......have not had a chance to edit any pics as work has been a bitch but I had a week away earlier in March. Between the trip up there at the end of January and this one I had a dose of COVID and was still feeling the lingering effects. Honestly I slept LOTS and well, as I only do when I am in the country !!!! First afternoon I arrived and just sat there and drank some beers alone taking in the great view !!! ....more pics tomorrow as I get editing.
........ yes the 70 Series and 40 Series before it, is where the TLC gets the reputation for surviving in the worst places.
Not many pics this go around sooooo.... I arrived about 1430hrs and as I said once my gear was out of the truck and inside I just sat and watched, hard not to be relaxed at this place. About 1800 one of my friends arrived and he got unpacked. The most telling thing this trip was how much water there was around (you may be aware there have been serious floods here twice in a month this area was not one effected but they had RAIN). The creek crossings in were up and, unusually you could sit on the verandah and hear the creek behind flowing (behind as in 200 metres away). He said he was heading out to hunt in the morning and I said that I was going to try and sleep, sleep I did, close to 12hrs. I remember hearing him leave in the dark (well the gate squeak and his Nissan start) but then fell back to sleep. at some point I heard the gate again but no vehicle, footsteps and someone entering. I enquired of him "did you walk back" to which he said "I did and we can talk about that when you are up". Long story, he got caught out by a simple depression in a flat track that was wet/slippery and on which his tow hitch dug in and stopped his back tyres getting any traction (his back diff was also sitting on the ground). After a bit we took my truck out to get him sorted out. Didn't look bad but without tread boards or a shovel he was not going anywhere unaided. I couldn't pull him out backwards (as he didn't have a pin for his tow hitch and mine was too large - second time in three months this has happened - I am going to carry a smaller pin myself) so I picked my way around him, did a 20 point turn up the track (it was really wet either side and I didn't want to have to recover myself as well) and run the winch out. Took all of ten mins to have him turned around and on the way back....
A mate of mine lives in your neck of the southern hemisphere and has a Hilux all decked out for bush work thanks to his employer. Very different than how we roll here in the states. The internet doesn't have the bandwidth to describe all the ways I have been stuck or extracted myself doing field work.
Yes my best mate has a HiLux. They are all the go here as they are exponentially cheaper than a 70 Series and have more mod cons. They give up some longevity and ruggedness for it all though.
I was nominally hunting deer and hogs, the rut does not start till (about now !!) early-mid April generally and I needed no more meat in the fridge so when I was out I was only going to shoot hogs and see if any of the bucks were coming in yet. Fire two shots for two hogs, sow and a boar. Sow dropped into a gully full of stinging nettles and crap so was not going in for a pic but the boar took one in the head just before he walked behind a tree...
Over the weekend two more friends arrived (father and son). Thanks to his cooking and seemingly endless supply of food I am not sure how much weight I gained during the week... One thing that needed doing since the rain there was clearing a small tree off one of the creek crossing. So chainsaw, three people and a quad bike...
I got out each day and scouted around, this place backs onto a National Park in which they were doing a helicopter cull of feral animals, several times darning the week their chopped dropped over the range and shot the small piece of the park at the back of this valley. They were dropping deer, pigs, goats and foxes. Hard to hear the deer getting culled out when you are hunting them about 500m from that happening. I did find climbing harder on the legs/lungs than January (FU COVID) but it always beats being here in the city !!! Gratuitous shot of a fragile ESEE... And of course one cannot be without a proper knife.... No snakes this trip (unlike the issues of January) but it was till hot enough for them (other guys saw a couple up in the bush, just none around the hut). These little guys darting around my feet did scare the bejesus out of me a couple of time though....
And finally, the last night there I was sitting outside watching the moon come up over the range not at all wanting to return to the world and it's associated BS the following day...
Great trip it looks like. Hope ya recover fully from covid.Yes the BS ya find outside the bush gets higher and higher every day and is harder to deal with every day. Great to get in a trip backcountry into the real world clear of the sham called civilization
