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Category Archives: Uncategorized
Time to break the monotony of public transport rants and computer nerd stuff… here’s some of what Christine and I got up to over the past few weeks on our epic south-east Australian road trip!
First stop was Baw Baw National Park. It’s an easy drive from Melbourne into the southern region of the Victorian Alps, and we dropped in on a completely deserted campsite for a quick overnighter. Took a chance on a track marked 4WD onlyand got lucky… it was a little hairy but nothing most cars can’t handle. Wouldn’t have stood a chance getting out in the wet!
Track to the Aberfeldy River Campground
Dropped in on the old mining town of Walhalla as well… it’s still a popular weekend tourist town it seems, a few stores and an old diesel train keep the place alive. Camping is allowed in a few areas, although we prefer to hit up more remote locations.
Walhalla Train Station - myki readers not yet installed
We went on a short walk to Mushroom Rocks, which proved quite elusive. No idea if we actually saw them or not… didn’t encounter any signs, although there were definitely some nice rocky outcrops.
Enroute to Mushroom Rocks
Next we headed further East, stopping briefly at Lakes Entrance to both reassure ourselves that we didn’t want to stay there and also to do a quick map check for some nearby free camping. We found a great little spot at the mouth of Lake Tyers with free camping in a state forest. No toilet facilities, but a great view of the sun setting over the water and again barely anyone else around.
Lake Tyers
Day 3 – we were pretty excited about getting to Croajingalong National Park, as we planned on having a few nights there instead of having to pack up the tent every morning. What a beautiful place! Apparently it’s so popular after Christmas that you have to enter a ballot to get a campsite, but once again we hit the jackpot and there was barely another soul around. The Wingan Inletcampground gave us access to a few decent sized walks, as well as a stunning beach and the inlet itself.
Boardwalk leading from the campground to the beach
Some crazy purple things we found - anyone?
Strollin' at the beach
View of the beach from Rame Head
This friendly guy dropped in at the campsite for a chat
Next stop was Bermagui, where my cousin and her husband have recently made a sea-change from Sydney. Kicking around eating and drinking was all we got up to there, which suited us fine…
We spent about 4 nights in Batemans Bay over Christmas, Mum recently purchased a massive house down there to fit the whole family in. More relaxing, drinking, swimming and chillin’ with the family… good times!
New Years was spent in Canberra with my brothers family.. we walked down to the Lake for the 9pm fireworks… unfortunately the fireworks were set off in the City… whoops. Plenty of people made the same mistake and swiftly rotated their folding chairs to a new bearing.
Oh yeah… the 2nd of Jan was my 30th birthday!! Organised a shindig at my brothers place to get everyone together, surprising how many Melbourne peeps happened to be in town as well. Party was cranking… largely thanks to Tommo and Juz spinning tunes, and the AWESOME present given to me by my lovely lady… check this shniz out: 
It’s a programmable colour laser… like a smaller version of what you see in night clubs. It’s completely off the hook, fill a room with smoke (using a smoke machine, not a bag of weed of course)… and you’ve got yourself an instant party!
We hung around in Canberra for a wedding on the 7th Jan, and had planned on returning to Melbourne over 2 days with another night of camping, however we both fell violently ill on Sunday morning and had to stay in bed all day. This meant that the dreaded Hume Highway was the logical choice for the drive home on Monday, which wasn’t as bad as I remember it, partly thanks to all the bypasses, and partly thanks to the audiobook we were listening to.
Back in sunny shitty Melbourne now… although we’ve managed to plan another escape to Trentham to visit some friends on Friday night. Happy New Years everyone!
I spent Sunday in the backyard swearing at the lawn mower. A number of rainy weekends in a row, combined with the fact I work during the week, meant that the lawn had been substantially neglected. I fired up the mower to tackle the waist-high grass in the back corner of the yard, and after about 20 seconds the sound of a machine gun rang out through the neighbourhood.
It was, of course, a brick being chewed by the blades – actually it was more like the blades being chewed by the brick.
To make matters worse, when I attempted to restart it, I yanked the starter cord straight off, and had to spend the next 30 minutes opening up the top of the mower and re-threading it. Good times.
I’m never quite satisfied with the lawn – mainly because we don’t own a whipper snipper. It got me thinking, those guys who buy all the tools they need to avoid renting or borrowing gear must spend thousands of dollars at Bunnings. Also, the percentage of time their tools are in use compared to being stored in the shed must be around 0.1%.
Sounds like the perfect candidate for a neighbourhood co-operative to me. Tool sharing has been going on since the dawn of agriculture. Even today in rural areas, farmers band together to create sharing arrangements to reduce equipment costs, particularly when they are all farming the same produce.
It’s quite typical of the modern day materialist city slicker to want a brand new Makita of his own, in fact the advertising even reinforces it. Don’t get me wrong, I own a bunch of tools, and probably couldn’t survive without a cordless drill and a tape measure of my own, but I can’t think of anything more painful than forking over my hard earned for a bit of gear that’s going to get fired up once every six months.
So I’m thinking of starting a tool sharing program (or co-operative) in Northcote, my local area. It sounds like a lot of work to get it off the ground, but if I can recruit a few friends to help get the word out, I’m sure that there’s plenty of people who’ll get involved.
Here’s some interesting resources I’ve already found:
- Darebin Community Grants – A kickstart from the local council wouldn’t hurt
- Start Your Own Tool Share – A great article on the benefits of tool sharing
- The Co-operative Start Up Manual – Can’t believe I found this, it’s even based on case studies of co-ops formed in Victoria (rural ones)