During the years I spent with Genius, we had two survival hide-outs.
Not con-currently though, and across Oz from each other.
The first one was a fantastic few hours drive away from our home, in a temperate rainforest on a mountain in New South Wales.
Nearly every week, we would pack the Toyota Landcruiser with supplies, and head out to the spot we'd picked, under a big granite boulder, on the slope of a hill, with a rocky mountain stream at the bottom.
Some of the trees there were enormous, Genius said one of them could be one of the tallest in New South Wales.
We'd make a camp on a track, down which, we could tell, no-one had driven down for a looonng time.
It was idyllic, peace and beauty, no-one around except the two of us...
DOOM seemed far away, yet so close. Close enough for Genius to want to prepare.
We had with us, several hundred hessian sand-bags, which were to form the walls of our shelter.
A 100 metres or so down from the shelter site, we dug. And dug. Or, mostly Genius did, being the one with the bigger muscles.
I held the hessian bag open while he shoveled in the soil, a clay/loam mixture that proved to be rather heavy when we carried the bags up to the site.
The granite boulder became one wall, it was hard work, but we got very fit, and gradually, over successive visits, we built up the other walls.
We also used local bush poles, for the roof, and started a worm farm, and hid supplies further up the track.
I guess those of you who don't love DOOM will have trouble understanding our actions...
In the rainforest birdcall evenings, after a hard day's work, we would walk through the trees to the stream, for a wash, and to do the dishes.
It really was something special, like Adam and Eve, with kitchen utensils, with the song echoes of all the birds, the clear water stream bouncing off rocks and the green glory of the canopy overhead...
Such was the romance of DOOM.
Except
for
the
leeches.
They were waiting for us, snug deep in the soil, until the scent of our blood drew them out,
and then they were so very keen for it.
Leeches were the stuff of my nightmares, I absolutely hated the thought of them sucking my blood and being stuck to me...ugh! I kept an alert eye out the whole time I had a wash, after a while we devised a system, taking turns watching each other's bodies.
It wasn't just when we washed that the leeches preyed on us, anytime we stood still long enough, was good enough. The worst was sleeping. We made a bed in the back of the Cruiser, hoping the steel was enough of a deterrent, but Genius woke up a few times with a bloated leech stuck to him. At first I carried a pocket knife, and as soon as I saw a leech crawling up my boot, I'd slice the bastard in two. It was emotionally satisfying, but my boots were getting badly scratched, so Genius lived up to his name, and came up with a solution - a matchbox of salt. They frizzled quickly.
Much like a whole chunk of the population will, when DOOM comes a-knocking.
The hardest, most painful part for me was that it was so uncertain if my children would have the time to make it there..they were in West Oz part of the time, travelling back and forth between us and their Dad.
I remember walking to the stream one sunset, crying my heart out, pleading to heaven for the lives of my children...eventually I came to the truth that I cannot control anything, our living is fundamentally uncertain, and danger lurks everywhere, all I had to do was follow my conscience, do my little bit, and trust it would all work out for the best.
We were always worried that we would be mistaken for marijuana growers (we did not grow any, that would have been sheer stupidity) if the ranger did come past, and one day, he did.
We were at the site when we heard the car, and quickly came down, before he could see where we'd been.
He was looking for someone, and we chatted with him, being very open, Genius even mentioned that we were worried about being taken for mull growers. He said it was ok to camp there, and soon left, but after that we changed our camp to further down the track, and into the bush, where we were hidden.
It was espionage kind of stuff! And we both enjoyed it, in a subversive way, covering our tracks, camouflaging the car..
But, Genius was always thinking, and he grew the opinion that being mobile was better, that the site was unstable, rainforest soil moves a lot, and in a situation with a lot of rainfall, we could get washed out.
So, we decided to abandon the shelter.
The survivors of past DOOM had three qualities in common, Genius had found out:
*they were in a small group
*they were mobile and adaptable
* they used creative thinking
We became very mobile, but the length of a collapse of civilization weighed heavily on Genius' mind, he was not one to do anything in half-measures, and he thought it best to prepare for the worst case scenario -permanent collapse.
That meant a lot had to be considered, what we carried with us was impressive, but limited, and it made camping difficult, so much stuff had to be moved around just for one night somewhere.
One day, on another mountain further north, I was reading a geology book, on Australia, and came across the info that West Australia was on the largest, most stable tectonic plate, the land was the most ancient in the world, and so would have had to withstand past cataclysms.
Since my kids were in West Oz, I was naturally keen for the move, and although Genius was not the type to be swayed by emotional reasons, his mind was a receptive one to logic, and flexible, so we moved back to the West.
The logistics of survival in another landscape were basically similar, but the differences in climate and landscape meant adjustments that are not so easily resolved.
We rented a house in Tom Price, a small mining town in the Pilbara, the most ancient landscape in the world,
the opposite end of the spectrum from our lush rainforest on the east coast.
The first half of my life had been spent close to forests, so I was in awe of the barren vastness of the Pilbara.
So majestic, the Earth, stripped of her green dress, semi-naked and exposed...the small mountain ranges were like the bones of the Earth, driving through to our survival site there, in the setting sun, was truly spectacular.
Past floods there have gouged out very deep gorges, the landscape is very flat, giving no indication of the deep ravines where deep cool pools of water lay, and lush remnant vegetation.
We'd found a small gorge, within a long walking distance of some caves, after driving down a deserted mining exploration track, very rough, towing a trailer through it was treacherous, but after getting stuck, we knew how to get through by 'gunning it through' just at the right places.
Water was a priority here, so having access to the gorge's pools was essential. once again, the muscles on my man proved their weight in gold, lol, Genius carried water 3.4 km's from the pool to the camp, if we ran out of what we'd bought with us.
To this day, it makes me laugh to hear women claim they could survive in the world in its natural state without men.
DOOM soon sorts out the gender war.
The setting up in the Pilbara was also hard work, it was hellishly hot, and we had more supplies, which we carted into the caves we'd chosen. We had two locations, in case our shelter got found, so we wouldn't lose everything. We carried so much stuff! In backpacks, on mountain bikes, on foot, by car.
It was very remote, no-one ever came there, this time it wasn't quite like Adam and Eve, but more like caveman and his woman.
The nights under the magnificent sky were worth it! No light pollution and no water moisture in the air, made for a stupendous view from our swag, I would feel euphoric and drunk on it..
DOOM romance was alive and well :)
The cave was a problem for me, the smell of the bat guano and urine made me sick to the stomach, if we had to live there, I planned to stay on the cave entrance.
Another problem was the lack of huntable wildlife, the scarcity of water made for scarcity of food, and Genius worried the water in the pools could also dry up.
So, leaving everything we could not fit in to the car and trailer, we set off once again, to the Kimberley,
where water and food were much more abundant.
Some years later, we went past there, on our way south, and although a wheelbarrow we'd left near the track was gone, all our stuff in the cave was still there...
and to this day, there is a half-built sandbag shelter in a rainforest on the east coast of Australia, and a cave with piles of toilet-paper and other stuff in a cave in the Pilbara.
And DOOM is still pending.
Not con-currently though, and across Oz from each other.
The first one was a fantastic few hours drive away from our home, in a temperate rainforest on a mountain in New South Wales.
Nearly every week, we would pack the Toyota Landcruiser with supplies, and head out to the spot we'd picked, under a big granite boulder, on the slope of a hill, with a rocky mountain stream at the bottom.
Some of the trees there were enormous, Genius said one of them could be one of the tallest in New South Wales.
We'd make a camp on a track, down which, we could tell, no-one had driven down for a looonng time.
It was idyllic, peace and beauty, no-one around except the two of us...
DOOM seemed far away, yet so close. Close enough for Genius to want to prepare.
We had with us, several hundred hessian sand-bags, which were to form the walls of our shelter.
A 100 metres or so down from the shelter site, we dug. And dug. Or, mostly Genius did, being the one with the bigger muscles.
I held the hessian bag open while he shoveled in the soil, a clay/loam mixture that proved to be rather heavy when we carried the bags up to the site.
The granite boulder became one wall, it was hard work, but we got very fit, and gradually, over successive visits, we built up the other walls.
We also used local bush poles, for the roof, and started a worm farm, and hid supplies further up the track.
I guess those of you who don't love DOOM will have trouble understanding our actions...
In the rainforest birdcall evenings, after a hard day's work, we would walk through the trees to the stream, for a wash, and to do the dishes.
It really was something special, like Adam and Eve, with kitchen utensils, with the song echoes of all the birds, the clear water stream bouncing off rocks and the green glory of the canopy overhead...
Such was the romance of DOOM.
Except
for
the
leeches.
They were waiting for us, snug deep in the soil, until the scent of our blood drew them out,
and then they were so very keen for it.
Leeches were the stuff of my nightmares, I absolutely hated the thought of them sucking my blood and being stuck to me...ugh! I kept an alert eye out the whole time I had a wash, after a while we devised a system, taking turns watching each other's bodies.
It wasn't just when we washed that the leeches preyed on us, anytime we stood still long enough, was good enough. The worst was sleeping. We made a bed in the back of the Cruiser, hoping the steel was enough of a deterrent, but Genius woke up a few times with a bloated leech stuck to him. At first I carried a pocket knife, and as soon as I saw a leech crawling up my boot, I'd slice the bastard in two. It was emotionally satisfying, but my boots were getting badly scratched, so Genius lived up to his name, and came up with a solution - a matchbox of salt. They frizzled quickly.
Much like a whole chunk of the population will, when DOOM comes a-knocking.
The hardest, most painful part for me was that it was so uncertain if my children would have the time to make it there..they were in West Oz part of the time, travelling back and forth between us and their Dad.
I remember walking to the stream one sunset, crying my heart out, pleading to heaven for the lives of my children...eventually I came to the truth that I cannot control anything, our living is fundamentally uncertain, and danger lurks everywhere, all I had to do was follow my conscience, do my little bit, and trust it would all work out for the best.
We were always worried that we would be mistaken for marijuana growers (we did not grow any, that would have been sheer stupidity) if the ranger did come past, and one day, he did.
We were at the site when we heard the car, and quickly came down, before he could see where we'd been.
He was looking for someone, and we chatted with him, being very open, Genius even mentioned that we were worried about being taken for mull growers. He said it was ok to camp there, and soon left, but after that we changed our camp to further down the track, and into the bush, where we were hidden.
It was espionage kind of stuff! And we both enjoyed it, in a subversive way, covering our tracks, camouflaging the car..
But, Genius was always thinking, and he grew the opinion that being mobile was better, that the site was unstable, rainforest soil moves a lot, and in a situation with a lot of rainfall, we could get washed out.
So, we decided to abandon the shelter.
The survivors of past DOOM had three qualities in common, Genius had found out:
*they were in a small group
*they were mobile and adaptable
* they used creative thinking
We became very mobile, but the length of a collapse of civilization weighed heavily on Genius' mind, he was not one to do anything in half-measures, and he thought it best to prepare for the worst case scenario -permanent collapse.
That meant a lot had to be considered, what we carried with us was impressive, but limited, and it made camping difficult, so much stuff had to be moved around just for one night somewhere.
One day, on another mountain further north, I was reading a geology book, on Australia, and came across the info that West Australia was on the largest, most stable tectonic plate, the land was the most ancient in the world, and so would have had to withstand past cataclysms.
Since my kids were in West Oz, I was naturally keen for the move, and although Genius was not the type to be swayed by emotional reasons, his mind was a receptive one to logic, and flexible, so we moved back to the West.
The logistics of survival in another landscape were basically similar, but the differences in climate and landscape meant adjustments that are not so easily resolved.
We rented a house in Tom Price, a small mining town in the Pilbara, the most ancient landscape in the world,
the opposite end of the spectrum from our lush rainforest on the east coast.
The first half of my life had been spent close to forests, so I was in awe of the barren vastness of the Pilbara.
So majestic, the Earth, stripped of her green dress, semi-naked and exposed...the small mountain ranges were like the bones of the Earth, driving through to our survival site there, in the setting sun, was truly spectacular.
Past floods there have gouged out very deep gorges, the landscape is very flat, giving no indication of the deep ravines where deep cool pools of water lay, and lush remnant vegetation.
We'd found a small gorge, within a long walking distance of some caves, after driving down a deserted mining exploration track, very rough, towing a trailer through it was treacherous, but after getting stuck, we knew how to get through by 'gunning it through' just at the right places.
Water was a priority here, so having access to the gorge's pools was essential. once again, the muscles on my man proved their weight in gold, lol, Genius carried water 3.4 km's from the pool to the camp, if we ran out of what we'd bought with us.
To this day, it makes me laugh to hear women claim they could survive in the world in its natural state without men.
DOOM soon sorts out the gender war.
The setting up in the Pilbara was also hard work, it was hellishly hot, and we had more supplies, which we carted into the caves we'd chosen. We had two locations, in case our shelter got found, so we wouldn't lose everything. We carried so much stuff! In backpacks, on mountain bikes, on foot, by car.
It was very remote, no-one ever came there, this time it wasn't quite like Adam and Eve, but more like caveman and his woman.
The nights under the magnificent sky were worth it! No light pollution and no water moisture in the air, made for a stupendous view from our swag, I would feel euphoric and drunk on it..
DOOM romance was alive and well :)
The cave was a problem for me, the smell of the bat guano and urine made me sick to the stomach, if we had to live there, I planned to stay on the cave entrance.
Another problem was the lack of huntable wildlife, the scarcity of water made for scarcity of food, and Genius worried the water in the pools could also dry up.
So, leaving everything we could not fit in to the car and trailer, we set off once again, to the Kimberley,
where water and food were much more abundant.
Some years later, we went past there, on our way south, and although a wheelbarrow we'd left near the track was gone, all our stuff in the cave was still there...
and to this day, there is a half-built sandbag shelter in a rainforest on the east coast of Australia, and a cave with piles of toilet-paper and other stuff in a cave in the Pilbara.
And DOOM is still pending.
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