Out in the outback, where the red earth sings,
There's a guide named Kitty, spreading her wings
With a hat on her head, and boots in the sand,
She leads travellers through this wild, untamed land
But now Kitty's unable to roam those trails,
Her spirit's grounded, but her heart never fails.
The bush whispers secrets she longs to explore,
Yet she's stuck in stillness, yearning for more
Amongst the gum trees and kangaroos in flight,
Kitty once wandered, under stars so bright.
She shared tales of legends, of dreamtime and lore,
But now she's confined, behind closed doors.
But now Kitty's unable to roam those trails,
Her spirit's grounded, but her heart never fails.
The bush whispers secrets she longs to explore,
Yet she's stuck in stillness, yearning for more
The sunsets she misses, the wide-open skies,
The call of the wild, where freedom lies.
But though she's confined to the walls of her room,
Her dreams still soar, in the outback's perfume.
But now Kitty's unable to roam those trails,
Her spirit's grounded, but her heart never fails.
The bush whispers secrets she longs to explore,
Yet she's stuck in stillness, yearning for more
One day she'll return, to the outback's embrace,
To feel the earth beneath her, her heart in its place.
But until that moment, she'll hold onto hope,
And dream of the outback, where adventures elope.
As most people know Barry and myself spent a couple of seasons in the Kimberly recently. I’ve always loved the majestic boab trees, the iconic symbol of the top of WA. Mostly closely related to the baobab trees of Madagascar, the trees are difficult to age, not having regular growth rings, but are estimated to live up to 1200 years. There is a famous boab tree in Kings Park, Perth, which was relocated when the Great Northern Highway was rerouted. Gija Jumulu was placed on a flatbed truck and transported to Perth where it now lives in our amazing botanical garden (planting areas there correspond to the regions of WA so well worth a visit).
It’s hard to find young Boabs in the Kimberley because the shoots are very tasty and the cattle tend to eat them immediately. In fact, at one stage they were commercially grown for their shoots in Kununnurra but not any more. I collected boab nuts where I could find them because I always had an idea I could try and grow them in Perth. Obviously, I plant for posterity!
All the inner parts of the nut are edible. The white pithy stuff tastes a little like lemon sherbet and the small brown seeds are contained within the pith. Aboriginal folk used to roast the whole nuts in the fire and the pith would turn into a creamy custard and the seeds were roasted like chestnuts.
I thought the hard part would be germination so I scarified the seeds and soaked them in two lots of boiling water before planting them out. I only did one nut but pretty much every seed germinated. From what I can gather, if I tuck them into a warm spot and make sure they don’t get winter rain then they should carry on flourishing. I have heard that they can turned into really good bonsai or a great potted specimen.
Which brings me to me next point…I seem to have a lot of boabs started. Would anyone like one? I’ll keep them going until next summer and then repot or you can just grab a seedling. I was so keen to see if I could grow them that I didn’t pause to think whether I should and now I’d feel like a murderer if I destroyed them! I do not have room for twenty odd boabs at my place! So let me know if you’d like one; you could pass it down the family for generations!
This weekend Wayne and I took time out of a really busy schedule to join some friends in the little wheatbelt town of Corrigin. I first met Ron and Jill on tour soem years ago and they’ve travelled with us frequently. Ron runs an agricultural supplies store and looks after the needs of local famers for irrigation and steel. The store was originally a blacksmiths forge and foundry and has been running for 90 years although shoeing horses gave way to to fixing windmills!
After a lifetime of work, Ron is ready to retire and Gannaway Brothers will be no more. There was a party held to commemorate 90 years of business and to farewell it.
I made a celebratory cake.
Whenever one of our tours goes through Corrigin we always stop and say hello. One of the best things about our jobs as tour operators is that your clients become your friends. We’ve taken Ron and Jill on some great trips (they even planned a private one, taking their grandkids gold prospecting) but their favourite was a Nullarbor Explorer, where we detoured up to Maralinga and wandered all over the Nullarbor Plain. We hope to see more of them on tour now they are retired but we also know that we’ll continue to enjoy their friendship and hospitality in Corrigin. Thanks for a memorable party!
Most of our trips head out to remote areas but we usually have the opportunity to restock every four or five days or so. We carry three fridges and find that this enables us to offer a wide range of fresh food for our meals. However, our first major trip of 2023 is out to Rudall River National Park and this area is extremely remote: we are ten days without a restock. With a six passenger load and two staff that means a lot of food.
I start planning very early on. I make myself a spread sheet and I divide and number it into the days of the trip. I then mark what days I can restock on and each day is divided into three meals, plus morning/afternoon tea. I then work out my meals, based on how long fresh produce will last and when I can restock. Each meal is listed, with components. For example, breakfast would be listed as hot dish/fruit/yoghurt cereal, with the hot dish being different each day. Dinner would be nibbles (crackers/snacks/dip); soup; main (protein/carb/vegie x 2) and dessert. Lunch will be a combination of leftovers from the night before and new items but again always includes a carb, a protein and vegetables/salad.
I make sure that I don’t repeat meals and that there is a degree of variety. For example, lunches might have crackers and crispbread one day, wraps the next and a flatbread the next (I make the flatbread myself in the morning). The spreadsheet ends up looking a little like this:
It is a definite work in progress and I write little notes alongside for myself, along with any specific dietary requirements I need to adapt to. I will print and reprint this several times as I change it. I make sure that I list every component of every meal, even down to how much milk for the day and what herbs and condiments I will need. This means I need to work out how much each person will consume. Fortunately, I’ve done a lot of catering over the years and I generally find that my estimates are pretty accurate, erring on the side of generous. One thing we do not want to do on tour is starve you!
From there I take the queen bed in my spare room and I divide it into a grid system, corresponding to the days of the tour. I place a container in each square and I number the container with the tour day and I start to accumulate the dry good shopping for the trip, according to my list. There is a lot of shopping to do and I hate it so incredibly much; I find it easier to do it in small doses. So now my spare room looks like this:
I still have some more containers to get but the food items are piling up in the squares that you can see defined by the red wool.
The various items I need are measured and bagged into individual ziplock bags and the container number written on them as well as a description of their contents. If they need to be reconstituted (ie mixes that have been separated out) I will also add what proportions and any recipe needs that I might find hard to remember.
I break things down as much as possible, using my vaccuum sealer. For this remote trip, where we have to take all our rubbish out, I don’t want glass. Cans can be bashed flat, bottles and bags squashed down but glass just takes up room. Anything in glass gets put into a durable bag and sealed into a pouch.
The material comes in a long roll which you cut off. It is already sealed on the two side edges so you only have to seal the bottom and the top. I usually run a couple of seals each way for double strength. Once its sealed along the bottom you can add the contents, seal the top and I’ll label it and pop it into its relevant box.
I always make sure that all the air is sucked out of the bags by using either the ‘vac and seal’ button or the pulse button, which sucks the air out in short bursts and you then decide when to press the ‘seal’ button. The ‘pulse’ mode is better for liquids as you can stop it before the liquids are pulled into the sealing area, which makes it too wet to seal. I also add an oxygen/moisture absorber. My daughter saves these for me from her work (she deals with lots of medications).
I’ll buy the meat required for the trip the day before and I will cryovac it using this method. Cryovacced tight and kept in a fridge, it will last until the first restock.
For a trip like this one I also dehydrate a lot of my own vegetables. Years of wilderness backpacking have taught me what works and what doesn’t and I bought myself a really good dehydrator. I dry all my own herbs, quite a lot of vegetables and even use it to prove bread dough.
In this run I am dehydrating figs and spaghetti squash. Once they are dry (between 18 to 26 hours) I will vaccuum seal the, When I am drying items for rehydration, such as vegies, I will first put them inside a sturdy ziplock bag (the ones from Ikea are the best; leakproof and you can wash them out and reuse them a lot) and then the outer layer. This means that when I open it I can just put the water in the ziplock bag a few hours before and let it rehydrate without mess.
When I’ve made/bought all of the food items required from my list, I go through each box and tick the items off. Then I attach a laminated copy of the items to the outside and label the box with the day of the tour and the planned meals. This means that I don’t have to go scrambling through a lot of containers of other stuff and I know exactly what is each box. Then I load them into the trailer in the order I am going to use them.
We carry three fridges on tour and each one is allocated to a specific foodstuff: meat, dairy and fresh produce. I will buy all of these items as last minute as possible so they stay fresh as long as possible. However, we will switch over to UHT milk after the first couple of days and I will make my own yoghurt as we simply don’t have the space to carry it fresh. We can’t carry enough fresh bread (we take rye bread because it lasts the longest) so I will make dampers and flatbread as we go along.
It does seem like a lot of organisation but I’ve found that’s what works best for me. I need to have a very clear plan of what I’m doing. Because I drive as well as cook, I get pretty tired and fuzzy brained at the end of the day. If I make it idiot proof, then I don’t have to think too much! It also has the advantage that if I’m incapacitated in any way (or I can’t be on tour) then my substitute can manage.
In the East Macdonald Ranges, close to Ross River Retreat, lies N’Dhala Gorge. N’Dhala Gorge Nature Park contains Eastern Arrernte men’s sacred sites, including petroglyphs, art sites and shelter sites. The traditional owners call the area Ilwentje. The petroglyphs have been created using either a fine pecking or pounding technique, which are thought to have been used in two different periods.
As this new site has only just been opened to visitors, it wasn’t on our original itinerary but, true to our ethos, we make and take the opportunity to visit places of interest along the way, whether we knew about them before the tour started or acquired knowledge along the way.
A short 2 km walk around the gorge gives us the opportunity to site up to 6000 petroglyphs – we won’t do them all but the effort of discovery adds to the reward of sightings.
We are looking forward to the start of our remote touring.
This year we have upgraded a lot of our equipment. We bought brand new foam cell mattresses to make our stretcher beds even more comfortable and new sleeping bags. The bags are rated for desert temperatures and are very wide because there is nothing worse than feeling constricted inside a bag at night. We’ve also introduced the use of sleeping bag liners to give you another layer. Now you have the option of just using the cotton liner if it is hot or having inside the bag for additional warmth. The thermal cell mats will keep you warm as well as being comfortable and have an inflatable pillow section. This doesn’t mean that you can’t bring your own pillow; just that you don’t have to. The liners have a pillowcase section where you can tuck your own pillow into or just hook it over the edge of the thermal mat so that it doesn’t slither away in the night.
We’ve also upgraded our chairs. Now we have comfortable solid sided chairs with fixed armrests that you can push down on when getting up from the chair. They also come with a little side table that has an insert for your wine glass! Warning though, you need to make very sure BOTH hinges are extended to hold the table up – ask how how we know!
The vehicles are being serviced and all tyres checked. The trailers are being streamlined and extra fittings added. We’ve added an extra fridge to the kitchen trailer and with the new battery required to run that, it has become possible to provide a powerboard for night time charging of electrical items (but we still recommend bringing a power bank as well). But the best thing is that we now carry a capsule coffee maker. We will still use our regular coffee/tea system during the day but you now have the chance for a good cup at morning and night.
We’ve also acquired some floaty toys for those outback swims where you want to loll around a bit (Millstream, Mackerel Islands on our Perth to Broome) or float downstream (Bitter Springs on our Savannah Way tour). We are sure they will come in useful. We’re also carrying a couple of fishing rods plus tackle so if time and terrain permits, you get the chance of a fish!
kitty is working hard on the tour menus. Some of our trips this year are fairly remote and we will need to carry in all our supplies for extended periods of time so it is a bit of an effort trying to maximise as much fresh provision as possible, with limited storage and electricity, whilst still trying to keep up with an interesting and varied diet. With some of our desert trips, we will carry canned and dehydrated food as well as make our own bread and yoghurt along the way. The up side of this remote travel is that we have more chances to cook on campfires and sitting around a fire at night, under the diamond encrusted night sky, is one of life’s truly great experiences.
This year we decided to take a booth at this famous country show and hopefully display the delights of Affinity Tours to a wider audience.
Setting up on the Thursday afternoon was a bit involved as there seemed to be no officials around and everybody was trying to unload and set up their stalls at the same town. There were long queues for vehicles, you had to dodge livestock being unloaded (lots of sheep!) and cars unloading were parked in the marked bays for the vendors. We found a smart car parked in ours and a woman lifting out plants one at a time. She obligingly said she would move but didn’t pick up her pace at all and at one stage stopped to find a nail file and attend to her manicure!
Obviously, we weren’t quite so concerned with our fingernails so once we had the clear space it didn’t take us too long to set up.
Kitty’s car was part of the display (to show people how comfortable it was to travel in) and we also set up a table with tea/coffee and the fixings for morning tea, including our latest camping acquisition, a coffee maker. There were a couple of comfortable chairs, lollies and a table spread out with tour details.
We purchased a powered site and became very popular, offering phone charging for random passerbys and our neighbours: in fact, we got on so well with the booth next to us that Kitty went off shopping with them!
Our neighbour directly across the way was the famous vet Rick Fenny, who looked after Red Dog. He was selling his books and it was a great opportunity for Kitty to catch up with him as she literally was his neighbour years ago and used to babysit all of his kids!
Speaking of shopping, Affinity Tours bought a brand new battery powered chainsaw for our 4wd trips. Great for wood cutting, both for fires and for cutting trees that have blocked the route. This was a carefully negotiated purchase, with Kitty only agreeing to it with the proviso that we would have as much wood collection, and hence campfires, as possible!
It was a hot couple of days; the asphalt radiated the heat up at us and the shade was not helpful in the way it kept moving. Still, we used the heat to our advantage as we had our car fridge filled with ice water and we performed a double act, whereby Kitty would say to passing heat flushed people, “Oh, you look hot! Have an ice cold bottle of water!” and once they came into the shade to drink it, Barry started talking about our company and our tours!
We asked people to enter a competition by putting down their email address so that we could add them to our mailing list and in return they could win a free tour (Mystery Weekend) or 10% off any other tour. The actual winner of this competition was F Pritchard from Kojonup.
Highlight of the weekend was Barry getting breathalised three times as we drove into town to find somewhere to eat, couldn’t find anywhere, did a lap and returned. The copper refused to take his word that he hadn’t downed a sneaky few since the five minutes ago she had last tested him!
So that was our couple of days at Wagin. We enjoyed the country feel, made new friends and reconnected with old ones and hopefully managed to spread our word a little wider!
Barry had erected our tents at the Primary School – it was nice because we had lawn, shade and weren’t right on top of the music.
After an early dinner we picked up our passes and headed down, chairs in hand, to hear some of the music. It got quite chilly early so we came home for a hot cuppa before an early night for all.
The next morning we had a cooked breakfast before starting off with the day’s festivities. We explore the main street, watched the parade and visited the markets before returning to camp for a relaxed lunch and an afternoon snooze for some.
It was quite warm in the sun and there was very little shade at the music ampitheatre so we waited until later in the afternoon before heading back down for some more country music before dinner. Because camp was about a fifteen minute walk from the music venue Barry did shuttle runs: too far to walk whilst carrying a chair!
Again, returning to camp for a BBQ dinner and then back to the music and the headline acts. It got cold again once the breeze got up but we stayed until about ten before it got too much.
The next morning we had an early breakfast and then it was time for the bush poets competition. This was the highlight of the weekend, according to our clients. The poets easily kept everybody entertained for around four hours while Barry and Kitty packed up the campsite. Once Kitty picked up the ladies, we headed homeward, via a couple of secondhand shops, a fruit market and a stop for icecream after lunch!
And that concluded the Country Music Festival – not as big as past years but we all had!
This last weekend we headed down to Boyup Brook for the annual Country Music Festival. Kitty picked up our lovely passengers and we headed off, stopping as usual for our first-morning-of-tour special coffee at Maccas. This has been a tradition for years now and came about because of our policy of picking up passengers at their homes: by the time you do a bit of a circuit around the city, the first pickup has often been in the car for a while and a comfort stop is appreciated. So after picking up the last person (each vehicle is doing the same) we would all meet at a Central Macdonalds, introduce our passengers to each other and enjoy a coffee and get comfortable. It’s a nice way to start a trip.
This time around our Maccas was in Rockingham and from there we drove out to Harvey to pick up fresh bread supplies and while we were there we spotted an op shop. A lot of our passengers (and Kitty!) love op shops so if we can squeeze them into our itinerary along the way, without Barry knowing (he doesn’t love them!), we will. A nice little browse and then a Caseys bus stopped there as well because the toilets were across the road. Caseys were also off to the country Music Festival and around five people, who knew Kitty from her time working there, jumped off to hug her and say hello! Nice to catch up with old friends again.
We picked up some lunch in Harvey and then travelled out in the hills behind Collie to Lake Kepwari. The lake is a former open-cut coal mine formerly known as Western Five and has been developed as a community aquatic recreation facility. It has taken about five years to fill with water from the Collie River South and is now a great camp site, full of potential for water activities (Kepwari is a Noongar word meaning playing with water). The day use areas are really nice and they have set up a shelter with bar stools and counter so that you can eat while overlooking the lake. So that’s what we did!
One of the interesting things about the area is that although you are allowed campfires, they have to be in fire rings only – and the reason is a little different from regular park rules. Because this was an old coal mine there are still coal seams around and if your fire accidentally lights one, the seam will continue to burn underground and may come up somewhere totally different so that a person walking barefoot would suddenly step on a hot spot and burn all the skin off their feet.
From Lake Kepwari we took the back roads to Boyup Brook. There was no internet coverage in the area and signage was sparse so we did a bit of guessing and I guess we got it right because we ended up meeting Barry at our campsite.
We have a great little population of bandicoots that live in our urban area. I opened the back door and Bob hopped in for a visit. He cruised around a little, sampled from the cat’s bowl and hopped out again. I love my bandicoots.
