High Plains Series Wrap Up What To Consider when camping in the snow + Marathon Track + Bush Beings
welcome to our high plains series wrap up running through some of the things to consider when camping in the snow and find out about native animal rescue good morning everyone it's another frosty frosty morning look at this the bundutop has stood up to another day mind you it's got some things going on in there but we'll explain that a bit later (Kathryn Laughing a lot) oh look at this what a problem you're an idiot Karl (Kathryn laughing more with pure glee) what you're an idiot why you left your gloves outside on the table (Kathryn sniggers) oh no can you warm them up in your pockets not a chance mate not a chance please no gates still open wow its slippery we were originally going to take old Moroka road back to civilization but we've changed our mind and we are now heading down a marathon track as you know we checked on hema maps and this track was rated as an easy track but we also checked on rooftop maps and it said it had a steep section rooftop maps are a very good map for the victorian high country they have lots of detail and are awesome for touring what is normally listed on the rooftop maps is correct so i knew that this was going to be a sleep track and it is the camera doesn't do it justice it is quite a steep hill it's no problem in the dry but if it was wet you would be winching all the way up it it looks ok yeah looks ok, don't even have to let down tyres a little bit of creeping oh its a bit steeper there we are not backing up over that we are not backing up over that bit its a one way bit that one hard core grading yeah look at the rocks in it as we mentioned in our last episode we're going to do a bit of a wrap up to explain some of the trials and tribulations that we had during our time in the snow so Karl what was the go with the rooftop tent the rooftop tent was great but it did have a few little problems probably as any tent in those conditions would the first real main problem is had a little bit of condensation along the sides on the really cold nights so when we're talking minus three degrees or minus five it did get condensation along the top aluminium pieces around the roof and on the canvas at the very top the actual whole ceiling was fine this morning it is so cold last night that we noticed that we have got condensation in the tent now we have had a little bit of condensation before but we normally leave the windows open a little bit more than we did last night so that was all frozen 20 minutes ago and the aluminium upright legs froze as well and they're defrosting and they've dripped down onto the corners of the bed a little bit more on this side same sort of thing condensation it was very still last night very cold and this was all actually frozen on the inside this one's all dripped i don't know whether you can see the drips on there they run down and drip off onto the mattress the second problem which is probably more dramatic and i had an idea that it may happen was the condensation under the mattress just like the condensation under the mattress in the van if you have a look under here it's so wet and i can't really tell whether it's mouldy because it's black but i assume from the bubbling and the crap that it's probably moldy as well so that is yeah it's definitely moldy you can see it there so that is absolutely no freaking good so i'm going to measure it up and we're going to get the airtec mattress exactly the same as a van and we're going to stick it under here to stop this mold and condensation problem because bear in mind underneath this is aluminium it's one sheet of aluminium underneath that is essentially open air so you've got on one side you'll have the body heat then the mattress and the vapour from your body going straight onto that aluminium sheet which would have been at minus three or five or seven last week and it's just too much for it and condensates so we will put the airtec under here as well and i'd suggest anyone with a bundutop tent do exactly the same because even if you're camping in the desert it's probably less likely to get mold but when it drops down to you know zero degrees overnight you're still going to have the same problem to some extent the only good thing about being in the the heat obviously is in the daytime it's going to be hot enough to really dry it out but if it doesn't you're going to get this which is no good whatsoever what we've done is we've gone and purchased some more aero mesh like we did in the caravan and we've put that underneath obviously we cleaned it all up dried it all out disinfected it because i wanted to make sure there was uh we'll try and reduce any potential mold same stuff except now it doesn't come on a roll it comes in pre-cut sizes like for your beds and your you know i mean queens and so on so we just got the right size which was a queen and installed it and it is the right size it's great we're just going to trim around the little box here remake our bed and we're good to go we'll put that under there so it should be fine from now on i think we shouldn't really it'll still get some condensation but at least it will be able to evaporate out yeah hopefully it'll work the same as yeah obviously the caravan the next thing that i've never considered before was the air compressor the fittings freeze up because they've got a little bit of moisture in them the quick release fittings they freeze up overnight so if you go to use your compressor at any time you know before it's defrosted essentially you can't use it it's just all frozen up so that's something else that we learned that you really need to pump up your tyres and everything the night before which goes along hand in hand with the water so everything that had water in it froze including everything in the truck and in the rooftop tent i couldn't have a coffee in the morning because the water was frozen i couldn't get it out to boil the billy all of our water was frozen the water in the tap from the truck tank was all frozen all the way up the line so we couldn't get that out our drink bottles believe it or not froze in the truck and they also froze in the rooftop tent the only way that we could keep our drink bottles from not freezing was to put them under the sheets on our body laying next to us in bed as soon as you move them just a little bit away from your body even still under all the blankets and doonas you wake up they're frozen solid like they've been in the fridge a week so we had to every night we've got our drink bottles went to bed with them put them on our legs or near us right up to it touching us and that's the only way that we could keep the water uh liquid so basically we were our water bottles hot water blanket to keep them warm so otherwise we had no water in the morning we couldn't do anything otherwise the other thing that we've worked out did work believe it or not was to put everything in the esky that we could so milk water anything like that oil cooking oil yeah you could put in the esky which at least kept it at let's say one or two degrees instead of minus five so that worked also if you had a fridge you could probably put it in the fridge as well and it'd keep it at one two or three or whatever and it would be okay keep it stable yeah yeah the oil like we just touched on olive oil is no good it just solidifies in the bottle and turns to like margarine yeah and you can't use it and it still hasn't recovered now i've tried to shake it up and whatever and it's just separated and looks like super thick hand soap on the top and it's just not working well no dad actually had an issue with the fact that his mobile phone wouldn't work which of course it had no reception so of course that's not the problem it was actually when he went to take some photos on his phone camera and it just said temperature big red thing and then shut down on him which we hadn't considered that so that was the same for all of our electronic equipment the laptop wouldn't charge the gopros wouldn't charge the ipad wouldn't charge the ipad wouldn't work when it got too cold the gopros wouldn't work and the laptop shut down yes and the ipad we use as one of our sources of navigation so thankfully we always do have our rooftop maps as well don't rely on one source of navigation because if you were relying on your phone your ipad or for pictures either even our good camera we couldn't charge the batteries on that and it would shut down as well in the end when it got too cold so apart from all the electronic equipment one thing that we were prepared for which you should do if you've got a diesel vehicle is put antifreeze in your fuel if you don't have that your wax in your fuel will all gum up and you won't be going anywhere fast so we did do that before and we had no problem with the fuel but i did consider it but didn't do it which was put antifreeze in the washer bottle i thought since the washer bottle was inside the truck cab not under the bonnet that it should be okay and not freeze well i was wrong so we had no washer water until probably i don't know two o'clock each day when it defrosted with the heat of the heater in the truck but that's probably not the most dramatic thing that you just don't have washer water what could be worse is that your washer bottle splits freezes solid so it could split you could damage your washer bottle and you would have to replace it so i would definitely put anti-freeze in the washer bottle water next time and we also had our windscreen completely covered in snow and frozen and Karl had said to me earlier in the day i must remember to pull the windscreen wipers out off the windscreen we didn't so we also had to wait for the windscreen to defrost a little before we could do anything because obviously there would be an issue with the windscreen wipers rip the rubber out of them remove your windscreen wipers from your window at night and also take your handbrake off because your handbrake can physically freeze on the shoes can freeze in the in the drums or if you've got discs they can the pads can freeze onto your discs so if you take your handbrake off at night that will stop that also but don't do that if you're on a hill like do that at your own risk we will not take responsibility for chock your wheels but there was one thing that i didn't realize was a problem and it was the the door the the gullwing door on the truck it kept like drooping and i couldn't work out what the issue was i asked Karl and it was the the gas struts so the temperature must affect the gas struts somehow in such a way that they sort of lose pressure and they can't push up as much as they used to so that happened to all of our struts they're all fine now but in the really cold weather they're just not quite the same they were droopy they were drooping and we use the gullwing door where the awning is to help hold that into a position that a higher position yeah so i was like why is it doing this another thing to be wary of with the cold weather is any of the cheaper stoves that have those little canisters that you put in and click the lever down the butane yeah the little butane canisters they won't work there's just not enough pressure in the little canister when it gets cold to to run your stove so jeff had one of those so you might as well just chuck that straight out the window because it just doesn't work at all and it was brand new and brand new because it was frozen broke straight away so they don't they don't work at all you need a real gas stove if you're going to use gas yeah um with a bottle or ours did go well the stove was fine no problems with that you also may have noticed in our videos that when we got food out to defrost it doesn't happen so if you think about you know oh you get your frozen food out for dinner or dinner the next day or the dinner in three days time it doesn't defrost at all it's still rock solid so realistically the best way is not to freeze your food up there yeah if you're going to have really cold weather just run your fridge freezer on fridge if you can otherwise the only thing we could do was take it out and put it in the truck on the floor because that warms up in the day when we drive it to try and defrost whatever we're gonna have for our our meal that night yeah your fridges are quite good because or your freezers because they don't use a lot of power because they don't switch on because it's so cold which is a great thing because you get absolutely nothing from the sun because the majority of time your panels are covered in snow but you know they go hand in hand so we didn't have any problem with power at all apart from the electronic devices really what we're trying to say is it was an amazing camp but you just need to consider that you are in a totally different environment it's frosty and you know even the doors can freeze shut so not this trip but previously when i was doing some work in Tasmania it was so cold that we couldn't get into our vehicle at all in the morning like literally you couldn't open the doors you couldn't open the boot you couldn't do anything because the rubber seals froze to the body work so we just had to wait until they unfroze good excuse yeah but apart all of these aren't all of these they're all minor issues but just something to be aware of but the main thing is that would we go back up there if we had the chance to do it again hell yeah we love it up there it was unbelievable you if you ever get the chance ever ever get the chance do yourself a favor put on some clothes put your antifreeze in your fuel and get the hell up there yeah because you'll you'll never see anything like it again and if you're not up for the cold it's beautiful in summer too it is beautiful in summer it's totally different in summer and the thing is you still can get snow in the middle of summer so you must always be prepared yeah that's right whilst we've been in victoria we've obviously been catching up with family and friends we caught up with Karl's sister and Karl's sister one of is super passionate about native animal rescue and so much so that she now has a a registered charity where she rescues all sorts of Australian native animals and we've jumped on board to help her save the animals we have added a page onto our website all about her animal refuge which is called Bush Beings Marlene and her partner Andrew have built an amazing animal rescue at her property at her farm in Victoria and it's got cages and flight averies and you name it they've got it just solely to look after injured displaced or orphaned animals and you know what they both have full-time jobs we're hoping that we can help them out by having their a little web page for them hopefully they can get some donations and people realise that the effort that they are going to to rescue these animals they both spend about i don't know how many hours a day every other hour that they're not working it's incredible it's a credit to them both yeah for what they do and how many animals they look after and then release in back into their natural environment and they fund all of that with their own money and the occasional donation so if you can get onto the web page have a look and if you're that way inclined and love our native animals help out whichever way you can as you may have noticed we're on the murray we are hopefully heading up the Darling it was our first attempt last year 12 months ago we'll see if we make it this time thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe if you want a reminder hit the bell and remember we always love a thumbs up of course we don't go straight to the Darling next week we take you to visit a 470 000 year old volcano crater and we camp in the middle of it after that we head to the Yanga National Park in New South Wales the Yanga National Park was an old sheep station and we go and check out the shearing shed the huge old wool shed and the magnificent old disused homestead you
2021-07-03 03:03
