Tag Archives: Camping

Red Centre Trip – Day 1

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Claire is currently based in Alice Springs and her and I had a week off from classes. So I flew up to see her, and we took a prebooked trip to see the red centre. Day one was about 5 hours driving, a view of Mt Conner, to a walk to Kata Tjuta, and a sunset view of Uluru.

The bus ride was fairly ordinary, but that will happen, and Mt Connor (often referred to as the fake Uluru was alright). We got to the camp and there was way too much stuffing around, picking up people’s whose flights were late, and we missed half of Kata Tjuta. Pretty ordinary of the company I thought. But it was great:

Next we were hurried away to see the Uluru sunset, which was very impressive

Great fun and we retired for the night at camp. It was cold, and we got to sit around the fire – great fun!

Cape Conran – Day Three

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Up early again on the last day and it was once again pretty cold on the water. Once again there was a line up at the boat ramp. I went down to see if anyone needed help in an effort to get us going a bit faster. The answer was that everyone did. Quite amazing how many people were putting their boats in danger, but anyway. We soon got underway and went back to the gummy shark place. There wasn’t anything for a while until BANG I locked up on something large. Unfortunately it stuck itself to the bottom and refused to budge, as I slowly dragged it up, I was pretty sure it was a skate. Well, I will take a bit of bit of action and a free knot/drag test, so I got it to the surface and got my gear back, before sending it on its way.

The amusing story for this was that I managed to get a small live baitfish for bait. Dad managed to get a live crab. We put both down there to see who could attract the gummy. After a while I couldn’t feel my fish moving, so I wound up to see what had happened and the crab was eating him! Aside from getting a massive tangle, he had taken my baitfish’s head clean off.

After that we went to the flathead spot. All of a sudden I was on fire. I pulled up about 5-6 flathead in a row, Dad didn’t manage any and the skipper had one or two. I used Dad’s old joke against him, asking if he needed me to show him how to hold his rod. Soon we went back to the mark and things got a bit quiet. It seemed it was quite difficult to figure out how to drift. The next move yielded great results, we were taking them up very regularly. I got my first double header, unfortunately the second flathead managed to wrap his tail around the braid so badly I gave up on getting it apart, and had to retie up during a gold 5 minutes of fishing.


Notice the braid wrapped around his tail, very annoying

We only had a few hours to fish, as we were out by 1pm so we could get on the road back home. I did manage to get a Red Butterfly Gurnard fish, who wrapped himself around Dad’s gear. I was a bit disappointing when I got him to the surface, as I thought he was going to be a monster, but actually I was dragging an extra sinker as well.

Caught:

A bit hard to say. I think I likely got around 15 flathead and the gurnard. The skipper got one gurnard too, probably 10 flathead. He got a few thumpers, I didn’t manage to get a real “photo flathead”. Dad got a bit less than him I think. All in all it was similiar fish than the day before, but it much less time. Minus the Gummy of course.

And that was it from Cape Conran, but I certainly would be keen to go back! Great fun.

Paradise Valley 2016

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Every Easter a group of us head down to Paradise Valley for a camping trip. It is so refined now that we take a kitchen sink. It really does make the dishes easier to do. Anyway this trip has been going on before I was born, I really look forward to it each year.

This might be the last year, though we have been saying that for a while. The people who own it are getting older and having trouble putting it on. And so it goes.

Got down there Thursday a bit later than we planned. Claire and I put there tent up and we were right on the river.

Friday & Saturday were gloriously sunny days, we made the most of it. I went for a swim each day except Thursday, which is really rare. Although when we were kids we used to swim for hours at a time, never getting colder.

Very happy after the Kangaroos had a win!

Otherwise it is a lot of food, beers and laughs. “What is like a sheep but black and white” Claire asked in a game of articulate. The answer is cow of course. These are always the longest and most fun trips, but the hardest to write about. The weather really made this trip, it was the first since I moved back to Melbourne. Definitely a lot of fun. Hope we get to do it again.

Long Weekend in Lake Tyres

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So I have officially moved to Victoria. We had a few days off so we asked my parents what their plans were. They were camping at Lake Tyres for several nights, so we decided to head down. I even managed to get my sister and her partner down as well, it was sort of an impromptu family camping trip.

We got down there Saturday and set up. Quite an amusing moment when we realised that we had never set up the outer on our tent before! You don’t really need it when camping in the dry season of Kakadu. Summer in Victoria is a bit different, you never know when it might rain. I have to say the tent looked rather new.

Had some fun on the beach the first day. It has been a long time since I have swum in the surf, something I really love. It was great to be among the waves again.

The next day Dad and I decided to do some land based fishing in the hopes of getting a flathead or two. He used bait, I tried my smaller soft plastics. He got a few bites, but we didn’t get anything. It was a shame we didn’t have more time, as we mostly spent it driving around and finding a few really cool locations.

Overnighter at Jarrangbarnmi / Koolpin

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Seeing Jarrangbarnmi (which used to be called Koolpin Gorge) was at the top of my list of things that I wanted to see up here. It was cancelled on us once before, because they couldn’t remove a croc. And all the permits were booked out the last time we tried to go. We decided to book the permits for one night on Saturday and Sunday. It was nearly 5 hours from Darwin, but it was worth it.


That rock is much higher than it looks in the photo

We got there, set up, then went to have a look at the river. It was amazingly clear. There was no swimming here because of possible crocodiles, but it was nice to see. The only thing that irked me a little about the campsite was the massive section reserved for ‘tour groups only’  which is fine, except there weren’t any. Meanwhile the other permit holders were forced to set up next to each other. We had run out of time to do the walk to the Gorge, so we just had a few drinks, watched the sunset, set the fire up and had dinner. Later that night we experienced this strange sensation I had not felt since being in Victoria… I remember it was called… cold?


With beanies by the fire

The next morning we packed up and headed to the Gorge itself. The walk… is… not very well signposted. It would be, if you decided to read the map that you were given. But since we had been down to river and there was a big sign about the walk, and a well worn trail, I assumed that was the starting place. Maps are stupid anyway. After about an hour we hit a trail marker, which meant that
a) There were trail markers, and
b) We had not been on the trail

After that we got to the pink pool, the smaller and easier one to get to. After our long walk across a lot of rocks we decided to swim and eat here before moving to the black pool upstream. We were the only ones around which makes things that much better. We had a long swim involving jumping off some rocks, and just generally lay around. Claire was having some trying to take photos of me jumping off the rocks. She was finding it hard to time which meant I probably did it twenty times in a row. It was pretty funny, and of course, a lot of fun!

I went for a walk to check out the black pool. It was amazing, far larger than I thought it would be. I sort of regretted having spent the day in the pink pool, but the way that I figure, it gives me an excuse to go back.


The black pool

On the way back going across the correct track markets, it took about 15 minutes. Whoops. Otherwise everything went well, the new car suspension was fine, I used the roof rack for gathering a large amount of firewood and that worked well. It was great to get away, even if it was for the night, and now I’ve been to all the swimming spots in Kakadu.