Why Use Traditional Camping Gear Outdoors? Ovens River Canoe Adventure

G'day everyone, welcome back to another video. In this video I've met up with Lee from Peak Oil Company and we're going to spend two days and two nights paddling down the beautiful Ovens River in some canoes, hopefully do a spot of fishing, try and find some good secluded camp spots. We have some heavy rain forecasted as well on this trip and we want to have a bit of a conversation as well about traditional materials and traditional gear. Stick around it's going to be a good one. We were headed towards the lower end of the Ovens, a 191 kilometre long river that flows from up in the Australian Alps and down into the Murray River. We found a quiet bridge at our starting point to unload Lee's canoes that he was generous enough to lend for this two day and two night cruisy adventure in a part of the state I'd never seen. After a car shuffle at our planned final camp we headed back to our start off point in anticipation for what the river would offer us. River gums, wildlife, sandy banks, typical of this lower part of the river. Loading up the canoes with both a mix of traditional and new gear I was pretty keen to get on the water for what would be my first canoe trip in many years. It was at this point I started to film all of our journey on the water on my GoPro. Little did I know what awaited me later on this trip realising I wouldn't be able to use any of this footage at all. So this video is going to be very exciting I have so much cool footage to show you except for one thing I dropped my GoPro in the river and I lost all the footage. So what you're about to watch is me trying to creatively make something without a lot of the footage piecing together this trip. We'll see how we go. But with one main camera and Lee offering his phone and GoPro 360 camera footage I was still able to document this trip and share some of the thoughts that came as a result from catching up with Lee while adventuring outdoors. This is river red gum country this is a part of the river red gum parks areas you know the murray the golden and the ovens and you just get these old growth gums with big hollows and the birds are living in and it's just beautiful. We plan to talk about our passion for what I call traditional camping or what Lee calls using heritage materials that is what are the benefits of shifting back to camping and clothing gear that the old timers carry or using natural materials common to our ancestors in a way that reflects our modern ways of getting out bush and what better place to do that than moving through a natural landscape on a river via a craft that allows conversation and reflection and we have plenty of that on this trip. Doing about 15 kilometers on the first day and then about 15 kilometers on the second day and find some beautiful camp spots as well and it's just really good to to do this and catch up with Lee and yeah it's very relaxing very almost a meditative type feeling just floating down the river for a couple of days. Yeah or a lizard but I think it's a snake. Oh look at the head. I just thought I'd show you as well I'm using the water bag for these five liters of water in here rather than drinking straight from the river. I've got fresh water from home in the water bag there for a spot of fishing. I've got a bunch of worms from the farm that I brought with me so I'm gonna chuck that on the end of a hook and see how we go. I just thought I'd show you while I'm filming as well for tonight I've got two sheepskins to lay on as mattresses and then two woolen blankets so I can thank the old sheep for my bedding tonight and then this is just a canvas swag so the idea of the swag is that if it rains I can just chuck the canvas over like that and I'll be fine but I'll probably sleep in the open like that tonight. But we don't need this part but that's that run rolls. Yeah right so we can just sit around that little bit. Yeah I mean we can empty it out into a big fire once the cooking's done because that will direct. I'm gonna get some firewood I reckon hey. What's going on there? Already? Don't tell me already. Is that filming? We're filming. What do we got? Feels good. What do we got? It's a Murray Cod so unfortunately, unfortunately I'm gonna have to throw it back. I would love to have eaten a Murray Cod. This is my first ever Murray Cod. I just want to show that. Check it out guys. That's my first Murray Cod. Beautiful fish. Unfortunately Cod season is closed so I can't take this one so I'm gonna get get him back in the water. Beautiful. Awesome. I'm stoked with that though that's my first Murray Cod. I don't think you've walked more than 20k in your life. Well especially for the snow. Yeah totally getting it and sand too. Bushcraft. Okay so you've got enough rice because I've got noodles if you need. Yeah I think I do. So Lee's currently preparing a healthy meal for me so I won't be eating just baked beans and a piece of meat tonight. It'll actually be half decent food. Oh yeah Having a bite that's for sure. All right Lee's masterpiece here. Well the rice is a little scorched I'm sorry. But for you there's no. No because um I'm here with Lee. Some of you may know Lee from Peak Oil Company. You've seen me using the sheep skins from Peak Oil Company but he does a lot more than that. But a lot of um yeah well I'm going to let him explain. So Lee tell us a bit about yourself and what is Peak Oil Company. Okay mate thanks. I think you know my origin story and so they call it is that I was walking in the Western Arthur Ranges down in Tasmania just with the standard kit lightweight nylon stuff and I got caught in a storm crawled into my tent and just went to cook inside my tent. Actually I was with someone else. That person was cooking inside the tent with me and they hadn't used the trans year before and I was just exhausted. I just crawled over and went to sleep and left them to it and there was a fuel spill. That fuel went around a bit and caused a fire in the tent and they got out and I was kind of cornered into this tent with a plastic fire and it sounds worse than it probably was. It was pretty serious but I got it out pretty quickly with a cotton tea towel which was the only natural fiber I had on me and I got it out but there was a massive all one side of the tent had basically burned and a bit of the sleeping bags and the ground sheets and thermarest had holes in them and everything was debacle and I had some pretty serious burns on my hands but that's my origin story as to I came down from that sort of concluded then that I was never at the outset I was never really happy with the sort of equipment we were carrying. There were plastic and fluorocarbon treatments and stuff like that and I just didn't feel like I was connecting with the environment that I was there trying to appreciate and I always looked back and admired the old timers and how they did things a lot like you do so I came back and thought okay enough this plastic stuff I'm going to start researching and finding out about older methods. Then a couple of years later I saw a slide presentation by a group of old timers who walked across Iceland unsupported for 10 days and they were giving a slide presentation and they did it in 1952. They were doing it with old canvas tarps tents even a cast iron pot cans and stuff women and men walking across Iceland off trail and that was then the catalyst I thought right I can do this I'm going to start making or buying my own gear from the old school and start practicing that way ever since I've been making and I started selling what I made and now I'm full-time with it. Awesome so can you tell us a little bit about what are the kind of things you make and what materials do you like to use? So in my mind I've got a full range of camping gear from hiking through to standing camps long-term standing camps so far I've made almost completely a full range of clothing sort of our portable shelter if you like I've started prototyping packs and I've modelled and started sourcing materials for lightweight portable tents through to heavyweight standing tents. The materials are all natural materials or as close to as I can get that's like cotton canvas hemp canvas blended hot hemp cotton canvas possum silk merino knit sweaters and melton woven wool pants and tops and wax canvas shell covers and sheepskins yep so and what's fascinating to me is the challenge of multifunctional design to justify the extra weight okay yeah so if I can get something that does one thing that does three or four things then arguably I can say those three things combined of what this is worth the weight of and going back to what a lot of the old-timers would the materials they would have been using out in the bush yeah there's a whole bunch of crossing over benefits one is that these materials are the materials and or the treatments in the material so if you take cotton canvas by itself that's fairly accessible material you can walk into a thrifty store and you can buy cotton woven pants and shirts and work shirts and things like that or and other things the treatments are simply beeswax linseed oil and gum turpentine you can go other mixtures but that's the basic premise of the material treatment so with that treatment you can put it into those readily available materials and make your own outdoor gear it doesn't have to be high-tech stuff and if you learn the methods of how to manage those materials how to maintain and manage those materials you can be doing outdoor stuff that that a lot of people say you can't use those materials in I don't use anything but like cotton treated with an oil skin out in the snow anymore because I just find it works great and I'll be bone dry wearing that yeah personally I prefer it over the Gore-Tex stuff and same yep so I can attest to that I think in the weather weatherwise like it performs fantastic wax canvas and and I know your stuff you've got a was is your slogan old meets the new is that yeah where the old meets the so you're using old material old traditional materials that old fellas would use but you do put a a modern spin on it in regards to the style of the clothing you make and that as well so yeah so the functionality so the classic oil skin jacket in Australia was a riding coat yeah designed for horse riding sure the jacket I make is more designed for walking packing carrying a backpack walking or skiing long distances and and designed to ventilate and stuff that that's the anorak anyway and I've been using the sheepskin bedrolls which I really like oh yeah yep yeah fantastic stuff so I will leave a link in the description for Peak Oil I highly recommend it and I think just to sum up this whole thing you know just encouraging more and more people to try using traditional materials I've been on a journey for you know two years ago I was using all your anaconda gear I'll say yeah well it's very accessible yeah it is and cheap and stuff like that but I'm really enjoying the the journey of discovering more and more traditional gear and I'd encourage other peoples to start I think it's um it doesn't have to be a you know you jump in a hundred percent and you go full traditional just mix it up here and there bring it bring a wax canvas um jacket or anorak next time you go on a trip and see how you go yep no very good bring it my my hit oh I've actually enjoyed the simplicity of your fit your meals and videos but yeah so two sausages each yep nice one mate thank you Luke yeah it's not uh it's not the most high quality meal but but I like it as the morning wore on we packed up and launched the canoes for our second day of 15 kilometers down the river starting off with plenty of obstacles to tackle which made for some fun navigating as I got more comfortable handling the canoe with a bit of help from the more experienced Lee of course so it's interesting to think about how old fellas would have uh navigated rivers like this you know obviously the canoe is very much a Canadian uh originates from the from Canada our indigenous had dugout canoes obviously um but you know the settlers would have had old dinghies but yeah they would have made little rafts and things like that and little canoes out of bark so doing it a little bit different being in a fiberglass canoe but it is really cool to be able to float down the river and obviously floating down the river was a great means of uh of um navigating the landscape and just cuts an easy path through the land for people to be able to float down towards the end of the second day though I was having to battle the inner despair of losing all the footage I'd captured while out on the water because I've been filming two days on this beautiful river with my gopro getting a bunch of awesome footage and I just dropped my gopro into the water devastated what are we down to we're down to your main camera yep my 360 and my phone footage yep which is yeah but material objects are just that material things and it was hard to stay negative in such a beautiful environment of good company and also plenty of wildlife and I was looking forward to reaching camp with big storms predicted for the afternoon some areas of this river really feels like almost Kakadu Arnhem Land type type thing you get these big river red gums have a look at this big stump next to me here that I'm about to pass yeah 15k about the right distance isn't that today that was good toggles the draw things I made these out of the same material as the posts yeah I want you to show us these paddles that you made okay well these are Tassie Blackwood and they've got a bit heritage in Australia is because the indigenous fellas used blackwood for shaping shields and woomeras and they're amazing timber beautiful timber they're used in guitars these days a lot yep it's fairly expensive timber but these ones here are shaped out of one board yeah beautiful and these are Murray pine nice yeah or native cypress saplings beautiful completed the journey nice one wasn't it Leslie it was I'm sorry about your camera man here's what it is it's a bummer yeah it is there was a lot of good footage on that but if you're watching this this is probably towards the end of the video and hopefully I've made something out of it as the sky started to darken and rain was inevitable we were winding down this trip and concluding our thoughts on many topics I had my thinking challenged on many areas and I enjoyed looking at my approach to the outdoors from a different perspective this is fallow deer it's very gamey tasting isn't it a reoccurring theme in our conversations was our relationship to the outdoors and the materials we camp in and wrap ourselves up in what are the environmental and health consequences of heading into nature wrapped up in plastics what are the benefits of not just outsourcing the production of all our gear when heading outdoors but looking into crafting some of our own stuff much like the old fellas used to could we try to transition as much as we feel comfortable with to some of these more heritage materials cotton canvas leather wool hemp things like that and is lightweight and compact really the highest value when it comes to gear in the outdoors when we have the possibility of multifunctional gear this is not a judgment on other folks and how they choose to experience the outdoors by any sense as you can see we had lots of modern bits of gear scattered among our own camp but it is an encouragement to start looking out beyond the confines of what the big outdoor chain stores would sell you to what you could possibly make yourself and to look back in time and get a this is what the older generations grew up on all right everyone it's really coming down now so we're going to pack up and head on out of here but i want to thank lee for organizing this trip letting me borrow one of his canoes for this trip i really appreciate it it's been an eye-opening trip i've really enjoyed it please check out peak oil company and some of the products that lee is making and yeah and have a about how you can maybe transition to using more traditional materials if you're up for it awesome have a good one guys