Camp Life

Little bit of rain is a bit of an understatement especially when your camping every thing seems wet, cold and miserable.

The clothes don't dry and your towels are wet before you even use them.

We went into town to do the wash the other day as it was the first lot of sun we had seen in over a week. Washed it all and took it back to camp to hang on the line, the sun didn't last long and the rain was on and off, then it got cold so in came the washing. 

The following day it was raining and miserable so we went back into town and put all the washing through the clothes dryer. 

Anyone who knows me knows i don't use dryers they are a huge waste of power and your clothes shrink.

Well clearly i forgot about the shrinking in my water addled mind and now all my long sleeved shirts are now 3/4 sleeves,  not to mention how short they now are i can barely tuck them into my jeans. They weren't the only things to shrink and unfortunately it was all my stuff and Andrew got away with all his clothes still the same size.

This is a bridge on New Line Road at Creewah, only after a little bit of rain. It did clean Betty's tires and rims but that was short lived, cause there is always another lot of mud to drive/slide through.

Today we went into Merimbula and picked up some LED Strip Lighting, well i can tell you they are well worth the $70 we spent. It makes night like day well almost and now when we get back after dark it makes cooking a whole lot easier than with just lanterns.

Maybe now we will stay up past 8pm, well unless its too cold that is and our nice warm bed calls to us as it has been known to do ( i swear ).

Curry Chicken for Andrew's dinner tonight but with no chicken as the chicken isn't delivered to the butcher till tomorrow. Cooked under the new lighting, oh its like Christmas......

A bit of time spent at the beach in Pambula.
The best part of going to the beach when its cold or raining is you get it to yourself.

No matter the weather, we love the beach.

Despite all the rain and shrinking clothes we are still having fun.


Happy Adventures Nicole, Andrew & Sally Girl

Camp Life

All in a days work.........

New spark plug in the chain saw.

Cutting up some fire wood.

Doing the washing.

Using the facilities.

Hanging out by the fire.

Sally Girl with her new coat.

A man's work is never done........

Happy Adventures Nicole, Andrew & Sally Girl

Camp Oven Cooking * Sausage Hot Pot

Sausage Hot Pot

This is for two but again you can size it up to however many you need to feed.

4 Sausages 

1 Tbl Onion flakes or 1/2 a fresh onion if you have it

2 cups Beef Stock

1/4 cup Rice (uncooked)

1 Tbl  Mixed Herbs

1 Piece of ham chopped or a slice of bacon

small clove of Garlic grated

a few dried mushrooms or fresh if you have them

Salt and Pepper

Worcestershire Sauce a good couple of splashes

Brown your sausages in a fry pan.
Add to your camp oven rice, herbs, salt and pepper, worcestershire, stock, mushrooms and onion if dried.
Cut up the sausages and add to your camp oven, I use a pair of kitchen scissors to cut them up so much easier.

Now fry up your ham and garlic.
If using fresh onion and mushrooms fry them at the same time until onion is caramelized.
Add all to the camp oven and place over the fire just off to the side.
Stir every 10 mins of so and turn the pot so it cooks even and does not burn on one side.
You Dont want a huge amount of flames or coles under it or it will burn and not cook.

About 40 mins over the fire give or take depending on the amount of heat, then its cook and ready to serve.

I like to serve it with mashed potato and crusty bread.

No bread this time as i have not mastered bread in the camp oven yet.

Side Note: i like to use a spicy bbq sausage. 

If your gravy is not thick enough then add a little flour and stir to thicken ( a little goes a long way when it comes to the flour).

If you dont have mixed herbs then it is also nice with 1/2 tsp Thyme and 1/2 tsp Parsley.

I made this recipe up for the slow cooker but it is heaps nicer in the camp oven.

Linked here
whats on the list

Happy Adventures Nicole, Andrew & Sally Girl

Camp Oven Cooking * Beef Stew and Dumplings

Camp Oven Beef Stew with Herb Dumplings 

This recipe is for 2, however it can be up sized to how ever many you need to feed.

250g diced Chuck Steak

3 Tbl Flour

Salt & Pepper

Oil to fry

1 Carrot diced chunky

1 Potato diced chunky

couple of dried Mushrooms or fresh if you have them

1tsp Onion Flakes

1 cup Beef Stock

1 cup water with 1 1/2 tbl Beef Stew Season

Herb Dumplings

1 cup SR Flour

Mixed Herbs

Salt

1Tbl Oil

1/2 tsp Onion Flakes

Water to make a soft dough

Mix flour, salt and pepper, use to coat meat.
Brown in the camp oven in a little oil.
Add veg and stocks.

Cook over a low heat on the fire about 45 mins
Siring and turning the oven to make sure it cooks even.

Mix up the Dumpling dough, pat it into a round about 2 cm thick and cut into pie pieces.
Add to top of stew 10 mins before serving.

I am not a fan of all those stews that have tin tomatoes, and this one has none.  It is very tasty and can also be cooked in the oven or slow cooker.
Below you will find the recipe for my Beef Stew Season.

Beef Stew Season    

If you love a rich hearty stew then this seasoning will bring out the flavour of  even the cheapest cuts of meat.

1 cup Flour

2 tsp Oregano

1 Tbl Basil

2 Tbl +1 tsp Salt

1 1/2 tsp Black Papper

2 Tbl + 1 tsp Garlic Powder

2 Tbl + 1 tsp Paprika

1/2 tsp Cayenne Pepper

1 Tbl Celery seed or ground dry celery

2 Tbl + 1 tsp Onion Powder or onion flakes

1 tsp Rosemary

Place all into a jar and shake well, don't forget to label it.

To use add 1 1/2 to 2 Tbl per kilo of meat.

Add it to your stock and mix.

Linked at

Home Acre Hop #115

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From the Farm blog hop

Home making link up

Happy Adventures Nicole, Andrew & Sally Girl

Easter Weekend Monday

The Bombala River is highlighted in yellow

The Bombala River in South East NSW starts below Brown Mountain at an elevation of 1170m and ends at an elevation of 635m merging with the Delegate River.

The Bombala River drops around 535m over its 87.4 km length.

Platypus Reserve Bombala

The Bombala River

Ah the elusive, secretive and rarely seen platypus.

 Some Platypus facts....

 They live along the banks of rivers and streams. They spend a lot of time in the water, up to 14 hours per day feeding.

*  They have a thick coat of slightly oily fur, one coarser outside hair with finer thicker under hair, which keeps them warm if the water is really cold.

*  Their strong webbed front feet pull them through the water when they are swimming. Their tails are used for steering.  They generally don't change direction underwater.

*  The bill is soft and rubbery and has 2 holes that are their nostrils near the end. The bill is very sensitive and is used to find their food on the bottom of the river. 

*  The platypus likes to eat worms, shrimps and small crayfish.

*  They must come up to the surface to breathe. They drown if they get caught in underwater fishing nets or crayfish traps.

*  They live in shallow holes in the banks of the river during most of the year.

*  When the female is going to lay her eggs, she digs a long winding burrow in the bank.  The entrance to the burrow is small so the mother has to squeeze through and this acts as a scrapper to remove all the excess water from her fur before reaching the platypups.

*  Females lay up to 3 eggs. When they hatch, the babies lick milk from the fur on their mother's stomach.

*  Six months later they'll have learnt to look after themselves and they'll have to find their own quiet bit of riverbed.

For those who have not seen a platypus 

this is a stock photo not one i have taken.

Happy Adventures Nicole, Andrew & Sally Girl

Easter Weekend Sunday

Sunday we went into Eden for lunch at one of the takeaway shops on the boat harbour. There were a lot of people lined up so thought it would be good. 25 min wait it was crazy.  

Went down to Boyd Town to eat and a walk along the beach.

FYI the lunch was not worth the 25 min wait time. Next time we will go to the place that has no line up.

We decided to drive down to Mallacoota in Victoria and go to the beach.

Mallacoota was place that Dad and Andrew wanted to go to for years and they never made it there.

It is a very cute seaside town with more accommodation than permanent residents.

The tide was on its way out of the little inlet.

So this is for you Dad....

The beach was pretty nice, i think we will visit Mallacoota again.

Betka beach

Happy Adventures Nicole, Andrew & Sally Girl

Easter Weekend Saturday

We started off our day by going into Delegate, it is very close to the boarder. After that we went into Bendoc which is just over the boarder in Victoria. 

Below is the Bendoc hall and beside that is a picnic area with a BBQ, tables and chairs, toilets and free showers. it is pretty impressive that such a small town has free showers.

We went into Bendoc to have a look at a property, it was about 5 mins out of town on a road that is closed due to snow 3 to 4 weeks a year.
The property was empty but there turned out to be someone staying there. The place said 2 bedroom cottage with solar panels and a water tank, plus another cottage out the back.
Well this place turned out to be straight from a horror movie, there was junk and rubbish every where it was surround by huge gum trees so it made it dark pretty much all the time. the solar panels dont work the cottage was very rundown and the back cottage was down right scary. Andrew went in there while Sally and i stayed out side, we didn't like it one bit. on my way back to the car as we were walking through the bracken i had a leach attach it self to my leg, Gross.... I was very glad when we left there.

At first when we saw it Andrew thought it was a wild pig as we just saw the back end.
It turned out to be some sort of deer, (no we didn't hit it)
Dad wanted to see pictures so these are for you Dad.

We decided to head on down to Orbost, we didn't go down on the Monaro HWY, that was the good way it turns out. 

We went down Bonang Road, 75 Km of winding mountain road. 

Lucky it was a long weekend or we would have had log trucks barreling down on us, as it was, it was pretty deserted. How ever it took us a good 2 or more hours to make it into Orbost.

With out a doubt the best thing about this road was the creek and road signs, i didn't get to photograph them all as some places there was nowhere to stop.

So here are just a few, there was also a Dead Bull Creek to go with the Dead Calf Creek.
A Pumpkin Hill and a Pumpkin Hill Track.
There were a few more that i cant recall now.

 

This was a rest stop on the way down with a little creek running along side.

The only thing i can say about Orbost was the lady at the information center was very nice
and had a few good yarns and suggestions on places we could buy down there. Oh and they had a goose who lives at the center and wondered around where it liked.
Next we headed on down to the beach at Marlo, it was the place to be for fishing cause there were a lot of people doing it.
Not on my must see beach list as it wasn't very impressive at all, hence the fact that there are no photos.

 We then headed on down to Cann River again we had come down here the day day before as well.
Its a cute little town with 3 motels and one Pub Hotel all on one street.

It has a pretty good kids park/ play ground with clean facilities there is a picture in the men's toilet that i will post another day.

At the only service station/ truck stop in town this is one of the signs out the front, if you haven't noticed i'm a bit of a sign junkie i love odd and unusual signs.
This one however could mean eat at your own risk. Saying that Andrew loves their coffee, ( yes hes back on the coffee.) They also have the cheapest diesel around.

It was a very big day, we headed back on the Monaro Hwy.
It was just starting to get dark when a baby wallaby hopped out on the road luckily we missed it.
And about 10 mins later there was a wombat idly crossing the road didn't even speed up when it heard us coming, not a care in the world. I think that is why we see so many of the dead on the side of the road.

 Happy Adventures Nicole, Andrew & Sally Girl

Exploring

Yesterday afternoon we finally built our fire pit, took about 1/2 hour or so to dig up enough rock.

This is now where we not only cook and boil the billy but also where i blog and Andrew does what ever he does..... look for property, brows the net and make phone calls.
We are pretty lucky to have phone reception at our camp site, sometimes its limited but we work around it.

Today we went river exploring.

This is Little Plains River, Andrew threw in a line but not a bite to be had.

Where ever Andrew goes Sally Girl has to go as well she is becoming quite the explorer.

These last two pictures are the Delegate River, not far from where we are staying, however we were informed that this was private property so we didn't stay to do some fishing. It was very beautiful, if only every one could wake up to this every day.

Happy Adventures Nicole, Andrew & Sally Girl