Review: Where's the Campfire?

Thanks Stephen and good idea,
Will look into them, they are not that expensive.

I guess though I will have to remember to switch it on at the right time!!!

Cheers
Alan

I regard Alan, amongst a few of the other notables, as an "elder statesman" of the forum when it comes to knowledge, exploring and surviving in the bush. I read his blog with interest as it was rather timely with regards to the recent saga of Mr Foggerdy. It also puts payed to some of the criticism of Mr Foggerty in that it shows that even the most experienced can find themselves in a situation where the circumstances change from normal to potentially life threatening so quickly.

I recall a trip in similar area to Mr Foggerdy, North east of Laverton - flat, featureless and scrub about 2 1/2 metres high.

I set off early one morning, after setting camp in the dark, to commence my day (so to speak). With other things on my mind, I quickly walked about 100 to 150 metres from camp and once I finished the paperwork I started to make my way back. I overshot the camp by what I worked out later was about 50 metres on several occasions.

I wonder what people would have posted about me...

"Should have 's_at' near the vehicle" "Should have fired shots from his rifle - or at least farted loudly three times in quick succession."

I'll be honest, I got scared! All I could think of was being found with a now second hand bag of toilet paper clutched in my dry skeletal hand. In hindsight, at least I wouldn't have had to eat ants - just open the bag and start a bush fly smorgasbord. After all I know what they taste like and they wouldn't kill me - I've eaten plenty of them in the past.

After taking stock of the situation, the training kicks in and I start to survive. I drag a stick to mark my route, I take rough bearings from the tallest of the scrub and the now rising sun and establish a simple grid. After about 45 mins I found my tyre tracks and followed them back from the vehicle where my grab bag, water, epirb and sat phone were all sitting waiting for me.

Who would have thought taking a short walk would have landed me in the sh1t?

What did I learn? Drag a stick when you go to take a ........

Cheers

Anthony

I'd have to endorse that Stephen after an incident a few weeks ago when camped at Muloorina station.

Someone went for a walk to the Loos about 300m away one night in pitch black.

Now you'd think that would be easy to find and return as you can see loo's from campfire during the day.

However if you look at the picture you can see that its a flat area with trees dotted around.

As you walk into the pitch black night away from camp you can't see the destination ahead and its very easy for a tree to block the view back to the fire.
All a sudden, without knowing it, you loose your return reference point and sure enough "someone" was lost 150m from camp.

All those trees look the same in torch light and walker soon drifted left and that was it.

Now I nag everyone to carry a handheld always and sure enough a call was made and another friend pulled out a flashing strobe light and placed it on our car bonnet.

The "someone" could then see its red light bouncing off trees and after walking a few meters in general direction the actual light appeared from behind a tree.

Soon after the "someone" who insisted they were only temporarily displaced , headed out again and made the return journey quite easily with the flashing light as a reference.

A point of discussion would be what is the best colour , in our case red was very distinctive and
flashing was also just as important.