GROIC Day 22

Some 28 years ago I spent the princely sum of $345 (I found the receipt in my clean up!) on a Fairydown Altimate II tent, which, while not quite as good as the famous-even-then Macpac Olympus that I kind of coveted, was still a pretty good tent. It went on quite a few bushwalks and camps with me, although because it could house three (squishilly) and had a solid floor it was fairly bulky and heavy tent.

A couple of years after I moved from Cub leading to Scout leading I needed something a little smaller and lighter for just me, and so I bought a second slightly cheaper tent, shown set up in the photo at right (the Fairydown is the pile of sun-bleached disintegrating nylon at the front left). I had over 150 nights in this tent, including 34 nights in a row travelling around the east coast of Canada in 1998. On one of its last trips — a canoe hike in Victoria — it let me down by leaking (this was a notoriously damp expedition, as there were some canoe capsizes and swampings as well!), and so shortly thereafter I upgraded to my light blue tent (shown in the middle here) which is currently up to its 94th night. A couple of years ago I also bought myself a very lightweight 1.5 person tent because I’m getting too old for carrying a bigger tent for just me on Scout hikes.

In setting up the old green and red tent on the weekend I discovered why it leaked, as the seam sealing has “gone”, so I have kept the poles (spare light weight aluminium poles are useful to have now that I haven’t the convenience of a “remote equipment repairs” shop like there was in Melbourne).

To add to my collection of riddables, you can see the gaiters that now only manage to trail around my ankles (see the last photo on this page), an old silk sleeping bag liner (bought to celebrate my promotion to senior lecturer, but now worn through), odd bits of defunct equipment, some ancient cup-a-soup mixes (always taken on hikes as emergency food, but they don’t last forever), and a container’s worth of powdered milk so old that it had seemed to have turned into powdered prehistoric cheese: yellowed, and with the smell of “off” parmesan (which is saying something, when you appreciate how off non-off parmesan smells).