from her infant son.

Japanese Maple. It’s amazing how much growth you can slip the tube over when the branches are bare. Of course she may have planted this the other way, ie slipping the root ball through the tube. In either case, this is quite a tree given that it has only been in the ground a couple of weeks. (Aside: the thistles are out of control this year due to my not being able to spray them. We have a contractor coming next week – and hopefully a couple of inches of rain too!)

I bought a 2” x 9” (long) earth auger from these folk (because I wanted it in a hurry) which cost me around $A50 delivered. I believed it would have a standard hex head which I could attach to a drill extension, but it ended up being a much larger hex head which I could not buy an extension for (locally) so I cut off a length of a long M12 bolt and welded the two together to give me a drill around 18” long, which was about what we wanted for the hole. (PS: It would have cost me closer to A$200 for one that long!) If the soil is nice and moist at that depth it will give the cutting a good start and leave pretty close to the 5’ of conduit (and plastic tube) sticking out of the ground to protect the growing plant from maraudering sheep. We have been using an 18 volt rechargeable Makita Drill Model DHP 481. It is very suitable for the purpose as it has a long handle which is great for resisting the turning force of the auger.

The Makita DHP 481, hole punch from Officeworks, roll of protective tubing and the poorly welded auger – which nonetheless works perfectly well!

We have pruned quite a variety of other (potted) trees (mainly tube stock and bare-rooted trees) to a single leader and planted them in the tubes too. Lots of them are doing well. The longest has been in the soil for less than a month. Others we planted just yesterday. They included English Oak, Holm Oak, Black Walnut, Chestnut, Red Oak, Pin Oak, Lilypilly, Magnolia, Maple…

The old blackwoods are near the end of their life. This one has fallen down. Winter wood for next year. When all those tree tubes have grown their trees Merrin will have quite a little forest there just above our bottom dam.

It is as simple as this: Drill the hole to 16-18”. Put the conduit in the hole. Give it a couple of taps with a mason’s hammer to secure it in the bottom. If planting a cutting place it in the hole next to it. If a potted tree dig a big enough hole right next to the conduit so you can fit the tree (pruned back to a single leader) inside the plastic tube, refill the hole making sure that there is loose moist dirt the full length of the hole. Slip the plastic sleeve over the tree and conduit (carefully so you don’t snap the tree). Pull the sleeve out in the middle (not the edge as the tree will get more air this way) and make three double rows of holes with the hole punch. Secure the plastic sleeve to the conduit with three cable ties. (Water in if necessary when you finish). Move on to the next tree.

This Magnolia and Japanese Maple arte already above their protective tubes after less than a month. These trees will be over 10′ high (3 metres) by autumn. Instant forest. This planting will both beautify and stabilise this old slip above our top dam.

We are going to have some very nice walks right here on our home farm – and in the bush up the creek behind us where there is a waterfall, fern gullies, giant mountain ash forest, eagles’ nests and etc.

I have been looking up some other (cheaper) earth augers you might also use. A couple from the States which typically cost less than $US20 plus maybe $US10 (max) delivery to a US address. If you have to use Shipito to get it to Oz you are going to be set back another $10-20 – but you have a drill closer to 2’ long.

For example: Yard Butler 1 3/4″ Roto Digger & Jisco 1/3/4″ x 2′ Earth Auger

You may be better with these offerings from Aliexpress. This one for example is 43mm x 370 mm and costs US$20 inc shipping (This will be long enough if you give the conduit a couple of taps with the hammer): or you can buy 5 for US$90 – and sell four to your friends for $22.50ea and get yours for nothing!:

If you want a longer one (800 mm) you could buy this one US$36.67: Note that you will need the electric drill adapter for US$ 13.32 Also free shipping to Australia. You might want a longer hole (then backfill) to get the plant’s taproot down to where the groundwater is in a hurry or you might want to drill for water (adding a few extensions). It is an appealing idea drilling a water well with your electric drill!)

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-tree-planting-team-today/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/wildlife-proof-fencing/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/our-valley-of-plenty/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/fencegarden/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/instant-trellisfence/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/capillary-mat-plant-starters/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/boastful-food-shots/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/ultralight-gardening/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/birds-in-our-garden/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/eradicate-european-wasps/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/several-winters-fires/

14/10/2018: For those who came in late. Here is how you have been gulled: A summary of Donna Laframboise’s ‘The Delinquent Teenager who was mistaken for the world's top climate expert’ – a critique of the workings of the IPCC: http://www.the-rathouse.com/2012/IPCC.html

14/10/2018: Gold! This will put Gillard behind bars. Imagine forging an important document for presentation to the Royal Commission – and imagine they never noticed! Incompetence and criminality in ‘high’ places: http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2018/10/former-wa-corporate-affairs-chief-gives-sworn-evidence-for-gillard-prosecution.html

13/10/2018: Shepherd’s Crook: I bought one of these in Hawick during our trip to Scotland in May. The local feed and grain store had any number of excellent products and gadgets for caring for and saving the lives of sheep which are not available here. Goodness knows why. You would attach this to the end of a pole 4′-6′ long (1.2-1.8m) and use it to catch ‘loose’ sheep. When you only want one out of a mob (eg it has wire caught up in its fleece; it is limping; its lamb is ‘flat’ so both need shedding…) it should prove a real boon.It is available online http://www.coxagri.com/breeding-equipment/crooks/shepherds-crook-head-aluminium

Also available above are these ‘gambrels’ used for restraining sheep (eg ewes giving birth). I have had one of these in my ‘lambing bag’ for 30+ years. I can’t imagine how many ewes/lambs it has helped save the lives of:

The large space in the middle goes over the neck then you lift the two front legs into the other two spaces. The string is never needed. You can use a piece of cord of the appropriate length in each end of which you have tied an overhand knot. You place the middle of the cord over the neck (as above) and pull the front legs through the loops.

The beauty of this arrangement is that it costs nothing and slips into your pocket.

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/convert-a-car-to-a-camper-for-50/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/great-scot/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/genius-strainer-post/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/happy-birthday-ultralight-hiker-2/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/mattresses-i-have-known/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/beach-burial-2-the-cat/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/riding-on-the-sheepss-back/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/what-tree-wont-sheep-eat/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/sheep-farm-retirement/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-tree-planting-team-today/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-tree-planting-team-today/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/wildlife-proof-fencing/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/our-valley-of-plenty/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/fencegarden/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/instant-trellisfence/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/capillary-mat-plant-starters/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/boastful-food-shots/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/ultralight-gardening/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/birds-in-our-garden/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/eradicate-european-wasps/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/riding-on-the-sheepss-back/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/trees-and-tree-guards/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/hello-possums/

13/10/2018: At last, alongside the Holocaust Museum we now have the Museum of Communist Terror – 100 million murdered so far is surely noteworthy. Hopefully there will soon be a Museum of Islamist terror to showcase how it is even worse – around 270 million murdered so far, and billions enslaved: https://www.museumofcommunistterror.com/

13/10/2018: Maybe you know some people who would like to go on this trip: https://thefreethoughtproject.com/flat-earthers-plan-quest-to-prove-earth-isnt-round/

13/10/2018: ‘The release of heat when water vapor condenses drives thunder clouds (known as cumulonimbus), and the energy in a thundercloud is comparable to that released in an H-bomb’. Lindzen Yet all around the tropics there are tens of thousands of them every evening! Makes our own butterfly effects look pretty trivial: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/09/richard-lindzen-lecture-at-gwpf-global-warming-for-the-two-cultures/

12/10/2018: There has been this measured stratospheric cooling going on since the satellite records began. Personally I can’t see much difference in the two ‘periods’ they want to split it into. However, my observation is that if the increased CO2 is supposed to act as a sort of blanket producing a predicted tropospheric ‘hot spot’ - which has never been observed incidentally – which ought to then warm the stratosphere, and so on: then where exactly is the predicted warming? Even the land surface measurements can only be ‘adjusted’ into showing it. Realistically folks we are heading for another ice age (hopefully glacially slowly) and nothing we can do will prevent it – and it will last for 100,000 years, like all the previous ones. But for the nonce, relax. BTW: A young fellow from James Cook has been auditing the land-based temperature series and finds them to be utterly questionable. Meanwhile of course the satellites have been showing a tropospheric cooling since 2016 and the coolest September ina long,long time: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/09/29/revisiting-the-mystery-of-stratospheric-cooling/ & https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2018-10-7-the-greatest-scientific-fraud-of-all-time-part-xix

12/10/2018: The other side of #metoo. Males falsely accused by women. For example : ‘[The boy] was basically being tortured in school by the other students and investigators, but the administration was only focused on protecting the girls who were lying. The false accusations led to the firing of their son from his job at a swimming pool and he was then “forced to endure multiple court appearances, detention in a juvenile facility, detention at home, the loss of his liberty and other damages.’ So far no consequences for the ‘mean girls’ involved: https://www.foxnews.com/us/five-high-school-mean-girls-targeted-boy-with-false-accusations-of-sexual-assault-lawsuit-claims

12/10/2018: Poland is leading the Fifth Crusade. We must join it or civilization be forever lost. This is what you ave to look forward to: ‘The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His messenger and strive to make mischief in the land is only this, that they should be murdered or crucified or their hands and their feet should be cut off on opposite sides or they should be imprisoned; this shall be as a disgrace for them in this world, and in the hereafter they shall have a grievous chastisement"’ (Mohammed) http://pickeringpost.com/story/i-did-what-most-muslims-don-t-do-i-read-the-quran/8623 & https://thereligionofpeace.com/pages/quran/violence.aspx

11/10/2018: The Third Way to prevent shark attacks; seriously clever: https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/drones-and-ai-ward-off-shark-attacks-as-predators-hunt-closer-to-shore#gs.VkZGBn0

11/10/2018: The police we need vs the police we get: http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2018/10/uk-police-chief-watched-from-inside-locked-police-car-while-islamist-stabbed-pc-to-death.html

11/10/2018: Morrison in the Australian on the IPCC’s gobbledygook, ‘We’re not held to any of them at all, and nor are we bound to go and tip money into that big climate fund…We’re not going to do that either. I’m not going to spend money on global climate conferences and all that sort of nonsense.’ I think nonsense is the semantic equivalent of Tony Abbott’s ‘bullshit’. There is hope: https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2018/10/tolerating-nonsense-prove/

10/10/2018: ‘This concept of wilderness is nothing but a new incarnation of terra nullius’ (Marcia Langton). Aborigines in 1788 merely experienced what everyone else had already had done to them (and of course, what they had done to the earlier inhabitants, some of it within the lifetimes of people still living today ie the destruction of the Cape York pygmies https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/history-wars/2002/06/the-extinction-of-the-australian-pygmies/ ). In the C12th the Crown took over Public Land. In Australia this confiscation appeared as Crown Land, State Forest etc. At least in Vic, some of the public's rights to land were reinstated in 'State Forests' in that you could hunt (albeit now with various permits) camp, hike, fish (with licences) have a campfire, collect firewood (with a permit), graze stock (with a licence) & so on - in other words you were reallowed to do things on public land (with a permit) which had prior to the C12th confiscation been rights (without any permit) - it being public land, ie not Government land. Then the land was re-confiscated as National Park, State Park, Wilderness Area, Aboriginal Land, Marine Sanctuary & etc and all rights of the public disappeared. This is what the Greens in the inner city (who never go there) want. Australia arguably has more land per capita than any other country but more restrictions on its use than any other country. I feel I have a right and duty to trespass there – with my dogs who would never see it else. Some interesting perspectives here: ‘In a pre-political environment prior to the enclosure of the commons, an individual was free to appropriate from nature what he or she needed to survive...’ https://quillette.com/2018/10/06/dont-get-fooled-again-the-continuing-necessity-of-anti-communism/

10/10/2018: If you have not been following, you may not understand this post, http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2018/10/marmion-on-the-gillard-forgery.html but it confirms that Julia Gillard is guilty of a gross forgery which was used by her (and others) to illegally acquire hundreds of thousands of dollars and spend them on herself (which the Royal Commission established). What this means is that Michael Smith’s upcoming private prosecution of her (http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2018/09/progress-report-on-my-private-prosecution.html) will succeed and that she will go to gaol. How the sisterhood will shriek! Myself, I cannot wait to see her (new crocodile) tears. Of course it is all the fault of misogyny – and Tony Abbott especially! (Rhyme intended)

10/10/2018: Is this woman the ultimate player of victim politics – such pretty blue eyes and ‘peaches and cream’ complexion yet a ‘Moslem woman of colour’. If you build a trough: https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/blogs/tim-blair/shes-literally-shaking-people-down/news-story/159cb75e5ae1367045212b9821717369

09/10/2018: Minnow Gripper: What’s not to like about these little beauties? https://countycomm.com/products/minnow-gripper Made in the U.S.A. ‘Hold up to 175 lb (80 kg) & weigh only .35 Ounce (10 grams). These heavy duty tarp clips create a grommet instantly on any material. Powerful cross-hatch surface gripping jaws clinch tighter as tension is applied. Great for fastening plastic sheeting, drop cloths, tarps. etc. Holds fast to canopies, awnings, pool covers, towels, BBQ covers, sails, cables and bags, netting and hunting blinds. They open wide enough for clamping any material up to ¼” thick and are crack resistant to 35° below zero’. US$2.75ea – email the store if you want a bulk order.

You could carry a couple of these for emergency tie-outs for your tent or tarp. I carry a couple of these myself, but the minnows might well be better – though not so much use for fishing!

If you haven’t discovered Countycomm before you are in for a treat (and a lighter wallet). They have a bewildering variety of interesting an ultralight goodies. I have often posted about their wonderful Maratac torches, for example. Their Peanut Lighter is an ultralight and indestructible beauty. These Titanium Keychains would be worth a look. Enjoy your visit!

(You may have to email to discuss freight to Australia).

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/super-aaa-torch-145-lumens/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/worlds-lightest-tarp-clip/

09/10/2018: ‘So many of our young appear over-privileged, unwilling to take on responsibility, emotionally fragile, narcissistic and utterly lacking in resilience.’ (Grace Collier) 14 years of ‘education’ now will help! ‘Give me the child and I will give you the man’ (Loyola) is just becoming ridiculous. I know this is the main impetus behind Labor’s plan – just as is buying votes by imposing high immigration and high welfarism on us is – but is any of this any more desirable than having a socialist government certainly isn’t? Especially as ‘education’s' measurable outcomes have clearly continued to fall - just as we spend more and more on it. When I went to school we had a maximum of 11 years of school education - which I foreshortened by two. This was more than enough, yet it produced better outcomes and a more employable population than we now have with more than a quarter of the population having fake bachelor’s degrees yet being largely illiterate and woefully impractical. There are huge savings for the taxpayer to be made by cutting the education budget and giving it a more practical and outcome focused approach. I doubt there is anything to be gained by giving any more than 10% of the population university-style ‘education or pre-school education at all (which is just expensive baby-minding and a pale imitation of being raised by competent parents anyway) for a start. More technical and practical education would also be a godsend. Read Grace’s take on this re-posted from the Australian by ‘OldOzzie in comments here: http://catallaxyfiles.com/2018/10/06/open-forum-october-6-2018/comment-page-3/#comment-2833359

09/10/2018: Imagine personally killing 40,000 babies! Many of them delivered live only to have their spinal cords severed and then left to die in agony on the bench! Is there any other serial killer worse than Gosnell? This film about him will be the nail in the coffin for the Dem’s and the sisterhood’s prospects of winning the ‘Mids’ eve if the Kavanaugh circus was not, (which it was): https://www.steynonline.com/8826/gosnell

09/10/2018: Colonialism? Phooey. Melania looks good in anything, full stop: https://www.thepiratescove.us/2018/10/06/melanias-hat-evokes-colonialism-comparison-or-something/

08/10/2018: US weekly jobless claims drop to a near 49-year low which is about 1969 when I graduated from my Honours year. Back then you had practically to bat employers out of the way on the street from heckling you to go work for them. The only foks who didn’t have a job were imbeciles and alcoholics. Where is our Donald Trump? Scomo, please take note: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/04/us-weekly-jobless-claims-sept-29-2018.html?__source=newsletter%7Cbreakingnews

08/10/2018: Looks like Scomo will win the Wentworth by-election. In their usual inept style the Greens preferenced Labor ahead of the Independent (defacto Labor candidate Phelps). She in turn preferenced the Libs ahead of Labor (in an effort to win outright). This means that the Greens votes will go to Labor, meaning she will finish third instead of second. Her votes will go to the Libs instead of Labor, so the Libs will win. If she and the Greens had a bit more smarts (unlikely), she would have won. Labor is deliberately ‘running dead’ (have you seen their awful candidate?) so that she would win. This win will give Scott some free air in which he can underline definitive policies which distance him from Labor, and articulate them – something he is far better at than anyone else in Parliament. If he wins Wentworth, he will win the General Election next year – and Shorten will never be Prime Minister. Thank God. Hopefully he is replaced by Kimberley Kitching – or someone like her. Maybe the Left has had its day after all? You can only hope. Bring on the 20^th October. No big upsets before then. http://theconversation.com/poll-wrap-phelps-slumps-to-third-in-wentworth-trumps-ratings-up-after-fight-over-kavanaugh-104478 & http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2018/10/kimberley-kitching-defender-of-conservative-judaeo-christian-values.html

08/10/2018: Trillions of dollars spent on climate because of fake data, eg temperatures of 80C allowed into the records: http://joannenova.com.au/2018/10/first-audit-of-global-temperature-data-finds-freezing-tropical-islands-boiling-towns-boats-on-land/ when the real data was staring us in the face. This is the Bureau of Met's records for our oldest continuous remote station in Victoria, Cape Otway. You can click on the 'Highlight' box to chose the warmest 5% (95th Percentile). You will see that all the really warm weather was in the C19th If you run your eye down the ‘Annual’ averages (last column), you will also see that in the C19th the temperature was at least 2 degrees warmer than it is today: http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/ncc/cdio/weatherData/av?p_nccObsCode=36&p_display_type=dataFile&p_startYear&p_stn_num=090015

07/10/2018: Renewables produce warming – how about that? And of course that’s not even countinf the CO2 required for their production, maintenance and dismantling. Much worse than coal! http://joannenova.com.au/2018/10/warning-wind-power-warms-local-climate-for-next-hundred-years-needs-5-20-times-as-much-land/

07/10/2018: Don’t move in with that unemployed boyfriend: ‘don’t even f-----g consider it for a second awful idea.’ http://stuartschneiderman.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-case-of-deadbeat-boyfriend.html

07/10/2018: Dr Strangelove please move over – we have some lovely new nukes for you: https://www.foxnews.com/tech/new-us-nuclear-bombs-and-futuristic-stealth-aircraft-to-provide-mind-boggling-military-might

07/10/2018: Riding on the Sheeps’s Back: Or vice versa. Patagonia’s Woolyester Fleece (US$139 – Oct 2018) might be a great mid-layer addition to your other wool clothing, your Kathmandu/Columbia thermal for example, and your Kathmandu or Columbia wool shirt. I rarely get cold enough (even in winter) when I am walking to need such a layer. I have probably put one on only once or twice in over sixty years tramping through the wilderness. Della however hot she may be in other ways runs cold in such weather – and needs to rug up, so this might be just the thing for her. (Aside: It will be interesting to see whether her new heart ‘cures’ this problem too – she can certainly fairly zoom up hills now).

Mind you it would have to be comparable in weight and insulative value to our Montbell Superior Down jackets (at 208 grams Mens Medium $A199 – Oct 2018) – though it might well be a little more durable. I can’t get any info on its weight. Fleece tends to be somewhat heavy though. You might think about something like a cashmere wool vest as an alternative.

The advantage I see it having over your run-of-the-mill fleece is that the wool should make it smell better after prolonged heavy exertion. I would have to buy one to confirm this – but I already have a cupboard full of old fleece garments for use around the farm. Anyway it will want to be better as it costs more. For example you can buy a good brand (like Columbia for US$79.99 and you can do much better than that at eg Harris Scarfe – A$25- Oct 2018 – or this one from Anaconda for $A24 – Oct 2018!

What they say about it:

‘Patagonia recreated the modern fleece with recycled wool that retains classic fleece fuzziness. The Woolyester fleece is made with 46 percent recycled wool, 46 percent polyester, 4 percent nylon, and 4 percent other fibers. Patagonia claims these fleeces feel soft, dry quickly, and manage moisture well. ‘ (Gear Junkie)

‘With heritage design lines, a warm fleece jacket made with a modern blend of recycled wool, polyester and nylon fabric that’s Fair Trade Certified™ sewn. This classic style is rendered in a recycled wool/polyester/nylon fabric blend, moving us one step closer to a zero-waste apparel industry. Because this classic, every day, all around layer is rendered in a recycled wool/polyester/nylon fabric blend, it is a better choice when buying new, and moves us one step closer to a zero-waste apparel industry’. (Patagonia) You can read the full liturgy here: https://www.patagonia.com/blog/2018/09/introducing-woolyester/ It is enough to put you off! As a sheep farmer for over 40 years it does me!

I imagine others will be along with wool/poly fleeces which actually benefit sheep farmers like us before long. Meanwhile we continue to treat our Finnsheep quite humanely. And, listen up: their fleece is the very best in the world for making fine felt – which Della does often. I may try to entice her to make me an anorak yet. I have been trying for years. And a hat! Her Finn wool felt is also very nearly waterproof.

Here she is in two of her recent felted creations. Over the years she has made many more beautiful garments:

You won’t be getting something like these from Paragonia (or anywhere else in a hurry! You probably won’t be getting a wife nearly as good as this either – and we have been together nigh on 50 years! Eat your heart out!

Can you see why I might want her to make me a felted anorak now?

Available here for US$139:

https://www.patagonia.com/shop/woolyester-fleece?avad=7185_c1353bcf5&netid=1&pubid=5889&utm_source=gearjunkie.com&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=app&src=app&src=avl

06/10/2018: More CO2 please. I have been saying this since the 1980s (because I was observing it – I get out there, you see) that forest area was increasing – when all the ‘conventional wisdom’ said it was decreasing. I think the same about temperature – that it has been getting cooler, at least all of my life (the Cape Otway records - our oldest continuous station, say for over a century now – and by 2C degrees). At least the September just gone was the coldest for a decade as the satellite records show. Pity those satellites weren’t around in the 1930s to see when it was really hot! In any case CO2 has added an area of forest equal to two Australias or two USAs over the last little while. So much new wilderness to explore! This is wonderful news: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/04/the-most-amazing-greening-on-earth-thanks-to-increased-carbon-dioxide/

06/10/2018: Most of you reading this already have sarcopenia. Listen up, you have to do something about it. Here’s what: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/03/well/live/preventing-muscle-loss-among-the-elderly.html

06/10/2018: Kavanaugh will be endorsed. Ford’s best friend contradicts her testimony, and two other blokes say it was they who groped her. Endgame for the Dem’s stalling. There will be a conservative judiciary for a generation. This is what ‘draining the swamp’ is all about. Go Scomo: https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2018/10/christine-fords-close-friend-and-alleged-witness-leland-keyser-testifies-for-third-time-that-she-was-never-at-party-with-kavanaugh/ & https://www.dailywire.com/news/36377/judiciary-talking-man-who-thinks-he-forced-ryan-saavedra

06/10/2018: 1200^th Post: Every hundred posts or so I take time to highlight significant posts on the website over the last few months. In this case it is 200 posts since 6^th October 2017 and my 1000^th Post. In that time I have made some belated posts about our Qld trip back in September including our ascent of Mt Bartle Frère Qld’s tallest mountain over 1600 metres – and you begin at about 100 metres above sea level – so it is quite a contrast of climates in a single day.

I did lots of Canoeing and pack rafting last summer as there was adequate water about even if not plenty. We had several trips on the the Wonnagatta the Macailister and the Thomson rivers.

I have been making some efforts to Speed up the website which have resulted in faster loading times. There is still much more to do but some of it is quite technical, time consuming – and fraught with pitfalls. I have loading times down to a bit over a second. I think I can more than halve that in the future for people who are every impatient – apparently many are.

I made a couple of new tents I am very happy with. This wonderful Siligloo which is vast yet only weighs 385 grams and my Pocket Poncho which weighs only 185. I plan a new version of the latter to accommodate two. It should increase its weight by only about 50 grams.

Some wet weather posts : how to enjoy hiking in the rain How to make a Hands free umbrella and other Rain gear

Some electrical posts including Chargers, Solar power, other Battery gear and a New sat messenger which weighs under 100 grams.

Lots of other DIY ideas including a great way to sleep two under one tarp in a Hammock Double Up and other hammock ideas New DIY: an ultralight New stove, some advice about ultracheap backpacking, pack mods, ultralight cups, hearing aid clips, cheap pads and cheap quilts, cheap tents and an ultralight saw – and how to eradicate wasps. There are posts about Cold season pads and others and cheaper alternatives.

The old dog Tiny sadly departed after many years & the new dog Honey arrived.

We have spent some time exploring the Gippsland coast: Liptrap & the Five Mile & Waratah Bay & the Isthmus for example.

Some Recollections of Fox hunting my dad and other early adventures.

There is as usual Food, lots of food

and numerous Deer doings and advice including how to be an Ultralight deer hunter

We have a new tree planting method which has seen lots of success. There has been wildlife fencing and other doings around the farm.

In may we had a ten day Scotland trip. I include our $50 camper instructions which we used on the trip.

There is more hiking advice including how not to die and how to find water

Unfortunately we have had some ill health We hope Della’s heart is now fixed My Back and knee have failed. Here is what I did about it.

To round off I offer this Life advice. Stay happy.

06/10/2018: Ultralight Pocket Lockpick: 54 grams: The SouthOrd Jackknife Lockpick. How could you go anywhere without one? Why bother to carry keys at all? They are probably heavier then this anyway. A great substitute for the Keychain Reinvented. Of course it might take a little practice to actually open your front door with it – and it may be highly illegal in some jurisdictions. In Victoria our Government are awful kill-joys who won’t even allow us to make a shanghai, let along carry a pocket shanghai when hiking, should we want to knock over a coney or scare away some nasty like a dingo perhaps, so carrying one of these would most likely incur the death penalty or something. Usual price US$39.95 from South Ord. Available on Massdrop for US$32.99. Instructions are also available from South Ord.

Specs

Tempered stainless steel construction

3.5 x 0.25 in (89 x 6.30 mm)

1.91 oz (54.15 g)

Included

Half diamond pick

Half single ball pick

Snake rake pick

Long hook pick

Key type pick

Key extractor

Tension wrench

https://www.southord.com/products/jackknife-pocket-lock-pick-sets

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-keyring-reinvented/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/hunting-the-wonnangatta-moroka/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-ultralight-persuader/

06/10/2018: First they came for the…we have not been told that the Chinese Premier has gaoled over a million party members since he came to power. I admit this is the palest shadow of Mao who murdered tens of millions, but it is one reason to be concened about China and to lament the folly of those who want to follow the communist /socialist road. The leftie journos never told us much about ‘The Great Leap Forward’ or ‘Year Zero’ either whilst they were happening.https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2018-10-05/interpol-president-reported-missing-after-trip-to-china

05/10/2018: Will CERN destroy the world – just something else to worry about? Well, we shouldn’t worry really. When it’s gone, it’s gone: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/02/forget-climate-change-large-hadron-collider-set-to-destroy-the-world/

05/10/2018: Notice anything about the new Government in Quebec? Scomo take note! https://www.steynonline.com/8895/the-majority-as-identity-group

05/10/2018: Modern Slavery? This looks like a ‘beat up’ to me. Where will the poor guy/s go now? Question: Is this worse, or better than the NDIS? https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/man-rescued-after-40-years-of-slavery/news-story/550b664468879928cfccb0a7d25eb9c4

04/10/2018: It’s Not My Fault: On 02/10/2018 I had this post The Parting of the Ways (Below) in which I hinted that not only may there be a small group of themes which inform our lives but that there may be a small group of delusions which drag them down. As an example of that, let me suggest the delusion, ‘It’s not my fault’. I am a child. It is the world that is wicked and unfair. I am helpless in a world I can’t control, and it is depressing and terrifying. I can’t express just how much I must terribilise it so that I can justify continuing to do nothing…you know how it prattles on and on.

The sane reply? ‘I can do it’. ‘Can do’. The motto of the 15th Infantry Regiment of the United States Army, a ‘parent’ regiment which dates back to the American Civil War – and beyond. They endured the most terrible battles of two world wars and more. ‘Can. Do.’

One of the reasons for the ‘success’ of Christianity is that its principal tenet helps to focus such troubled spirits outwards. If they can ‘love’ their neighbours (others), they can stop obsessing about themselves – and their woes. This is a good strategy.

‘Happiness’ is not some external thing (no more than misery is). Happiness is an internal thing. You might start with the adage, ‘Smile and the world smiles with you. Cry, and you cry alone.’ A primer for such sufferers is to do just that: ‘Smile’.

Smiling actually causes the associated feeling, happiness. Even if you feel that you are going through the day with a rictus. Try this. It will help to banish those internal gyrations where you circle and circle, coming back to the same scab to pick each time.

There is nothing at all you can do about the past. You must learn to pass on. To let ‘it’ go, whatever ‘it’ is. Tell yourself over and over ‘Let it pass’. Move on – and focus on the external world, not as the source of your misery. Not as something to blame. But as an adventure to be had. Something to work with.

You are not alone in having ‘lost your mind’. You are in good company, though many of us are loth to admit it. I am well today (in mind), though my back is broken. I have ‘moved on’ You must move on too. Believe me, it is not as hard as dragging this back around my afternoon walk, having to lie down and do my exercises against the exquisite pain every few hundred metres – but it takes the same determination: ‘Can do’.

Tyers River 2010 Let it pass…

Today perhaps is the time to fix that tap, plant that vegetable, service the car, sort your camping gear, plan for that long hike you will begin tomorrow…It is your fault if you are unhappy. No-one else is the slightest bit interested, or to blame. And the only person who can lift you out of that unhappiness is yourself. You cannot have happiness delivered like a milkshake. It was always within yourself.

Think back to a time when you felt happy. There is always some time. For me, I go back to a time when I was sitting quietly under a bridge watching the deep waters of a river roll past. Try to capture the emotion you felt in just two words. For me they were, ‘Quiet. Calm.’ Say those two words over and over to yourself slowly whilst thinking of nothing else at all. Do that for a few minutes, then,

Smile right now. That is the beginning of sanity – and happiness. Have a happy day!

May I repeat the advice I gave in the post Cure Back Pain: Regret Nothing. Smile along with the music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzy2wZSg5ZM

‘Hi Steve,

As an avid camper, I’ve chosen this comprehensive guide “The Big Green Guide to Responsible Camping” as the focus for my assignment:

https://www.vouchercloud.com/resources/big-green-camping-guide

I thought that it might be a helpful resource for your site and visitors.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.’

I replied: Hi ——,

Good Luck, Steve Jones.

He never replied. There is always still time. At least I tried!

PS: Just a sprinkling of our photos to illustrate what otherwise might be too much writing in one hit. Hope you enjoy. Cheers, Steve.

CO2 is greening the earth. Two new areas the size of Australia of forest cover added.

This great greening news even comes from NASA which usually warns about its ill effects. See: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth

& https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/04/the-most-amazing-greening-on-earth-thanks-to-increased-carbon-dioxide/

& https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2014/12/04/watch-how-europe-is-greener-now-than-100-years-ago/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2da17e43c799#comments

& http://www.thegwpf.com/matt-ridley-global-warming-versus-global-greening/

& http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/bumper-harvests-save-nature/

A Thoughtful Comment and Reply:

19/10/2018: Watch out: Severe climate events could cause shortages in the global beer supply: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/15/climate-beer-goggles/

Simple milk bottle trap.

The Kiwis are wiping out European wasps. Let’s do it too: https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/wasp-wipeout/87865462/the-weapon-to-wipe-out-wasps-the-story-of-vespex--wasp-wipeout?rm=m

Instructions for preparing poisoned baits here and here:

Male Queen and Worker European Wasps

European Wasp and (native) Paper Wasp

To my astonishment when I was at Uni he was a hero to the benighted Left. He still is on a current Irish postage stamp. What a strange country Ireland is that it can yet make heroes of such monsters.

The Makita DHP 481, hole punch from Officeworks, roll of protective tubing and the poorly welded auger – which nonetheless works perfectly well!

For example: Yard Butler 1 3/4″ Roto Digger & Jisco 1/3/4″ x 2′ Earth Auger

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-tree-planting-team-today/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/wildlife-proof-fencing/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/our-valley-of-plenty/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/fencegarden/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/instant-trellisfence/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/capillary-mat-plant-starters/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/boastful-food-shots/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/ultralight-gardening/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/birds-in-our-garden/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/eradicate-european-wasps/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/several-winters-fires/

The beauty of this arrangement is that it costs nothing and slips into your pocket.

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/convert-a-car-to-a-camper-for-50/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/great-scot/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/genius-strainer-post/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/happy-birthday-ultralight-hiker-2/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/mattresses-i-have-known/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/beach-burial-2-the-cat/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/riding-on-the-sheepss-back/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/what-tree-wont-sheep-eat/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/sheep-farm-retirement/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-tree-planting-team-today/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/the-tree-planting-team-today/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/wildlife-proof-fencing/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/our-valley-of-plenty/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/fencegarden/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/instant-trellisfence/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/capillary-mat-plant-starters/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/boastful-food-shots/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/ultralight-gardening/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/birds-in-our-garden/

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/eradicate-european-wasps/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/riding-on-the-sheepss-back/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/trees-and-tree-guards/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/hello-possums/

13/10/2018: Maybe you know some people who would like to go on this trip: https://thefreethoughtproject.com/flat-earthers-plan-quest-to-prove-earth-isnt-round/

11/10/2018: The Third Way to prevent shark attacks; seriously clever: https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/drones-and-ai-ward-off-shark-attacks-as-predators-hunt-closer-to-shore#gs.VkZGBn0

11/10/2018: The police we need vs the police we get: http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2018/10/uk-police-chief-watched-from-inside-locked-police-car-while-islamist-stabbed-pc-to-death.html

You could carry a couple of these for emergency tie-outs for your tent or tarp. I carry a couple of these myself, but the minnows might well be better – though not so much use for fishing!

(You may have to email to discuss freight to Australia).

http://www.theultralighthiker.com/super-aaa-torch-145-lumens/

https://www.theultralighthiker.com/worlds-lightest-tarp-clip/

09/10/2018: Colonialism? Phooey. Melania looks good in anything, full stop: https://www.thepiratescove.us/2018/10/06/melanias-hat-evokes-colonialism-comparison-or-something/

What they say about it:

Here she is in two of her recent felted creations. Over the years she has made many more beautiful garments:

Can you see why I might want her to make me a felted anorak now?

Available here for US$139:

https://www.patagonia.com/shop/woolyester-fleece?avad=7185_c1353bcf5&netid=1&pubid=5889&utm_source=gearjunkie.com&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=app&src=app&src=avl

I did lots of Canoeing and pack rafting last summer as there was adequate water about even if not plenty. We had several trips on the the Wonnagatta the Macailister and the Thomson rivers.

Some wet weather posts : how to enjoy hiking in the rain How to make a Hands free umbrella and other Rain gear

Some electrical posts including Chargers, Solar power, other Battery gear and a New sat messenger which weighs under 100 grams.

The old dog Tiny sadly departed after many years & the new dog Honey arrived.

We have spent some time exploring the Gippsland coast: Liptrap & the Five Mile & Waratah Bay & the Isthmus for example.

Some Recollections of Fox hunting my dad and other early adventures.

There is as usual Food, lots of food

and numerous Deer doings and advice including how to be an Ultralight deer hunter

We have a new tree planting method which has seen lots of success. There has been wildlife fencing and other doings around the farm.

In may we had a ten day Scotland trip. I include our $50 camper instructions which we used on the trip.

There is more hiking advice including how not to die and how to find water

Unfortunately we have had some ill health We hope Della’s heart is now fixed My Back and knee have failed. Here is what I did about it.

To round off I offer this Life advice. Stay happy.

Specs

Tempered stainless steel construction

3.5 x 0.25 in (89 x 6.30 mm)

1.91 oz (54.15 g)

Included

Half diamond pick

Half single ball pick

Snake rake pick

Long hook pick

Key type pick

Key extractor

Tension wrench

https://www.southord.com/products/jackknife-pocket-lock-pick-sets

http://www.theultrali