My Kevlar skid pad canoe repairs on a delightful overnight trip on a couple of beautiful warm days with abundant water from Kingwill Bridge to Hut Creek. We planned for a longer trip but Della began feeling unwell (and I blew up a clutch in one of the cars) so we had to cut it […]
Our Old Town Pack Angler canoes really don’t tolerate hard knocks on rough rapids well. Bruce and I tore a couple of holes in them when we came down the Macalister in late Spring (See Carpe Diem). I ordered the Kevlar to undertake these repairs back then but of course I didn’t get around to
Here’s the lightest carbon fibre Canadian I could find the Hornbeck Blackjack at 11 lbs (5 kg). An interesting alternative to a packraft (See below). Hornbeck Blackjack ($1,695-$1,795 in carbon fiber, hornbeckboats.com) L: 12′; W:30″; D: 10″, 11-15 lbs. Made in Peter Hornbeck’s pine shed just a short drive from our put-in at Follensby Pond,
Yet another lightweight shoe. This one the Sketcher Go walk claims to be only 206 grams in Mens US Size 9! Only A$99 (September 2020) so maybe worth giving them a try even just as ‘river crossing’ or camp shoes. Here’s what they say about them: ‘The leaders in walking shoe technology continue to innovate
‘Seize the Day’. There are only a certain number of them. No-one knows how many or ever will. ‘Some days are diamonds‘ as the song says – and in my (fortunate) experience, most are. Anyway one where you keep on breathing in and out has to be a good one. It was a beautiful spring
You can have some really wonderful single day packrafting adventures on Gippsland’s wonderful Thomson River. I promised to post this ages ago, but the summer fires and the coronavirus lock-down has meant I have not had the opportunity to go take a look – and I need to take a couple of more looks in
Lots of people live in flats and don’t have anywhere to store a normal kayak. It may be they don’t have a car with roof racks either but they still want to go canoeing on a beautiful silvery river on a hot summer’s day – as who does not? The folk at Tucktek have come
The Wonnangatta-Mitchell is Victoria greatest river. It rises deep in a wonderful remote wilderness that is the heart of Gippsland and finally finishes (weeks later) at the amazing ‘Silt Jetties’ where it enters Lake King. It can be canoed (when there is sufficient water, ie approx 1.8 metres on the Waterford Gauge) from the Humffray
This video had somehow disappeared from my page so I have resurrected it. Somehow I managed to video most of the trip with my late friend Steve Cleaver with a non-waterproof very old video camera. There is no editing. It is all just as I filmed and narrated it. Nonetheless I think you will enjoy
What a wonderful ruin – like something from Ozymandias. Construction of this weir at the junction of the Mitchell and Stoney creek commenced in 1881 but the weir was destroyed by floods in 1893 soon after completion and has never been repaired. Two other attempts to dam the river at Billy Goat Bend and Tabberabbera
