It is highly desirable to carry a fixed blade knife mainly for those rare occasions when it is necessary to split branches to produce dry kindling and shave them to produce ‘excelsior’ (wood shavings) which are the best fire starter. Lighting a fire when it is very wet and cold is the most important time […]
Four days paddling the Tarago River in Gippsland. This guy is inspirational. Shades of Travels in a Donkey Trap. People need to get out exploring their local area more thoroughly like this: Beau Miles: “Following two rivers, one drain, one sea and one creek, it turns out that paddling to work, which ends up being
Spot and I have been away for a few days enjoying camping next to a lovely fishing hole along one of our remote Victorian mountain rivers. This small trip has highlighted for me more than anything else how much I need a new knee. Though it was only 6-8 trackless kilometres each way over fairly
For a number of years I carried my motorbike around on one of these which sits the front wheel up in the cradle while the rear wheel just tags along, basically turning your motorbike into a trailer. The trouble was that it was hard to turn around on narrow tracks mainly because I could not
Perhaps the last lovely canoeing day of 2021’s autumn. Time to spend a few hours on one of my favourite rivers. As I mentioned in this post Thomson River Packrafting Day Trip you can enjoy a number of different day trips on this beautiful river if you haven’t enough time for a multi-day trip like
My Kevlar skid pad canoe repairs on a delightful overnight trip on a couple of beautiful warm days with abundant water from Kingwill Bridge to Hut Creek. We planned for a longer trip but Della began feeling unwell (and I blew up a clutch in one of the cars) so we had to cut it
Our Old Town Pack Angler canoes really don’t tolerate hard knocks on rough rapids well. Bruce and I tore a couple of holes in them when we came down the Macalister in late Spring (See Carpe Diem). I ordered the Kevlar to undertake these repairs back then but of course I didn’t get around to
Here’s the lightest carbon fibre Canadian I could find the Hornbeck Blackjack at 11 lbs (5 kg). An interesting alternative to a packraft (See below). Hornbeck Blackjack ($1,695-$1,795 in carbon fiber, hornbeckboats.com) L: 12′; W:30″; D: 10″, 11-15 lbs. Made in Peter Hornbeck’s pine shed just a short drive from our put-in at Follensby Pond,
Yet another lightweight shoe. This one the Sketcher Go walk claims to be only 206 grams in Mens US Size 9! Only A$99 (September 2020) so maybe worth giving them a try even just as ‘river crossing’ or camp shoes. Here’s what they say about them: ‘The leaders in walking shoe technology continue to innovate
‘Seize the Day’. There are only a certain number of them. No-one knows how many or ever will. ‘Some days are diamonds‘ as the song says – and in my (fortunate) experience, most are. Anyway one where you keep on breathing in and out has to be a good one. It was a beautiful spring
