Thursday, Mar 01, 2007 at 14:22
Not female but my wife can't
cook without hurting herself so here are a few ideas.
Track is mainly corrugated and sandhills. Travel is relatively slow for much of the track. Wife would attest to the requirement of appropreate underwear as the
ride is often fairly rough.
Temperature: Warm to hot during the day with temperatures dropping overnight. This varies a lot from day to day. We went down the CSR in August and I think the coolest night was about 5 degrees celcius It did get to 41 on one day though. Decent sleeping bag and maybe a back up blanket if you feel the cold should do it. One thing every one forgets to mention is that it can get very windy.
Clothing: Unfortunately you need to cater for hot and cold. Take stuff that dries quickly. We tend to take less gear and just rinse it out when an oppertunity arises. Most of the
camping shops have gear that dries quickly.
Water: Have a decent map with all the operative wells on it. Don't ever be in a situation where you only just get to a
well. We carry about 120 l all up but this is not required. Every one has there
views. The minimum would need to be 40l for two people.
Water from the wells should be boiled before drinking. Make sure you have a rope and good bucket as not all wells have a way of getting the
water out.
Cooking: We tend to use a
camp oven but carry a gas stove as
well. You can't always find firewood. Using a
camp oven is relatively simple and there is plenty of information around on how to use them. Try to keep to one pot meals if possible.
Food: We vac packed meat and stick it in our fridges. Obviously cans are ok but you need to carry them afterwards. Hard vegtables in a fruit box last pretty
well. Pumkins, sweet potatoes, potatoes, onions, apples and oranges all travel ok in a box. Note it is not permitted to take fruit, veg and used fruit/veg boxes (even the foam ones) into the
Ord River area. So if travelling north to south don't buy up big befoe you go. If you take a box they will take yours and give you a new one! This is not an issue as much if going south tho north. Most veg lasted ok till about 12 days. Far longer than I thought it would. Salad stuff is ok for the first few days.
Menu: I did the full gamit. Curries, stews, made some bread a few times in the
camp oven, rice, Couscous. Roasts in the
camp oven. Apple crumble. Vegtables wrapped in foil then into the coals. You can get flat breads that last about six weeks and travels ok. BBQed a fair bit of stuff. We ate just as
well as we would at home. You just need to improvise a bit and let the menu be set by other factors like how much firewood you have.
For curries pre mix the spices and put them in a loctight bag. Bread is easily done using premix packets. Lukies (?sp) have non bread machine instructions and work a treat.
Stick anything that could leak and cause a mess in a locTight bag. At least the desaster is limited then.
A good trick is to take things you can
cook for lunch the next day. We used snags, steak sandwich steak, preprepared lamb yiros, bacon in vacpacked ham etc. Just
cook with your main meal and there is lunch the next day basically done.
Dark fruit cakes also travel
well.
We even had a few bottles of red.
Be aware that you don't want to be using huge amounts of
water for washing up.
The big secret is to do a full menu for every meal of every every day. Don't forget nuts etc if you want predinner nibbles. You really do need to do this so you know what you need to take. Once done the order they are consumed is pretty irrelavent. When you put the stack of food in one pile you will be surprised how huge it is. It is prudent to slightly over cater as it is easy to be delayed a day or so.
There is only one oppertunity to restock (near
well 33) and the
shop may or may not be
well stocked as you go through. Don't rely on it. It can also be fairly expensive.
Steve
AnswerID:
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