Land Rover Owner Club of Australia
Sydney Branch trip report
Originally posted to the Land Rover Owner mailing list.
Date: Mon, 06 Oct 1997 14:40:22 -0700
From: Bill Caloccia
Hi All,
I survived the weekend camping the 'the bush'. It appears that
the colloquial usage of 'the bush' is the forest, in this case mainly
Eucalyptus trees of one kind or another, but there were some palms
about, occasional pine trees and lots of other stuff.
[Phil told me that the botanists figure that up to about
40,000 years ago the whole place was forrested with pine
trees, but the aboriginals would burn sections and afterward
the Eucalyptus were quicker or sturdier and displaced the
pine trees in re-growing.]
Friday I left Melbourne, after a day of mixed downpours and
sunshine, had a turbulant flight to Sydney, and changed to a
twin prop for the 25 minute flight to Newcastle, and arriving there
a few minutes late at 20:45. Phil Carkagis, the President of the
Sydney chapter LROC of Au was there to meet me.
[Now we'd not made any plans, and I hadn't talked to Phil 'bout
the meeting point, but then, it was kinda obvious when I
arrived. The Newcastle terminal, if you can call it that,
isn't a very big place, and there were only 12 people on the
flight, the last flight into Newcastle. So, I figured the
man wearing the shirt with the Land Rover logo was the right
one. I think he spotted be a bit further away, probably
'cause Aussies don't have Barbours, they have Driz-a-bone
jackets, then again, maybe it was the Binford Tools baseball
cap...]
We threw my gear into the back of Phil's Isuzu 3.9 diesel
powered Series III 109" and set off for the drive up to the camp,
which was only 67km from the airport, but took about 90 minutes.
The last 10km were a bit rough either due to erosion or recent logging
activities. Camp was at 32d18.796m S 152d05.094m E, 16km from
Buladelah, NSW.
There were about 8-10 vehicles (mostly families) already there
when we arrived, and the camp fire was going with most everyone
gathered about. Phil had already set up a tent for me, and all I
really needed to do was put my gear in it and unroll my sleeping
bag. He did warn me to stay out of the weeds, 'cause they found
some leaches there earlier in the day (or maybe it was the leaches
found them...)
The next morning someone went into town to meet campers
arriving on the Saturday and give them directions to the site, and
Mandy, Phil's wife, cooked up a wonderful hot breakfast, and then
a group of us set off to see 'the Grandis' - New South Wales' tallest
tree, a 76.2m high giant Eucalyptus. (Mandy was careful to point out
that
they wouldn't even rank a tree of this height in WA (Western Au),
it just wasn't tall enough to count.)
The New South Welsh stood up
for their tree, and said, well, you know how every state has stuff
it is proud of. I joked that we were going
to see the biggest ball of twine in NSW next, and then we started
joking that it probably wasn't the tallest tree in NSW, it was only
the display model, or the loggers probably left this wee tree, 'cause
it
wasn't worth taking :-)
From there we stopped at a picnic spot near a trestle of
an old narrow guage logging railway, which operated up to about
50 years ago in the Wang Wauk forest. It was the source of timber for
the Melbourne docks and used while constructing the Sydney Harbour bridge (acutally made of steel). At this point,
some of the group stayed in the area to walk the trails.
At one point we stopped for tea, and the Aussies brought
out the bush tea kettles and biscuits, it was in a cleared area
where they appeared to have logged and cut up the timber for
fence posts. Members of the expection immediately started piling
the old, dry wood into on onto the vehicles so we'd have a good
supply for the campfire that evening.
The Bush Tea Kettle...
----||---- Top - removable, fits around chimney
Owww||www| Chimney exits center top, water sits
|ww/ \ww|] around chimney and inside outer can
|w/ \w|] fire is under chimney and bottom of
|/ fire \| outer can has holes in it to allow
| box | in air. Fuel is usually small twigs
| O O O O| leaves, etc.
We went out to check out some other trails marked on the
park maps, and evenutally found ourselves well into the forest, and
making little progress as the number of fallen trees along our
path increased, and the path seemed to go away, as it was getting
along in the afternoon, we decided to head back. It turns out
that wasn't a bad decision, as we weren't on the road we thought
we were on, and were on a road to nowhere. For the most part it
was unpaved, sometimes eroded or abandoned roads, and not dis-similar
to green lane trips in the UK or the US, but it was a lot drier.
There was an occasional puddle or stream, but we didn't encounter
any vast wet muddy bits, but then it hadn't rained recently. The
only unpleasant thing was my encounter with leaches (yes, the
blood sucking type) which are a relatively common pest in the
bush, annoying and a bit messy.
We got back to the camp, and lots more folks had arrived.
There were a number of interesting characters there, and the Aussies
were quick to point me in their direction. Chris or 'Flash' as he
was called, was a Brit who'd been there for 25 years, and was driving
an '84 two door Range Rover. Stuart spent most of his life in
Michigan, packed up and moved to Hawai'i before meeting Wendy and
moving to Oz a couple years ago. It didn't take him long to find
an ex-Aussie military SIII 109", and his place in the Land Rover
World. The Aussie's said he always chose the harder path, and
if it wasn't harder, he sometimes would just end up on the track on the
right - old driving habits or something like that. Bryce had a
next to new Defender 110" TDi, and was a bit of a native character.
He'd been up to Cape York - over land, and across other bits of
the country and had a lot of tales to tell. He's got some relatives
in the Texas, and says he'll be over to visit - and I'm sure some
good stories will get started then.
A couple notes on Aussie Land Rovers
- most all of them, except Rangies, were diesels
- most all had been fitted with some form of storage facilites
- only Defender 110 TDi's are imported (no 90s and no V8s)
- there are a lot of Isuzu powered ones around, as that engine
was standard for the military and civilian LRs for many
years
Sunday we went out on some trails in a bigger group - of about 15
vehicles - from a Kia Sportage, and Toyotas
to 2 door Rangies,
109's, 110's and some rather new discoveries. Again we were off to
more trails in the state park. Stopped for Tea in the morning,
and lunch at a hill-top radio tower. Just as the trails got
really interesting, Phil and I had to bug out so I could make
my Sunday evening flight back to Melbourne. More on Sunday later,
with pictures...
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 19:31:21 -0400
Subject: Re: RROC Au Sydney
From: William Caloccia
Hi Steve, Ron, Phil, Alan, Lloyd & all,
Attended the RROC Au Sydney meeting last evening, they had about
an hour-plus of business, trip reports and announcments, let me say
a few words 'bout rovering on the net, and in the US, and what vehicles
I had, etc.
Each month the club meets at a different location, last
evening was the Great Outdoors Store on on Parrametta Road, next month
is the 4wd Warehouse. After the club business, the store showed a few
products to the club, a new lower cost tent from Southern Cross (introduced
at the 4wd expo in Melbourne last week), therma rest mattresses (foam
filled, self-inflating mattresses), and the newest coleman lanterns,
(the latest/largest dual fuel lantern now puts out 600,000cp).
Afterwards, the store was open for shopping, and they offered
discounts on purchases, usually about 10%. I picked up a couple of items,
'jaffles' (sp?) and a toast fork, but am still looking for a billie/
bush kettle as the store only carried galvanised ones, and I want a
stainless one, so I'm off to kent st, and to Gowlings tonight for
some shopping.
Bill Caloccia
Newcastle, NSW, Austrailia
November 1997
Last modified: Jan. 1998
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