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Hi all,
Recently, my lovely wife and I and our dog George senior, completed a well deserved, two months caravan holiday.
This is our rig.

We travelled from here ( Armidale) across the state to Broken Hill, then on to Lake Eyre, where we took a flight over the southern part of it to see all the water.
We figured that at our age, 60, we wouldn't get another chance to see it flooded, as it happens very seldom.

We battled the headwinds all the way across the Nularbor plain, to get to Norseman, then down Highway 1 to Albany, old home of Whaling in WA.
This is a pic of the last Whaling boat that was used there. The whole of the old Whaling station is now a museum.

On the way, across the Nularbor, we detoured to Head of the Bight to see the Southern Right Whales there.

This shot is of a juvenile Shy Albatross, I think.

We spent some time in the SW corner of Australia, looking at some lovely countryside and photographing the wildflowers my wife had come to see.
This is just one of the hundreds that I photographed.

I tried doing some fishing, but as usual the wind and tides were against me,

, but I did manage to catch one little Australian Salmon. It was delicious.

One of the many birds we saw.

We got sick of the wind and rain, so headed back inland to see some of Australia’s desert that we both love.
Hundreds of Budgies, looking for nesting hollows, entertained us at a morning tea break.

Camped at a lovely place in the sand hills, but the storms were chasing us, so we headed for the sealed roads again.

Checked out Kalgourlie then back to Norseman and back across the Nularbor with favourable winds this time. Yay!

We went up to have a look at the Flinders Ranges and Wilpena Pound.
This is the southern aspect of the Pound, taken from a station campsite.

It’s beautiful country up there and we are going back for a better look next time.
We camped near a dry creek bed, just south of the Flinders Ranges National Park, for a couple of days and my wife cooked a beautiful Zuccini Damper in a stone oven that I built from the water worn rocks.

It was delicious.
Here is a photo of a Velvet Gecko ? that was under one of the rocks.

Back to Broken Hill again, but this time we headed NE through Willcania to Lightning Ridge, where we stayed for a couple of days at a station campsite. It very nearly turned out to be a couple of weeks, as a big storm hit the place and we were camped on black soil. We managed to get ourselves out of there before the next storm hit.
This shot was taken at the Tilpa Weir on the Darling river.

Being well ahead of schedule, I phoned Fatboy 404 and we were invited up to his place for a couple of days. He lives in a western Queensland town that I lived in back in the early ‘60’s and I wanted to show my wife some of my history. The old house we lived in was gone, but the town hadn’t changed all that much except to get bigger.
This shot is of a tree’s roots exposed in the last flood out there.

I had not taken a firearm on our trip, because we were going to visit three other states and I had no permission to hunt in any of them, but I did take my 65lb recurve bow with me and also some cedar, broad head tipped, arrows. I don’t hunt with a bow very often, but I knew that if I got close enough I could nail something.

Fatboy 404 kindly took me out pig hunting in some sandy, Black Cyprus pine country. He had his two pig dogs, Duke and George junior, with us and we covered a few k’s before seeing any game.

I had been stalking a large, dark, pig like shape under a tree for a while, till I got close enough to see that it was a dead cow and I was just about to call out to Neale, when the dogs started baying, off to my left.

Suddenly there was a lot of barking, squealing and grunting interspersed with a couple of shots from Neale’s 8x68.
Off to the right of the kerfuffle, George jnr had grabbed a young pig and was mouthing its neck in an attempt to get hold of it. It escaped twice from his inexperienced jaws and by that time I was near enough to put an arrow through the little sucker, when George jnr let it go for the third time.

This, believe it or not, was my first bow shot pig. It’s only a little one but hey, a bloke’s gotta start somewhere.

Neale shot a couple more pigs and I missed another chance at one when it saw me before I could get close enough.

After a very pleasant couple of days with mine host, we travelled to Toowoomba to visit my two married daughters and their respective families.
We were getting close to the home stretch of our holiday, but there was one more important port of call on the way.
We had met Neale's parents who were up at Neale's place for a 21st and they very kindly invited us to stay at their farm on our way home.
Arriving at the farm, we quickly set up camp in the old wool shed. It had rained up at Neale’s place, so he had taken the opportunity to come down for a quick visit with his daughter. It also meant that he could take me hunting and fishing on the home ground.

We tried fishing for Golden Perch, in the river, but had no luck. I did see a fish shape follow my lure, but that was all.
The next day he took me goat hunting and this time I was given a rifle to use, as the shots would be too long for the bow.
We headed out on the 4 wheelers and cruised around the country side looking for all these goats he’d been bragging about. I have a track record of the day’s hunt, on my GPS and it looks like kids scribble on a piece of paper.

Neal finally spotted some goats on a hillside, so we stalked them and I shot a Nanny +kid, using the fence as a rest.

Two shots, two goats with Neales 6-223.

This is supposed to be my 1,000yd stare.

The goats were brought home, cleaned and hung in the cold room.

We couldn’t catch any fish in the river, so we tried our luck in one of the many dams on the property.
It must have been my day, as I caught a few nice Golden Perch and my host caught nothing. He even borrowed my rod without any success. Mustn’t have been holding his tongue right.
I missed my chance of a great photo of Neale nearly falling into the dam, trying to retrieve a fish that he had just dropped. It just happened to be the biggest one too.
This is the dam we were fishing in.

Golden Perch are a beautiful sport fish and are delicious as well.

This next photo has a funny, painful story connected with it.
See the bandaid on my left arm?

A couple of pix up, George Jnr is inspecting my catch and we are best mates because of what happened earlier.
After Neal & I had been trying to catch some fish in the river, we came back home and Neale leant his spinning rod, with minnow lure attached, up against the chopping block in the back yard.
Neale was inside talking to his dad and I was outside talking to his mum, when I noticed George Jnr acting strangely and looking like he was trying to get the last bit of meat off a bone. When I got closer I saw that he must have inspected the lure a little too closely and had well and truly hooked himself in the upper and lower lips! The poor bugger was standing on the end of the rod and pulling at the lure.
I grabbed George by the neck, to stop him running off, and attempted to extricate the hooks from his lips. Meanwhile Neale’s mum had run inside to get him to help. I was going to try and grab the hooks with my fingers, but the thought of a hook embedded in my finger tip put paid to that, because poor George was moving his head around too much.
Neale raced to his car, to get his multi-tool, but it wasn’t there! Hes cursing and I’m yelling, because George had managed to pull the hooks from his lower lip and proceeded to embed two of the trebles barbs into the skin of my arm!!!
It was fascinating to watch the hooks go in and the tips of them come back out of my skin. Bloody hell!!
My dilemma was fixed in good order, ‘causeGeorge flicked his head again and tore the bloody hooks right out of my arm! Jeezus H Christ!!
Neale ceased the futile search for his pliers and came and grabbed the dog’s head while I staggered, on rubbery legs, over to my car and got my multi-tool, cut the hook shank and pulled the hooks out of George’s lip.
During this whole episode, the poor dog just made a tiny squeaking sound in his throat. Didn’t howl or bark or try to bite either of us. What a champ!
A bit of first aid on the arm and all was well. It has healed up nicely and left a small scar that will be the start of many a yarn in the future, I’m sure.
We had a great time and would like to thank Neale and his extended family for the great hospitality shown us. Much appreciated.
Hope you enjoyed my yarn.

Edited by AFRO408 (25/12/11 02:35 PM)