Psychaesthetic

Sorry yeah location info would be good. I been flat-out all day and tonight I got the last pack-and-strap to do for the morning, but I'm checking in regular.

I plan to go due south to Mt Solitary, where the overhangs and escarpments can provide shelter from rain and hopefully wind, thrn see where I go from there. I just have to find the easiest track down into the Jamison from town really.

I've stopped at my mothers place a few days so I have the chance to offload deadweight, like the second sleeping bag, that's gone now. I doubt very much there'll be any mobile reception in te valley, but even if there was, the powermonkey solar charger can't keep both the ipad and Oregon charged, and the GPSr takes priority. That's about all I'll have as it turns out, in terms of electronics. The Garmin Handheld GPSr. Course I'll have my phone, and will probably take the ipad, but they might's well be rocks in my bag, maybe I'll be able to charge and use em in town when I go in. *shrug*

Well, with a too-hot-inside jacket and top layers, I've grabbed long-johns, some thin but quick-drying adidas training/trackies and sealed waterproof nylon outer pants, Plus a dry bag for a dry change of clothes and socks, And a maplefire hiking stove and canisters. Reakon I'm good to go. All I need tomorrow is some food shopping and some backpack repacking and I'm good. On Saturday I will be in the Blue Mountains! Word is there's been snow in thr mountains last few daya or something, but whatever: too much planning for some snowy coldness to stop the process. ;)

As some of you might know, I am outta here soon, and am lookimg for a good home for the following, healthy plants. All are about a foot tall: 2 x Coffea Arabica 2 x Camellia Sinensis (Black Tea - proper drinking tea I mean) 1 x Coffea Arabica cv Amarillo (Dwarf Arabica) 1 x Hawaiian Baby Woodrose (Argyreia Nervosa) I'm also happy to throw in: * An almost full 800Ltr Certified Organic seaweed fert (eco-seaweed), * Almost new bottle of eco-calmag (Certified Organic again) * And a $50 5Ltr Hozelock Application sprayer (Made in England) that's only been used a few times * And a half bottle of eco-neem - cert. Organic pure Neem Oil. Now, these are all free, for anyone who lives in the Adelaide area and wants them, on one condition: you have to pick em up, and before next Wednesday. Pm or reply if you want em. The plants are very healthy, and have been fed 100% organic ferts and worm castings for th past 6 months. Oh I also have a tub of compost worms I'd love someone to take too, because I'd feel really really sick to my stomach thinkimg aboit tem being forgotten aboit where they are, left to starve. The woman who'll be here when I go won't take care of any of these, she's just never cared much aboit plants, so I have to find a home for all of the above where they'll get a chance to reach some kind of potential :D Anyone want to come grab em, you can just pick-up and go, so just set a day and I'll give you my address. Cheers!

Well, the latest update is I'm on the bus for Sydney. Upon arriving, I'll stop at my Mothers place just to store my laptop and other non-camping/hiking stuff, re-organize and re-pack mybackpack, grab some food and a few gas cannisters for the stove, and get on a train to Katoomba.

I want nsw cos it's my home state, and it's greener and I prefer the climate, but there're cheap little towns there too. Sydney's just a stopover at my Mothers a few days while I book the next lot of tickets and drop my laptop and other valuables off.

Having said that though, the few months extra were to be used to research the best clothes to keep be warm out there. So without those few months, I have nothing warm enough or waterproof/resistant to wear out there at all. Be in Sydney mo day though, so maybe I'll look up clothing stores there.. See what I can find before I go wherever I end up going.

Well, a week ago She screemed for about half an hour solid, because I ate two Easter Eggs out of a basket meant for someone else. Called it a "crime" and "theft" etc,,. And she's been as hysterical as that for a while now, so it's pretty hard to think of it as losing anything much far as she's concerned. The dog though. I haven't even been patting the dog when she runs to me, cos it makes me tear up every time.

Well I feeel good about that. I reakon they'll be fine where they've gone

Oops. Don't know if you got that, but 10:30's fine. I gotta get to the shops the afternoon though to stick money in the bank and book a ticket. *sniffle*

Yeah nah gone quick as that, 'fraid.

Nvm, they've been spoken for! They're going home with the original recipient-carer ;)

I also get the urge to throw my ipad at the wall and start breaking shit, but that's probably to be expected when confronted with such a low bitch act.

Alright so having vented my disgust I'll update the thread, since it's been a while. With maybe a month left to go and two-three items of kit to procure before I get on my way to Sydney, this bitch has - in the space of two days - got one of her ex-bfs to come and rekindle the flame while I'm still fucking here, and told me I have until next Thursday to get out. She knows I'm almost ready, but not quite, and as a result of the snake act, come Thursday, rather than heading off to live the dream, I'll be heading off to homelessness. The new guy's no upgrade: a foot shorter than me, and 20 years older, he sits in the corner reading books for hours on end and mumbles as he talks - shifting from foot to foot like a dumb-fuck kid in trouble with the teacher or something. Everytime he skulks near me I wanna grab the cunts head and slam it in the fucking wall. So I can go to the Mountains, without the stove or water filter, or warm clothes, or be homeless. Fucking slag.

Also, I'm looking at some of the old haunts of my younger days, up and down the mid-north coast, and figure no matter how secksee the Mountains are, just touring that one area could get a bit mundane, so I'm going to plan seperate 'legs' of the journey. This way once/if I end-up sick of moving about hiking round the world heritage national park, I'll have pre-planned my exit from there. Cartodraft map delivery is staggeringly fast, shockingly fast, no really I ordered the last three 25K topos in late afternoon, from their Sydney store, and it was in the mailbox here in Adelaide the next morning. I was agape, I've never known anything to be delivered cross country in 12hours. Anyhow, once I've picked the alternate/additional coastal destinations, I know I won't have to wait a week let alone several (*cough*-Torsten-*cough*) ;) I've moved the departural 'D-Day' back a little, too. I set a deadline of mid-winter because I'd rather freeze than sweat constantly, and I want to have time to get into it well before sprong arrives. Edit: I'm also re-configuring wordpress and re-enabling the post-via-email feature so I can upload photos etc right from my phone, without the need for all the bullshit comes with logging-in etc: all I'll need to do is take pics, stick em in an email with some text, and email it to the site. Cron will process incoming mail into posts every 10 minutes on the dot.

While I'm here, I've added a 12V 9000mAh solar-charged battery and panels to keep my handheld devices running, and testing the device (PowerMonkey Extreme 12V) in the mild autumn sun I've had approx. 10-15% charge per hour out of the device. It won't replace an AC charger, and power will still be limited, but from full I can recharge my phone 4 times (~20% per full phone charge) from one full charging of the 9KmAh battery. The GPS and lantern rechargables take about the same to recharge 4 at a time, and the iPad(3) charges fine, but sucks the juice pretty heavily. I'm still deciding on a water filter, and though I originally figured the LifeStraw Family was a reliable option I've since found other - smaller and lighter - filters at almost the same price. The lifestraw family has a massive bucket that gravity-feeds water and would just be far too bulky. I also grabbed an entry-level GPS receiver, but regret that now I've found out they're giving topo maps for the entire country away free in 610 and 710 models, so I'll go with the 610, knowing the AA batteries can be recharged with just 1 hour of sunlight. I've been experimenting with the dried food I'll be taking too and noticed some dried veges take forever to re-hydrate and almost as long to cook, but I'm working out a short-list for food, and planning my routes. I'll plan alternate routes, and aim to zig-zag across thr mountains between towns, giving myself a few days between, and marking all points of interest that can be visited along the way. The tent only takes 20mins to setup, and half an hour maybe to pack away, and that speed will increase the more I do it.

Mildura, sadly, is over a thousand kilometers from my destination, and simply gaining cheap accomodation and part-time work isn't what I'm aiming to do. But thank you anyhow, nice of you to offer ;)

..and relaxing after all the strain of anchoring the tent down, by sitting.. Sorry bout the angles, it's right-way-up in the photo-viewer. Wish She could come with me!

Canine lupus familiaris helping by holding the tent down thus saving me the effort of pegging it down

This half a year i spent on a huge property in the middle of nowhere years ago had no water outside of a rainwater tank. Huge tank, but the meshing at the top had long ago been destroyed and the entire tank was crawling with mozzie wrigglers. Didn't even take us a week before we got sick of filtering em out and started drinking it wrigglers and all. You could see em twitching around in your bottle as you drank it, and nobody got sick. Granted, I wouldn't be so carefree now, but most the .1micron filters will strip out any and all pathogens, so it's really only chemical contaminants I have to worry about.

A quick Google uncovered the "Biolite" stove range. Not only do they burn on any combustable fuel at hand, they generate electricity while they do it, allowing charging of electronic devices whether you're cooking or not, long as you're burning shit, it charges. Amazing the range of options available.

I figure I'll take the family sized lifestraw or similar with a .1 micron filter, as well as a portable burner - though i haven't decided which will give me the most flame for the weight/space it occupies, and I've already got the 2lre stainless billy and Iodine: on the off-chance the filter dies or the boiling can't happen and I get desperate enough to drink iodinized water. An actual fire would be most efficient, but a great number beautiful places only allow portable stoves. The issue is the number of hours a canister of fuel will give me: if it's only 4 hours, it's impractical, but then again a pot of water only takes a few minutes to boil. I did grab some solid-fuel fold-up stoves while I was out a few weeks ago, but having tested them a few times on packet soup, bakes beans and water I've concluded they're garbage. Each tablet of fuel only gives about 8 minutes or flame, and although the fold-up metal stove weighs nothing, the fuel tablets weight-in like sugar, very dense and heavy. So I'll read-up on which gas burners and cannisters are modt efficiant and order the winner.

Wrap that up with the fact there's not a human alive who's not a hypocrite, and anyone who claims otherwise is delusional.

Yeah we already discussed the hypocracy of switching from vegetarian to meat-scoffer back on page 2. I'll rephrase that: I won't have access to the mass of food stores or resources needed to maintain a healthy diet without meat, and cannot take a trailer-load of high protein/iron foods, so I can either buy already dead animal before I go, or have a bash at killing local wildlife. That being said, I'm quite confident I have the patience and sneakiness to stalk-down animals, but won't have any ranged weapons with me, so jerky it is!