Far Out, Boy Scout

I like a camp out as much as the next person but the two things that I've never been keen on, even when I was a Boy Scout, is the absence of a comfy mattress and being cold in bed. Edward only stopped for lunch at Ebor Falls, choosing to move ahead into the Snowy Mountains a bit to make their evening camp. As Edward pointed out, Snowy Mountains is something of a misnomer because they are not snowy. Denny was greatly astonished by a trifling fall of snow because he had never before beheld such a phenomenon but real snow falls there are rare.

Edward knew that moving into the mountains, there would be some shelter from the wind and certainly our first night at Ebor demonstrated the truth of that. We experienced the first real wind we'd had since Bremer Bay. A taste of home. Although as the hotel barman mused in the morning, "at least that breeze kept the worst of the frost under control." Felt pretty cold to us but our bedding is substantial so we were cosily tucked in. The second night there was no wind. Just an eerie mist, and in the morning frost on everything. It was so cold that as in Glen Innes, all the metal surfaces inside the van had ice on them. Once the sun came up though it didn't take long to thaw.

Nor are the Snowy Mountains really mountains. Rather they are the top of a plateau and as you travel through them, while the vegetation has a definite alpine feel to it, they are just a series of rolling hills. Its only when you go and take a look off the edge of the plateau, which you can at Point Lookout, that you realise how high up you are.

Trish at Point Lookout. Declared a National Park in the 1930s, this lookout does just that over the New England National Park. We could just make out the coast probably 100kms or so away. This country is so rugged that even today its wilderness. 

Another view.

Something that might amaze Edward, on the road in to Point Lookout, is this Air Navigation Facility. Located half way between Sydney & Brisbane it presumably keeps our planes aloft. There was nothing to say I shouldn't photograph it but I confess I was looking round for a Federal copper in case I was breaking one of those terrific new anti terrorism laws that help us all sleep easier these days. (I s'pose a sign would be pointless because presumably your actual terrorist wouldn't be deterred by one anyway.)

Edward wrote that he had a warm tent while poor Smith and Denny slept in the open. Such was the privilege of class? Although his tent couldn't have been much more than a sheet of canvas because he also relates that, adding insult to injury, when setting up each new camp Denny cuts poles for my tent. Presumably "stuff you boss, cut your own poles" wasn't an option. However, if it looked like rain, Denny with his tomahawk strips a sheet of bark from a neighboring tree, and this dexterously set up upon an extemporary frame of sticks, in a sort of Dutch-oven form, makes a warm though somewhat limited shelter. I wonder whether Edward would've been amused by the usage that the phrase "Dutch-oven" had taken on, 150 odd years later? (NB. For the politer reader and those in the future when current usage might have become an archaism, Dutch-oven in some circles refers to the practise of pulling bed clothes up over a bed mates head, prior to passing wind... or so I've been told.)

Edward makes no reference at all to mattresses so I can only assume they were sleeping on little more than groundsheets. Don't think I could've been part of his party. Thank god for inflatable mattresses.