So when fishing crays in Geraldton, he heard about these islands off the coast from Pilots at the air strip. So he sailed his 16 ft clinker built timber dinghy out there & camped out there a few weeks living off fish and the odd turtle and seal... whatever he could get!
Caught a boat full of crays and sailed back to Gero... these are the days before GPS - he had a compass was all!
Built a hut eventually out of stuff he took out from town a few bits at a time!.
I stayed in that original hut mostly after he passed away. One night in a gale it almost blew off the Island with me in it!.

I guess I am saying - we really don't need all this technology - its nice to have, I like a cold beer at the end of the day out of the engel fridge freezer as much as the next guy - but this country was established without any of that stuff- just the very basics.
I trapped fauna once with Hary Butler... & he did all his early work out of one of the first Land rovers, broken axles and all.
No portable fridges and heat exchanger showers in those days.
Heck what about the guys who conquered the gold fields with wheelbarrows and shovels?
Maybe we are all just becoming 'soft cock's' at the end of the day....

Had a mate once - wouldn't go camping with us coz there was no where to plug his hair dryer in! (We nick named him "pretty boy Floyde").

I reckon people shouldn't put off seeing this great country coz they haven't got $3 -4 hundred Kay's worth of "all the latest gear"...
I remember up in the Pilbara we once had a couple camped near us once (yeah the ones who drained all our diesel from the long range tank into jerrys in the middle of the night & put it all into their 4wd & shot thru at ridiculous O'Clock the same morning before we woke up) - who traveled on the smell of an oily rag!.
Reported it to the local plods... turned out - they had been after them for weeks... apparently they rented a 4wd from some hire place in Perth for 2 days - took off and never came back with it.. stole a caravan to hook on the back, and were stealing food & fuel from other campers, doing servo drive offs etc.. I think they made it to Qld before the law finally caught up with them from memory - but heck they were seeing Oz on a shoestring budget!
