GPS Coordinates : S 30 50.267 E 151 01.419

You travel North north west from Sydney for about 7 hours – Through the Hunter wine region and then through the Country Music capital of Australia – Tamworth.

Just south of a small town called Bendemeer you turn off the main road and onto a dirt track that goes west into the mountains.

This time it was 2 of my mates from work, Mark and James that joined me on the long weekend away. I was keen to learn a bit of Australian bush cooking from James that had his Australian camp oven that looks like a South African potjie pot but with a flat bottom. So apart from lots of good food we planned to do a bit of pig, goat and rabbit shooting.

30+ in the shade made it a bit hot for walking outside the normal early morning and late afternoon breaks from the heat, so the rest of the time was devoted to target shooting and staying hydrated

James got his first Bendemeer Billy goat, and the boys got a few rabbits for the pot.

You’ll see in the photos a strange looking critter that looks like the freshwater version of a small crayfish called a Yabbie. We caught them in a Yabbie trap over night. You bait them with a piece of sausage. I could not believe the numbers – we must have caught 50 of them in a creek that was no more than 20 cm deep in most places. We cooked the Yabbie’s in my potjie – dead easy, fresh boiling water, you through them in and wait 10 min. When they come out they are red in colour. You eat the tail, just like a crayfish.

We also cooked some rabbit and a bit of goat in the camp oven – the rabbit was delicious, I am not a big fan of goat meat but if there was nothing else to choose from it will do.

James is also qualified in using commercial grade explosives. The next door farmer was planing 2 new dams to try and generate hydro electricity and we offered to help by blowing up the sides of a mountain creek to allow him to build some dam walls. This was an amazing experience. All up we used 12 sticks of explosives. I will add some video I took of 3 of the blasts. Needless to say for the rest of that day there was no hunting – I think we chased all the surrounding animals into Queensland.

I got my goat – Only fired once the weekend and got a nice neck shot on a very unsuspecting goat. I must say this was a hunt, not your typical goat cull. We walked for hours up and down some serious mountains to get to them.

So tally for the weekend :

• 2 cases of VB (beer)
• 2 bottles of scotch
• 1 lamb shank potjie
• 1 camp oven lamb roast
• about 30 Yabbie’s
• 3 goats
• 2 rabbits
• some awesome 4×4 action in the Jeeps last trip
• 12 sticks of dynamite
• 4 m of detonation cord and a few detonators
• some beautiful scenery
• and 3 happy hunters