Neil Uys Blog Site

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

As usual we hit the road out of Sydney. Up north this time, about 35 km west of Gosford next to the Hawkesbury river.

And yes, even though I didn’t arrange the weekend ( Thanks Rob and Eli ) we did have to pitch tents in the rain again The rain was short lived though and the rest of the weekend was sunny and very warm.

Almost 20 of us this time, looks like the camping bug has taken . It just seems to get bigger and bigger every time. This trip we had 2 boats and everything else that makes a long weekend camping fun.

A nice wood fire every night, a bit of 4 wheel driving in the area ( Ryan and Fiona lost a tyre half way – luckily no-one got hurt ).

Plenty of boating that included wake boarding and other skiing up and down the Hawkesbury river. Unfortunately no fish ( we tried … )

Paul made his first potjie ( Oxtail ) and it was awesome. Almost everyone had a turn in either the hammock or on a sun bed in the shade under a tree simply relaxing or reading the paper.

Thanks everyone – we had a ball. Here is a link to some more photos

It’s clear that when the blog goes dry things at work are crazy.
I don’t think I have had a more demanding 5 weeks at work ever. But the lessons learnt and the experience gained — invaluable.

One of my mates ( Mark ) saved me from certain implosion last weekend by taking me out of town to a beautiful piece of farm land owned by his sister.

We had no running water or any other of the typical facilities you’d expect at a camping ground and this made it eve more special.
Setup camp next to a old caravan, now home to some swallows and a few wasps. We used the tarp to collect rainwater for drinking and did a bit of “Australian” hunting.

It’s a bit of a drive ( about 7 hours north of Sydney ). We left here on the Friday night at about 11 PM and arrived there around 6 AM on Saturday
morning. I have some photos and will only attach 1 to the front page of this blog – Don’t want to offend anyone with photos of dead animals – some people still think red meat grows in packets on trees – But if you want more just click on the photo.

Anyway – The pressure at work is dissipating and there is light at the end of the tunnel ( Hallo December, I’m back )
PS. You might notice the MO – If you don’t know. The month of November is always “Mo vember” here in OZ. We grow a moustache and raise money for charity ( Men’s Health )
As always it gets shaved off on the 1st of December.

Imagine light blue water and white sandy beaches…, pitty we could only stay for a week.
We got lucky and we were upgraded to a 5 star hotel called DinaRobin ( First name of the island given to it by it’s first discoverers -the Arabs – meaning “Silver Island” )

The four of us, Linda, Anne-Marie, Victor and I made sure we made use of all the facilities available to the guests. We did some wakeboarding, sailing ( yes I did tip the boat but theres no photo of that ), tennis, table tennis, boules, relaxing at the pool and as many of the wonderfull restaurants as we possibly could.

Lucky for us the week there included a visit to Emelia and Andrew’s awesome place. We got to play terrible golf at a beautifull golf course. We went dolphin watching on a huge cat and played volleyball on Ile’de Surf.

I offered a “How to drink Whiskey” class and had a few eager students

Sam took it easy the next day, infact I think he probably won’t drink Whiskey again
Thanks to Charlene we got a nice anniversary cake to celebrate our 4 year anniversary

Did a bit of underwater walking

We spent a nice afternoon traveling up one of the rivers, swam from pool to pool and jumped a few rocks.

What is a holiday without a bit of adrenaline and adventure – Pic the biggest waterfall in the area and jump off it into a unknown pool of water.

I have hundreds of photos on this trip and wish I could put them all on – but it would take hours. I hope this will give you a idea of what a wonderfull place it is and the time we had.

Emelia and Andrew – Thanks again, you have been awesome hosts. I only hope I can return the favour here in Oz