crustyadventures

Photos: Lisbon 2017

crustyadventures — Mon, 11 Dec 2017 16:27:00 GMT

Summer school in Europe

Photos: 48 hours in Hobart

crustyadventures — Mon, 18 Mar 2013 20:56:00 GMT

Photos: Cook Islands

crustyadventures — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 21:37:00 GMT

Photos: around Sydney

crustyadventures — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 10:38:00 GMT

Newnes, Blue Mountains

crustyadventures — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 13:24:00 GMT

Heading off camping at the end of this week... First time in a few months. I know when I open the little cupboard under the stairs, there will be a few ready packed boxes meant to make the departure a little easier and quicker. Nonetheless, the gear can be overwhelming. Especially there's now two kids with kid-gear.

Friends often want to come camping with us as we're well equipped and they can lig off our gear. That's fine and it's nice to have friends to sit around the fire with. Hey, they can bring the wine!

But it's always a fine line between comfort and gear-overload. I don't actually want to take my lounge room into the great outdoors. So, what IS in the cupboard under the stairs?

THE camping box has now been packed since 1999. A 6 month trip around Oz in a 4WD helped us refine core camping gear into a single box - torches, camp lanterns (we've tried everything and have now settled on solar recharging LEDs), matches and lighters, gaffa tape, batteries, loo paper, mozzie coils, sunscreen, washing up liquid and collapsible bowl, a sponge, a tiny folding rack for campfire cooking, an MSR WhisperLite Stove, a backup Trangia stove and fuel.

Food and eating - When you're on the go for a few months, you buy as you drive, stock up and then let supplies dwindle. When you've got a 5 day trip only, the less time spent in supermarkets the better. And kids don't wait patiently for food, nor happily live off canned spinach for a few days, so it's worth planning this part well.

There's an always packed food essentials box: Vegemite, honey, olive oil, salt & pepper, mixed herbs, garlic salt, baked beans for kids, porridge, tea bags and a bag of pasta and pesto. The other permanently packed eating box has cutlery, plates, bowls, 1 frypan, 1 saucepan and a kettle and some tea towels.

We take a big esky and it's full to the brim with fresh food... i'm just not the type to live off 2-minute noodles and it's not necessary when you've got a car to carry it in. This - and our clothes - are about the only things that aren't permanently packed.

We've also now got a Coleman two burner stove (we run it on Shellite/WhiteGas ) ... I know we've got stove overload now, but that's just the evolution of fast-and-light-couples-travel into slower-with-kids-and-the-kettle's-always-on.

Two small folding tables - one for eating and one for stove/washing up. A chair each. This is definitely a concession to getting older. And cheaper than my chiropractor ;-)

A tarpaulin + some poles. The poles seem necessary in Australia as many of the national parks have Rangers who love nothing more than coming around and making you deconstruct your exquisite tarp erected artfully between a few trees ("Madam - Nothing tied to the trees - you'll get a fine for that!!")

Sleeping - Love, love, love our Vaude Division Dome tent (this one). Big enough for 4 plus a decent vestibule to keep gear out of the rain. Small enough that it goes up in 10 minutes and doesn't take up all the room in the car. Also have a double inflatable camp mat for the kids. It's so good, we'll ditch our bulky 4WD mattress at some point and get another.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the smallest, easiest options to keep the Gear explosion to a minimum, but reading this already makes me groan. There's no denying that with kids + age, comfort + the Good Life, the gear certainly doesn't fit a backpack. Oh well, when I look out of my tent on the weekend up at the red rock walls of the Newnes valley, it'll all be worth it.

Photos: Fiji 2011

crustyadventures — Wed, 1 Jun 2011 14:04:00 GMT

Our first ever School Holidays, couldn't bear hanging around at home so nicked off across the Pacific for a week in Fiji. Great fun, easy travels, lovely people.

Photos: Vic Roadtrip 2011

crustyadventures — Tue, 31 May 2011 21:00:00 GMT

Down the Hume to a spot of wet weather camping at Mt Buffalo and then across Victoria to a farm wedding near Ballarat. The dodgy highway motels were hilarious, but never looked as good in photos as the scenic campgrounds.

Photos: Uk Panoramas 2006

crustyadventures — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 15:01:00 GMT

Photos: Barrington Tops region, NSW

crustyadventures — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 10:48:00 GMT

We went on a few camping trips in 2009 to this amazing region - exploring the exposed alpine meadows and low lying forests and rivers.

All mist. No smoke. Fears gone.

crustyadventures — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 17:25:00 GMT

Last night, after a little concern over the smoke lingering in the forest, we soon found ourselves distracted. There were a million stars keeping us amused... too long in the city and you begin to forget that they are still there. It's so beautiful to live under the Milky Way.

And later again, much later indeed, I discover the dawn light gently seeping in under the edges of the tent and slowly prising my eyelids open.

Ah, the peace, the quiet and the cold! Pull on a fleece and hat, shoes and socks. Emerge.

This half hour is my favourite time in the campsite.

Nothing to do but mosey amongst the trees, think about putting some coffee on the stove and inhale all that bloody oxygen.

Gallery: Camping at Wingello

crustyadventures — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 17:07:00 GMT

March 2009, camping in Wingello State Forest, NSW

Into the forest

crustyadventures — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 17:03:00 GMT

Slightly nervous driving in. The sun, huge on the horizon, signals that there's only a few more minutes of light before the darkness envelopes us. It's not really the fading light that's jangling my nerves - setting up a tent in the dark isn't that hard. But it's the smoke mixed with still mist amongst the trees that triggers alarm.

Driving into the forest, deeper, further. Where is the smoke coming from? Should we turn and go the other way?

The map is showing a litle tent symbol in a place clearly it is not. Hmmm...

The 3-year old's commentary from the back seat is quiet but constant. "I'm scared. We're lost". It digs at the tiny 1% chance we actually are lost and amps it up into something bigger.

The roads are wide fire trails and are marked on the map correctly. So, we know where we are, just not where the campground is. Nothing to do but keep driving on in the half light.

And just before the dirt road kicks back around a bend towards the tarmac, we turn to look right, down yet another fire trail, and spot some tents in a cleared patch. Phew. The safety of others.

If there was no smoke, I'd be seeking the solitude of a bush camp; no rowdy strangers, no toilet, no tank stand. But tonight, maybe it's better to be found. We shall see.

Photos: Nooo Zealand

crustyadventures — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 13:18:00 GMT

Who'd have thunk it?

crustyadventures — Tue, 5 Jun 2007 15:15:00 GMT

Huh... who'd have thunk it? I'd find myself in Oslo presenting to a global eco-tourism conference, drawing on work experience but also travel tales near and far, to piece together an angle on a complex world. I met some great people and wonder if I will look back in years to come and remember the day I met Gopi from The Blue Yonder, Martha Honey or Intrepid's Responsible Travel Manager, Jane Crouch?

Maybe my lasting memory will be the visual image of the Masai warrior respelendant in colourful blankets, spear in hand, microphone in the other infront of a projected PowerPoint slide.

Now I'm on my way out to London for 24 hours and there's a few funny memories that haven't been caught on Camera that need to be recorded here...

AQUAROBICS: Lost luggage between London Heathrow and Oslo airport means that I arrive with no spare clothes at all and the need to wash off 28 hours of travel. Chris (also in the same boat) and I put a pair of togs onto the company credit card and dive into the Holmenkollen Park Hotel pool. Ah relief! Before we know it, it fills up with a few families and then a stream of yougn girls, pert and pubescent and giggling. We wonder where they're all coming from?

Later, much later, we return for an end fo the day dip and dive in with a group of 6 or 7 girls on a hen's party. Not much alcohol in sight, but a huge 80's style boom box that they use to pump out disco tracks whilst the Hen herself leads the group in a session of aquarobics. I am invited to join in "the fun" but can hardly manage to lift my arms aloft such is the weight of the jet-lag setting in.

THE COST OF THINGS: Hardly a funny memory! But worth noting that beer cost at least $20AUD for a pint in a waterfront pub. However, that pales into insignificance next to the $300, 50 minute taxi fare from the airport. Ouch!

And finally, THE HOLLMENKOLLEN GIRLS CHOIR: I suspect this is where the girls at the pool fit in. At the offical conference dinner, the girls choir came out to sing for us. I sat up expectantly - bring on the traditional embroidered costumes, songs of Nordic forests and vikings! But instead, about 20 strutting girls wearing jeans and sunglasses wiggled their tooshes to 'One Night in Bangkok' for the opening number. Such good spoken (and sung) English could not cover the fact that the lyrics are about prostitution and I giggled at the inappropriateness of it all.

He he he ;-)

Gallery: Oslo

crustyadventures — Wed, 23 May 2007 10:40:00 GMT

I'm in a Norsca commercial

crustyadventures — Mon, 14 May 2007 14:08:00 GMT

Oslo; first impressions. Green, calm and clean. It's so nice to have arrived at the Oslo airport which smelled of popcorn and looked like a stylish entrance to a sauna, all glass and wood and light. This was a contrast after the awful mayhem of a quick flight changeover in London's Heathrow which required 'fast track' access clearance from uniformed women with big behinds and a sprint down a kilometer or so of terminal corridors. In UK style, the travellators were out of order too.

The calming views from the mountain we're staying on seem to wash away the fact that I don't have my luggage yet(nor does Chris). Hopefully, I'll go downstairs in a minute and it will have magically arrived sometime overnight. If not, I'm not sure the conference delegates want to meet and greet me in tracksuit pants that I have been wearing for the last 3 days. Ewww.

Oslo city lies beneath the Hollmenkollen Hotel, all compact around the harbour on the Fjord. It's misty and soft and I'm enjoying the cool breezes (my hotel window actually opened and I could breathe real air last night - what a treat from the usual air-con prison hell). With summer here, the little grasses have put forward their best yellow dandelion flowers, the trees are all budding and the sea of green pine forest called the Marka that surrounds Oslo just stretches on forever. All these Nordic pines are standing to attention, neat and orderly; painted in by a landscape artist intent on presenting Norway as a ecological paradise in pristine condition. I feel like I'm in a Norsca commercial. It makes our familiar Australian gum forests look like some artisan absent mindledly just scribbled them in.

The longer I sit (Bude, Cornwall)

crustyadventures — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 16:40:00 GMT

There's not a lot of bugs in England, but I just managed to sit down on a small ant hill, alive with small black creatures, scurrying & carrying their loads across the cliff top. I was trying to plant my bum firmly behind a tussocky mound so I could look out at the view calmly and not worry too much where the edge was. I've moved to the left now ... still feeling safe and these meadowy grasses providing nice comfort for the bum. Of course one questions safety at these moments for many reasons...

The Bean is strapped in her car seat, which is attached to the large rock behind me with two climbing nuts and some slings. She's sucking her thumb whilst snoozing and snuffling - obviously unpertubed by the height, but maybe a little irritated by the wind. That's the scene behind me.

The one in front sees Charlie halfway up a fin of rock, clinging deftly to some sparse holds whilst the sea crashes around the rocks below all green and churning and relentless with it's whooshing noise. Charlie's belt of rock climbing nuts and cams is slowly getting smaller as they're carefully wedged in bomber placements. Gilly's waiting below for her turn to follow behind and strip them all out again. Those two are joined at the hip - harnesses and otherwise...

So it seems that everyone's strapped to this Cornish cliff except me. The longer I sit, the more my vertigo subsides and those random, irrational thoughts of 'What if.." ebb away. Now, after settling in and scribbling these notes I can glance up and take in this beautiful rocky coastline. The meadows go right up to the edge and I'm amused by the cows who stand around all day with the best views in all Britain.

Gallery: Uk West Country

crustyadventures — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 04:21:00 GMT

Wildlife count

crustyadventures — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 16:33:00 GMT

Furry woodland creatures spotted on tour:

* Grey Squirrel, alive and well in the Westonbirt Arboretum

* Bumblebees - lots of them, but apparently in a mysterious decline across the British Isles. You've gotta rate any animal that is anatomically impossible.

* Shrew - tiny little (dead) thing with a very cute and pointy nose.

* Badger - roadkill on the way out to Wales. Still counts in my book though on account of them being unbelievable cool with a big stripe on their head and also quite rare. I'm reckoning that this is like seeing a 'Roo for our tourists.

* Bunny Rabbits - galore!

Gallery: UK Wales

crustyadventures — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 04:56:00 GMT