In April 1861, the explorers Robert Burke and William Wills — sick, starving and desperate to survive — abandoned their surveying instruments and other ‘non-essential’ items in outback Queensland and continued south on their ill-fated journey.
Almost 150 years later, in a discovery being proclaimed as the holy grail for Burke and Wills enthusiasts, a Melbourne academic claims he has found some of the equipment buried in a creek bed hundreds of kilometres inland from Brisbane.
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There’s something basic about cooking on a naked flame outdoors, and many years of camping has reinforced that primeval urge.
And that’s where I’ll be doing most of my cooking when I hit the road again.
Besides the sheer pleasure, there’s another valid reason — kitchen grease and grime.
Just last week, while checking out my ‘bricks and mortar’ kitchen and trying to decide what to take with me I thought I’d top up my rice and pasta containers.
As I took them down one by one, I saw how each of them was covered in a fine layer of grease — and that’s in a kitchen with a three-speed fan extractor with carbon filters directly over the stove!
Imagine the same scenario in the bus. As it came, there was no extractor, just a nearby window. I could see myself cooking there with a sidewind blowing straight at me, needing to close it and then watching a fine mist settle on everything inside.
Sure the weather is not always going to suit my outdoor endeavours, but neither will I be layered in grease.
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The nomad’s mantra is ‘save weight’. Rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat.
But sometimes a small sacrifice has to be made. Last week I spent half a day cruising the local camping shops for some outdoor furniture to fit under the awning.
In the end I simply gave up. Sure a lot of it is lightweight and compact when folded, but the look got to me. It was aluminum tubing, gaudy Hawaiian cushions, springs and bits that like biting your thumbs. The final straw happened while I was trying to fold up an outdoor lounge chair and squashed my index finger.
Bugger.
I have a new mantra. Comfort first. And as part of it I am taking my original Queen Elizabeth First Class deckchair with me. Made of teak and brass it is wonderfully comfortable [and I just saw one for sale on eBay for $US800 and there's still five days left in the auction].
And something else, it is not all that heavy.
It is getting a fresh coat of linseed oil this week, as is the folding wooden table that came everywhere with me while I travelled with Bluey [my red Kombi].
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While I’m still in the midst of getting rid of stuff, I have also, for about two years, been accumulating stuff specifically for going on the road.
It might sound contradictory, but the process has saved me money, and put a lot of my existing stuff into perspective.
I once again have my camping mindset. Packing for those trips I always sought out stuff that was lightweight, compact, absolutely essential, and where possible capable of playing two or more roles.
Some small examples — a sleeping bag storage bag that doubled as a pillow when stuffed with clothes; a walking pole that converted to a monopod with a twist; and the ultimate — my Swiss Army knife which I still use everyday.
On this new adventure I’ll be taking a few home comforts, including the amazing double act of my iPod and Pal radio and speaker system.
The Pal features the audio technology of the amazing Henry Kloss who invented the phenomenal AR [Acoustic Research] speakers. I still have very fond memories of my set of AR7 speakers and the crisp highs and solid bass notes.
I’ve now got the same sound quality emanating from a little box about a tenth the size, with a bonus AM/FM radio and a direct connection for my iPod. Fully-charged the battery gives about 22 hours of playtime.
Hooked up to my iPod I get another level of sound quality and the ability to pick and chose my music. The tiny iPod has 902 songs on it at the moment and is only about a third full.
Oh, and did I mention the amazing battery life?
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Stuff. It’s everywhere. Stuff. Stuff. Stuff.
I’m sick of bloody stuff. And I have to get rid of it all before I hit the road.
For starters there’s more than 2,000 books, some of them shown above, being sorted on the lounge floor. There’s more, many more, on bookshelves in the office, the bedroom and in the kitchen.
Downstairs there’s a room full of tools, garden equipment, and gear — for sea kayaks, camping, skiing, bicycling, rafting, scuba diving [including underwater cameras and lights] and bushwalking.
I’ll be sad to see a lot of it go, but at least I will have the memories of many momentous adventures across Australia, in Africa, India, Japan and Europe.
And, talking of memories, another room has six filing cabinets containing thousands of colour transparencies documenting those adventures.
They weigh a tonne, literally, and my attempts to find a useful future for them constantly gets thwarted. A State library was going to take them, but had its budget cut; a Sydney photo-agency reneged at the last minute ["We simply can't handle an influx of 90,000 photographs"] and I can’t afford to digitise them, which would be the perfect solution. Bugger.
For about six years now all my photography has been digital, and thousands of photographs are backed up on a couple of hard drives, each barely the size of a paperback thriller. I like that.
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