Newsletter 29, June 2007

The DRY is here. We are enjoying weather that's just about as good as it gets, cool (not cold) nights, warm (not hot) days. low humidity and clear blue skies. Why not come up and see what makes our dry season so special.

In This Issue...
Last Chance -- June and July

June and July are the coolest and most comfortable months of the year. We now have only five trips still available. Limited space on them all.

Our Tour Availability and Specials page is regularly updated with information about what trips are available and with any special offers we may have at the time.
Last Chance -- August

Only one August trip is already a definite departure.

  • Mitchell Plateau No. 3: 19 August - 1 September. Not using helicopters makes this the least expensive of our Mitchell Plateau trips. If last year's trip is any indication, this will be a particularly relaxed trip.
    Only one place available.

We want to run the two other August trips which a few people booked months ago so we are offering some very special deals.

  • Kakadu Highlights No. 7, Sec 2: 20-25 August. Our shortest walk with an Aboriginal guide. Note. We need only one more booking to guarantee departure. Section one of this trip does not yet have any bookings. (Given the nature of that walk, that's a real surprise.)
    Special Offer. We've extended the 15% advance purchase discount to 23 June.
  • Kakadu Highlights No. 8, 26 August - September 8. Three separate walks, any of which can be done on its own.
    Special Offer. We've extended the 15% advance purchase discount to 23 June.
  • Super Special Offer. Book section two of Kakadu Highlights No. 7 in combination with Kakadu Highlights No. 8 and take an extra 10% off the combined price after all our other discounts. Better still, we'll throw in a free night's accommodation in Darwin between trips.
NT Orienteering Championships: 11-12 August

The Northern Territory Orienteering Championships on 11-12 August would make a great way to finish our Kakadu Highlights No. 6: 29 July - 11 August. Get back to Darwin and head out for a dinner and night at the event, compete the following morning, fly home that night (or later if you prefer). Here's a link to the entry form.

Want more? Don't forget the Austrailain Rogaining Champtionshops which will be held in the NT. They will be held near Alice Springs on 28-29 July.
In addition to the roagine, two orienteering events will be held in Alice Springs during the week before the rogaine.
September Onwards

Every trip in the list on our website remains available but only one is a definite departure.

Kakadu Highlights No. 12: 25 October - 2 November
This trip combines one of the nicest, most relaxed walks in Kakadu with a day and night on a houseboat on the Mary River. It's a trip I really enjoy so I've guaranteed the departure for a small group and will lead it myself.

One other trip needs a special mention.

Bungle Bungles in the Wet: 17 February to 1 March 2008
Two people from the UK who did our last New Year in Kakadu trip liked it so much that they want to come back and do this one. It will be hot. It will be humid. It will be spectacular!
Our Bungles in the Wet Photo Gallery gives you a hint of what you can expect.
I want to do this trip so much that I will guarantee departure and run it at cost if we get fewer than the five bookings we normally need to guarantee departure.
Overseas Trips

South America, going, going ....
This is where we began our overseas trips way back in 1990. We had 2 people pay a deposit and another 10 express an interest in our 2007-08 Patagonia trip. When I sent an email to the ten, I got only three replies and no deposits. If we don't get any more interest within the next three weeks, we'll have to cancel the trip.
See our Patagonia trip notes for details of what's on offer this year.

We have two arctic trips on offer next year.

  • The Western Arctic Spring: March 2008 trip is a repeat of the trip I did in 2006, short walks in southeast Alaska combined with ten days on dog sleds in the Yukon. If you'd like a better idea of what it's like, see the photo galleries.
    Southeast Alaska, March 2006
    Yukon Dogsled, March 2006
    Everyone who did the trip thought it was fantastic. But, with only two people expressing an interest to date, this will have to be cancelled if we don't have more possible takers by sometime in July.
  • High Arctic Summer: July - August 2008. We are considering two possibilities
    • Hiring a car and doing 1 to 5 day walks in the Yukon and along the Dempster Highway
    • Baffin and Ellesmere Islands. We'll charter aircraft and get as far as 80º N if we do this. If it runs, it will cost at least $10 000 in total and we'll be doing at least one walk of 10-14 days.
    Both of these have people who want to do them. (The Baffin-Ellesmere option has slightly more so far.) We can't do both. Have a look at the web page and see if you might be interested in either one. Whichever goes, it is likely to be the only time we ever run it.
Light Pack Bushwalking

Our Light Pack information document and Light Pack check list are both somewhat out of date as many new items have come onto the market since they were written. Here's a bit of what's new.

  • The MSR Hubba Hubba tent is great, lightweight tent available in Australia.
  • The American Company Tarp Tent has some amazingly lightweight gear. Their Contrail is an excellent, roomy one person shelter, great ventilation, weatherproof and only 700g. John Murray, who helped with the original light-pack notes, showed me his, I could hardly believe how light it was compared with what it offered. (You can see a photo of John on page 48 of the current April-June issue of Wild
  • The lightest, strongest groundsheets I have ever seen are made of Dupont Tyvek. John had one he bought from Tarp Tent. The fabric must be available somewhere in Australia. Anyone know where I can find it?

Want more info? Roger Caffin has written an excellent overview of the whole subject for the NSW Confedferation of Bushwalking Clubs website. This includes lots of links to other sites.

Finally, I am thinking about including some of this information in out Bushwalking Guide. I'd like to know whether or not you think that would be a good idea. I'd also appreciate any suggestions for how I can improve this information.

Revised Bushwalking Guide

It's been a long time since the last major revision of our Bushwalking Guide. Almost as long for some of the other forms. Too long. I'm now working on updates. Your suggestions would be most welcome.

  • Our registration form definitely needs a place for people to list mobile phone numbers. If you can think of anything else we should be asking, your suggestions would be most welcome.
  • Our Bushwalking Guide is the most important piece of information we send out. We've learned a bit since the last revision. For example, it is difficult, but it is possible to drink too much water. Suggestions welcome.
  • Every trip we offer comes with a set of trip notes which are designed to give participants all the necessary information about that trip. They all get minor revisions from time to time. The last big revision was to the Terrain and Difficulty sections a couple of years ago. If you've got any suggestions as to how we can improve the quality of the information in the notes, we'd like to hear them.
    • The trip notes page is the only page which lists the trips divided both by the type of trip and the geographical area where they take place.
Computer Hassles

As they would say in the comics, "@@##?#!@¿!!!"

The past month has been a bit of a nightmare. Thankfully, we had decent back ups. Unfortunately, getting things almost back to normal has taken many hours of hard work. If you sent us an email or gave us a call and we didn't get back to you as fast as we should have or didn't get back to you at all, please accept our apologies.

In the hope that someone who reads this newsletter will have some advice as to how we can prevent these hassles from happening again, I'll list what happened. If that's not for you, then scroll down and see our special extra discount offer.

  • Outlook Express began duplicating various emails for no apparent reason. It then began deleting large numbers of emails when I tried deleting the duplicates. I got most, maybe even all, of them back using a program called OE-Mail Recovery.
  • The server that hosts our website was down for several days due to an outside attack. We like to support local businesses and use a local server.
  • Our supposedly automatic back up program didn't work as it should. This meant many manual back ups.
  • A hard drive in one of out computers crashed totally. Anything that wasn't backed up elsewhere was lost. (I think we got it all, but can't be 100% sure.)

There was more, but that's enough. We need help.

Here's what we have.

  • We have two computers networked together.
  • We have two external hard drives for back ups.
  • We are using Outlook Express for our emails. We've got many thousands of emails and it's very slow
  • We use a program called MailWasherPro for scanning for spam and deleting it from the servers before we download it. It's taken to blacklisting and trying to delete some emails that are from our clients. I have no idea why.
  • We've given up on Norton and are now using AVG anti-virus.

Here's what we need.

  • Email improvements
    • We need a way to make Outlook Express run faster or we need a new email program.
    • We need to be able to automatically copy the entire email file from one computer to another.
    • We need a way to back up our emails to an outside server like gmail.
    • We need a way to make MailWasher behave itself or we need a new anti-spam program.
      The email address we have on our website receives a lot of spam. Having an email contact on the website means that it will inevitably get sent lots of spam. Not having the contact on the website would mean that we'd lose a lot of new business.
  • Automatic backups
    • We need a way to automatically back up changed files from one computer to the other. This needs to work in both directions and only copy over the most recent version of the file.
    • We need an easy, almost automatic way to do the same with our external hard drives.

If you have any suggestions which might help us overcome our problems, we'd love to hear them.
Special discounts -- combine them and save even more.

Book now and save! As in the past, if you are one of the first three people who quote this newsletter when booking any Australian trip within two weeks of when we sent it out, you will get an extra 10% discount on any trip where your total discounts are 10% or less. You'll get an extra 5% off if your total discounts are 15% or more.

Note. There has to be a limit. The maximum total discount on any trip is 35%.

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Best wishes to all.
Russell Willis