God must be angry

Well this may be my last transmission.... It seems that I may have inadvertantely angered god as he seems to be sending his wrath down on us here:

First tornados.

Then, swine flu - two teachers from my school where on the same flight as these kids

They are currently taking the week of school and taking anti viral medications.  If I don't escape this emerging pandemic, please, have a parma in my honor.

Autumn and Burgers

Another quick update. After returning from tramping last weekend I headed down to Queenstown and Arrowtown for some autumn colours, and to live the dream of eating Fergburger at every meal (though I later had to concede on breakfast and only managed lunches and dinner). Fergburger is by far the best burger I've ever had. The classic Fergburger with cheese is a good starting point, but for the truly brave the Big Al (pictured below) with 2 patties, 2 eggs, lashing of bacon, beetroot, lettuce, tomoto, cheese, red onion, relish and garlic aioli is a winner.

Arrowtown, a historic gold mining settlement about 20 minutes from Queenstown lived up to it's reputation for spectacular Autumn scenery.

More Tramping

Easter Weekend

Plan was to attempt Mt Bowen (1955m). Failure. We decided to take a more round about route than the standard route up Mikonui spur. Reports were that the Mikonui spur route was overgrown and difficult to follow on to the tops. So we decided to try via Explorer Hut and then along Miserable Ridge.


Exlporer Hut took 7 hours to reach (instead of the suggested 4). River travel and boulder hopping is really slow going. On the second day we were defeated in the thick scrub belt below the alpine zone, on a track that had not been cut since 1980. Armed with a machete and a pruning saw we managed to recut about 100 metres of track in 2 hours. Running out of daylight and water we ended up retreating to Explorer Hut and abandoning the attempt to get up Mt Bowen. We walked out a day early (probably lucky cause on Monday there was quite a bit of rain and we may have become stuck with rising river levels).

Mt Bowen from Mikonui Flats

Explorer Hut

Where's the track?



Ahh... Mud



River travel



Mikonui Flats Hut



Old Farmstead

Last Weekend: Kirwans Reward Track

A nice, although at times a slog up hill, track through a historic goldmining area on a well formed pack track. Starts at about 200m and 12 or so kms (and 6 hours later) emerges at around 1300m. Nice Hut, and really good views from the tops. Gave me a few blisters this one though. It seems a well form track has it drawbacks - you're only using your feet and legs. On the really steep stuff like Mt Bowen and Mt Alexander most of the time you're hauling yourself up with your arms by grabbing scrub, tree roots etc - more of a whole body thing.

The Legend Grows...

(From a week or so ago):

Fresh from my appearance on the front page I have now graced the sport section. Luckily they didn't take a picture of what I was wearing. Unfortunately they did spell my name wrong.

As a side note, Julie has just started working afternoons in the school library so we now share the same work place. Bizarrely enough, since she has started working there I have quite regularly been called Mr Swallow. It seems that the kids are now unable to differentiate Mr Toby Swallow and Linda Swallow (who are of a similar age and are also a married couple at the school) from myself and Julie. This has obviously been too much information for the students to take in as I am now quite regularly called Mr Swallow by students who have called me Mr Shawcross before. I suppose we both have beards... though Toby and Linda are English with associated accents (which I would've thought was a give away).