Dunlop Volleys - The End of an Outdoor Era

When I started getting into white water rafting I tried a few different sets of river shoes, trying to find the perfect ones. There were pros and cons to each, but I ultimately settled on the same footwear as everyone else. Now, years later, it seems I may have to change styles again.

#1 Booties

The first was a pair of wetsuit boots—or "booties" as they're affectionately known—I already owned for snorkelling around oyster studded rocks. New to white water sports, I foolishly thought their impressive tread meant my booties would provide all the grip I needed both on and off river. While they remain the warmest river shoes I've ever worn, those boots taught me that impressive tread doesn't equate to good grip on wet rocks. In fact, the stiff soles glided easily across the smooth, wet river rocks.

#2 Fingers

So I upgraded soles, adopting a fancier pair of neoprene shoes. I took to wearing a pair of Flows, an early model of Five Fingers. They were comfortable, reasonably warm (apart from the unfortunate gap between the top of the shoes and the bottom of my wetsuit) and their gecko soles gripped surprisingly well on wet rocks. They suffered from only three problems:

• The low tops meant they filled with sand easily when walking along the riverbank, extremely uncomfortable in a skin-tight shoe;
• The stitching tended to tear through the thin neoprene, severely limiting their service life;
• They cost around $200 a pair.

The first was bearable, but the combination of the latter two (and Vibram's refusal to acknowledge the rapidly deteriorating neoprene as a manufacturing defect) made them an impractical option for a student rafter.

#3 Sandals
I'm a long-standing user of hiking sandals, from various Tevas while I was growing up to my eventual introduction to Chacos. The first pair of Chacos I owned predated the heavy tread that followed in later years, when the lines of river and land shoes had almost identical soles. While I wasn't using a pair of their river shoes, mine gripped well on dry and wet rocks alike and dried quickly afterwards. With the addition of a pair of thick woollen socks (aww yeah, socks and sandals! Trendy, I know) so my feet didn't freeze, they made for decent rafting shoes. I could usually find them for around $100 a pair (although I once absurdly found a shop trying to clear some shelf space in a hurry who sold me several pairs at 20c each. Why, I have no idea!) and last me around three years of near-daily use before the soles start losing grip. They can be resoled, but generally only once since the straps eventually start to wear through.

Chaco soles from left to right: original multi-purpose colorado,
dry-land unaweep and wet-rock pro.
Photos courtesy of Chaco US and Wilderness Exchange Unlimited.

More recently, Chacos have diverged into two distinctly different styles: one with the solid, heavy soles of hiking boots; and one with limited tread and soft rubber soles that stuck easily to wet rocks but wore out faster on dry land. I mainly use mine on land as a warm weather shoe that actually has some support, and have stuck with the heavy tread. Alas, that means they're restricted to hiking and I needed to find a new source of river shoes.

#4 Dunlop Volleys

It took me a while to get there, but eventually I bought myself a pair of Dunlop Volleys, cheap canvas shoes whose design had remained largely unchanged for 70 years. They're a popular choice, and the Tasmanian University White Water Rafting Club has long recommended them as the footwear of choice for all new rafters. I forked out the standard $20 for a pair, grabbed some thick socks and tried them out. The grip was astonishing. It took me a while to fully trust them, but it felt like my feet were glued to the rocks. The only time they lost grip on river was when encountering green slime of death* unexpectedly. Since nothing else can find grip on green slime of death, I'm willing to forgive them that one. Like the Vibrams, the low tops meant they filled with sand easily, but it wasn't nearly as uncomfortable. An earlier model of Volley had a higher top that kept the sand out, but the end of that product line predated my use of Volleys by over twenty years.
By far the cheapest river shoes I'd owned, the Volleys also outlasted my Vibrams (which, if you're keeping track, were the most expensive). The canvas tends to wear through beside the little toe and the grip wears out, but neither happens instantly. I could get two seasons of rafting and occasional sessions of parkour out of a pair before they failed.

#5 Cheap'n'shitty Volleys

These sneaky shoes look like Dunlop Volleys, are sold in the same shops, have the same branding on their soles and are sold for a similar price. The only obvious difference is that the name on the shoes' tongues has changed from "DUNLOP" to "VOLLEY." However, one must never mistake Cheap'n'shitty Volleys for the shoes they're imitating...

Somewhere within the bowels of Volley Australia, a decision was made to bring back the old style of high-topped Volleys, rebranded as High Leaps. Excited at the prospect of not shaking gravel out of my shoes at day's end, I bought a pair and tried them out. I'd worn halfway through the grip under the ball of my foot after a 1 1/2 hour parkour training session on their first day of use. A few days of rafting later and holes were forming through the rubber. Despondent that they weren't as well made as other Volleys, I returned to using my old pair.

Then I went on a ten day rafting trip and bought a new pair of Volleys rather than relying on an old pair for so long. By the end of day three, the soles of both brand new shoes had partially detached from the canvas. I doused them liberally in glue and hoped they would last the remaining week. While I was still wearing my new shoes when we rolled up the rafts at trip's end, they were then deposited in the first bin I found. The additional glue had held them together admirably (one thing you can say for rafters is that they've always got powerful glues on hand) but I'd ultimately added duct tape around the toes to reinforce them. The tape would have diminished their grip, except that the grip had already worn away completely.

I started canyoning this year and was fortunate enough to still have my last pair of Dunlops, since the classic shoe has also been a popular choice for canyoners for some years. Although they're holding up well, old age is starting to catch up with them and I doubt they've more than a couple of days' canyoning left in them. With Volleys now a non-contender, I will soon have to delve back into the world of river shoes in search of a replacement.

* Green slime of death is a colloquial term for a type of algae found in some Tasmanian rivers. It's mostly found on rocks that are only intermittently submerged by higher water levels. When dry, it forms a dark green-hued coating on the rocks to which most shoes grip well. When it gets wet (for example, because someone has walked across it with wet shoes), it becomes a slick slime to which no shoes will grip. The result of this is that the first rafter walking across rocks coated with it has no problems, but anyone who carelessly follows their wet footprints a few seconds later is almost certain to slip over.

† A Wikipedia edit recently suggested these changes to the Volley design had been undone and they were reverting to the earlier construction, though didn't cite any evidence. Soon after, another edit was made to the page:

However, an October 2013 inspection of the various models sold in a department store found that all models on sale still had the much softer sole condemned as failing within 3 days in the references above, and there is no documentation at www.volley.com.au indicating that the soles of the online models are any different from those sold in stores.

It's a surprisingly strongly worded edit for something from a user calling himself BenevolentUncle, but a quick browse of the bushwalking forums and blogs of some big names in the Australian outdoor community make clear the widespread displeasure about the new Volley design. It remains to be seen whether Volley Australia will actually do as hoped and return to us our most beloved river shoes.

A Vegan Moroccan Feast

We were recently invited to a friend's house for a truly spectacular Chinese dinner. The host is a vegan and had prepared everything from steamed dumplings to cake, all without so much as a sniff of meat, egg or dairy products. I was impressed, but the meal also presented me with a problem: when hosting a meal in turn, how was I to cook something suitably impressive? I mostly cook vegetarian meals but have little experience cooking to vegan requirements.

I relish a good challenge and thoroughly enjoy trying to meet odd requirements. I've variously deprived my cooking of all sugars, fats, gluten and other such ingredients for a week or two at a time just to see what happened. So I approached this "problem" in much the same way.

First, I had to choose a theme. My usual go-to cuisines were off the list: Chinese and "Southeast Asian" would both have felt like imitations of her banquet; I briefly contemplated Italian but then realised I would have to omit cheese; my Mexican favourites, too, would suffer from a lack of dairy. So I went with Moroccan, largely because it let me cook one of my all-time favourite dishes, which just happens to be a vegan recipe already.

I looked around the net for some inspiration, set myself a menu and went about concocting recipes with every trace of egg or dairy removed. The resulting menu is below. To save this being a ridiculously long post, I've linked to the recipes separately rather than writing them all out in full here.

Entrees were dips and flatbread, a simple affair... or so I thought. One, a spicy carrot dip, was easily prepared the day before and stored in the fridge overnight. But the second dip proved a challenge. I wanted to have a sharp dip to balance the sweet carrot, and that could also accompany the main courses. I would usually make a yogurt-based dip to achieve this, but that wasn't an option with dairy off the cards. Instead of thinking up a different style of dip, I opted to create a dairy-free substitute for yogurt. It was a laborious process, and one that I have no interest in repeating, but eventually I manage to produce a reasonably tasty mint and "yogurt" dip.

For the main course, I dug out a favourite whose recipe I was given last summer: Winter Vegetable Tagine. I'd share the recipe here, but I'm under orders not to give it to anyone else... so I guess that one remains unpublished. The accompanying dishes are under no such restrictions. As has become traditional whenever making this particular tagine, I prepared a spiced rice dish, studded with nuts and currants. Since it promised to be a warm evening, a chickpea and couscous salad seemed an appropriate addition.

The next challenge came in the form of dessert. Again, because of the promised weather, I wanted something cold. Icecream sprang to mind, but suffers from a terrible case of containing cream. Sorbet? Egg whites, I'm afraid. So it had to be something different, and still fit into the Moroccan theme. I decided to experiment with using coconut cream to make icecream and, because the idea appealed to me, went for a rose-flavoured coconut icecream. This was only vaguely Moroccan in theme, so I added a honey and mint syrup cake to the mix.

Well, that wraps up the menu. Generally, I found it pretty easy to find vegan substitutes for ingredients. The exceptions being yogurt and, quite surprisingly, butter. I may have to explore the issue further in another post, but I was certainly shocked to discover how many dairy-free spreads are flavoured using dairy products. Vegetarian food may be fairly mainstream and easy to shop for in the supermarket, but clearly vegan has some way to go yet before its ingredients are so easily obtained.

Vegan Honey and Mint Syrup Cake

This cake is moist, rich and—above all—sweet. The recipe I use here differs only slightly from the original and those changes are largely to make a vegan version rather than my usual inability to follow recipes without making alterations along the way.

Ingredients:

• Cake Batter
• 160 g margarine*
• 300 g sugar
• 1 1/2 tsp chopped mint
• 1 banana
• 2 tbsp white vinegar
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 2 tbsp soy milk
• 4 tbsp custard powder†
• 180 g shredded coconut
• 210 g self-raising flour
• Syrup
• 150 ml water
• 135 g sugar
• 1 1/2 cups roughyl chopped mint
• Topping
• 50 g margarine*
• 120 g honey‡
• 180 g sliced almonds

Directions:

• Cake Batter
• Preheat oven to 150°C/300°F (160°C/320°F non-fan-forced). Beat the margarine, sugar and mint until they become light and fluffy.
• Mash banana to a fine puree and combine with custard powder and baking powder. Stirring constantly, add vinegar, baking powder, soy milk and 2 Tbsp water. The resulting liquid works as a the substitute for the raising, binding and moisturising properties of egg in most cake batters.
• Adding small quantities at a time and beating between each, add egg substitute, coconut and flour to the beaten margarine.
• Line a spring-form cake tin with baking paper. Even if the tin is non-stick, baking paper will be required for the base. Pour the batter into the tin and spread evenly. Bake for 1-1 1/2 hours until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean Remove from the oven and allow to rest for 10 minutes.
• Syrup
• Combine all ingredients in a saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring until sugar is dissolved. When it comes to the boil, remove from the heat and allow to cool. Leave for at least 45 minutes before using.
• Strain to remove mint leaves immediately before using.
• Assembling
• Increase oven temperature to 170°C/340°F (180°C/355°F non-fan-forced). Leaving the cake in the tin, prick holes over 2 cm in the top. Pour the mint syrup over the cake and wait for it to soak in.
• To prepare the topping, place margarine and honey‡ in a saucepan over medium heat and stir until combined. Stir through the almonds and remove from the heat without letting the mixture come to the boil.
• Spread topping immediately over the top of the cake and place in the oven for 15 minutes until the top starts to darken. Allow to cool for half an hour before removing from the tin. Be careful when removing the cake from the tin, as the syrup softens it significantly.

* The majority of the margarines sold at your local supermarket are most distinctly not vegan, using milk solids to reproduce the flavour of butter. Check the ingredients before buying.

† In theory, custard powder is powdered eggs, cornflour and vanilla flavouring meant to reproduce an egg custard. However, cost cutting means that most custard powders don't contain egg any more. Check before you buy.

‡ There are two schools of thought on the vegan qualities of honey. Put simply: honey is vegan vs. honey is not vegan. To avoid getting bogged down in the debate, which runs deep, some less controversially vegan-friendly options are: agave syrup, maple syrup and golden syrup. Each has its own distinct flavour that it will impart, and the choice between them is down to individual taste.

Rose and Coconut Icecream (Vegan)

Making icecream without an icecream maker usually presents me with a challenge, one that I discussed in a post about sorbets. But making a vegan icecream presents another challenge. The lack of cream is the first obvious problem, with a few obvious solutions. I opted for basing my icecream on coconut instead, and flavouring it with rosewater as a suitable accompaniment. The second problem, though, is one of texture. Egg whites or yolks are generally used to make icecreams and sorbets smooth and light. Without them, I was floundering somewhat.

I suspected I could achieve the desired texture using gelatine, which is distinctly non-vegan (nor vegetarian, for that matter), so in theory agar-agar would work as well. Of course, I don't actually have agar-agar at home, and Canberra's various supermarkets and even health-food stores proved non-cooperative. So I tried to use cornflour instead, with some success.

Serves 6
Ingredients:

• 400 ml coconut cream
• 400 ml coconut milk
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp rosewater
• 2 tbsp cornflour
• 1/2 tbsp beetroot juice*
• 2 tbsp shredded coconut (optional)

Directions:

• Combine 2 Tbsp coconut milk with cornflour and mix until smooth. Add to a saucepan with remaining coconut milk, coconut cream and sugar. Place over medium heat and bring to a simmer.
• Stir mixture constantly until it thickens. Remove from heat and add rose water and shredded coconut (if using), stirring slowly as it cools.
• Stir in beetroot juice when lukewarm. Whisk until thick and smooth, then transfer to a sealed container and freeze.
• Remove from the freezer after two hours and stir, then return to freezer. Repeat every two hours until set.

* I had beetroot juice on hand since I was opening a can of beetroot for something else. If you don't have any on hand, use a few drops of red food colouring.

Chickpea and Couscous Salad

This light and tasty salad accompanies sweet main courses well, providing a sharper counterpoint flavour. It is a variation of a recipe from Mediterrasian.

Serves: 4
Ingredients:

• 1 cup couscous
• 1/2 cup sultanas
• 3 cups boiling water
• 1 1/2 tbs vegetable stock powder
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp lime juice
• 1 clove garlic, crushed
• 1 tsp cumin, ground
• 1 tsp coriander seeds, ground
• 1 cm fresh ginger, finely grated
• 1 carrot, peeled and coarsely grated
• 1 red capsicum, diced
• 1/2 red onion, diced
• 1 400g can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
• 1 1/2 tbsp coarsely chopped mint

 Directions:

• Combine couscous, sultanas and stock powder. Pour through boiling water and cover.
• Combine oil, lime juice and spices in a jug and whisk until emulsified.
• When couscous has absorbed all stock, chill to room temperature then stir through all ingredients.
• Serve.

Homemade Vegetable Stock Powder

Vegetable stock is pretty readily available in various cartons, powders and cubes. I've tried a few of them and been heartily disappointed by most. I know salt is needed to preserve the stocks and amplify their flavours, but they usually have so much salt that there are no other flavours to amplify. So I started making my own.

Initially, I tried dehydrating vegetables, grinding them and combining with salt. It worked, but the vegetables tended to rehydrate as small pieces rather than a stock when combined with boiling water. So I experimented with a few methods until I came up with this recipe. The quantities are only approximate and vary in every batch, because it depends on what leftover veggies I have lying around at the time. If you have plenty of fresh vegetables just waiting to be used, that's great. The advantage of this is you don't need them; when I make pumpkin soup, I reserve the skin to use in my next batch of stock. The same goes for carrots and sweet potato, provided they've been washed before being peeled. Have some mushrooms that have shriveled slightly in the fridge? Toss them in, too.

Ingredients:

• 2 large onions, chopped into quarters
• 2 large carrots, washed and chopped into chunks (or carrot peel, pumpkin skin, sweet potato peel, etc.)
• 2 celery stalks, washed and cut into 4-5 cm lengths (or discarded celery leaves)*
• 2 cups mushrooms
• 1 leek, chopped into 4-5 cm lengths (or discarded leek leaves)*
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 tsp freshly ground pepper
• Salt

Directions:

• Add all ingredients apart from salt to a pot and almost cover with water. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer for 30 minutes. This isn't as long as most stocks, but remember that this is to make a powder, not liquid stock.
• Remove from the heat and blend liquid and vegetables to a puree. This may need to be done in batches.
• Poor onto trays of a dehydrator and set for vegetables. If you don't have a dehydrator, poor onto baking trays and put in an oven set to 55°C/130°F, propping the door slightly ajar to allow moisture to escape.
• Dehydration times vary depending on how much liquid is in your puree and how thick the layers are. Stock may need to be flipped over when dehydrated to a leathery consistency to finish drying. When dried, it will be hard and brittle. Transfer to a mortar and pestle or spice grinder and grind to a fine powder.
• Now you need to add the salt. This varies by personal taste and the final product can contain anywhere from 25-50% salt. To test, rehydrate 1 tsp powdered vegetables in 1 cup boiling water and add salt 1/4 tsp at a time, tasting between each addition. Take note of how much salt you add to meet your tastes. If, for example, you prefer 1/2 tsp of salt, combine powder vegetables and salt in a 2:1 ratio to produce your stock powder. Mix well and store in an air-tight container.

Note: This powder produces a light stock, but if you want something more akin to a dark beef stock, you can add 2 tsp promite/vegemite/marmite or your preferred black yeast concentrate spread of goodness to the mix before blending. Equally, you could combine a small quantity with your stock powder before adding the boiling water.

*Remove the roots, but the rest of the leeks and celery from the white to the leaves is usable.

Moroccan Spiced Rice

This is a dish I've been cooking for a while to accompany a sweet and spicy tagine. It has changed somewhat from the original recipe and keeps varying every time I make it, but this is the recipe as I last prepared it. It's easiest to cook using a wide stainless frying pan with a lid, but in lieu of this any lidded pan will suffice.

To serve 6 people.
Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 200g unsalted roasted cashew nuts
• 1 1/2 tbsp moroccan spice mix
• 1 cup fried shallots*
• 1 1/2 cups basmati rice
• 3 cups vegetable stock
• 1 orange, peeled and cut into segments
• 1/3 cup currants
• 2 tbsp flat leaf parsley, chopped

Directions:

• Heat 1 tbsp oil to pan over medium-heat and add cashew nuts. Cook for 5-6 minutes, stirring constantly, until nuts are golden brown. Remove nuts to a plate or bowl and stir through half of the spice mix.
• Heat remaining oil and add rice. Stir until rice is well-coated, then stir through remaining spices. Add orange segments and stock, then stir until it comes to the boil. Reduce hit and cover until liquid has been absorbed.
• Remove from the heat, remove orange segments and stir through currants, nuts and parsely. Serve immediately.

* If you don't keep these in your pantry already, I recommend you add them. They're sold by the kilogram at most asian grocers and are a cheap way of adding a lot of flavour and texture either at home or in the wilderness.

Moroccan Spice Mix

This spice mix is one I use fairly often, not just when cooking Moroccan-themed meals. It works well as a seasoning for everything from rice dishes to grilled meat. It can be prepared without roasting, but the flavour is intensified by the roasting process. Note that if you intend to store it and don't roast the spices, powdered ginger must be used.

Ingredients:

• 2 tsp ginger, grated
• 2 tsp cardamon seeds*
• 2 cm length cinnamon bark
• 1 tsp cloves
• 1 tsp coriander seeds
• 1 cm length dry tumeric root
• 3 1/2 tsp nutmeg, ground
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp white pepper
• 1/2 tsp cayenne
• 1/2 tsp fennel

Directions:

•  Place ginger, cardamon, cinnamon, cloves, coriander and tumeric root in a small pan over medium heat. Stir until seeds become fragrant and start to pop. Remove from the heat and immediately transfer the spices to a mortar or spice grinder.
• Add remaining spices and grind to a fine powder. If using a mortar and pestle, the tumeric root may need to be crushed with the pestle before it can be ground.

* If using cardamon pods, lightly crush before use and remove the green outer skins.

Mint and Yogurt Dip

This dip falls somewhere between Tzatziki and Indian Mint Sauce. It's simple to make and (if you're feeling crazy) can be made as a vegan dish*.

Ingredients:

• 1 cup unsweetened greek yogurt
• 2 tbs fresh mint leaves, finely chopped
• 1 lebanese cucumber, diced into 5mm cubes
• 1/2 tbsp lime juice

Directions:

• Combine all ingredients. 

* If preparing this using soy yogurt, double the quantity of lime juice to compensate for the sweeter yogurt. The resulting dip will be significantly runnier than one produced using dairy yogurt, unless a thickener such as agar-agar is added.

Vegan Yogurt

I've been making my own yogurt for a while, using some of each batch as the culture for the next. It's been a largely successful process (with one unfortunate incident using milk that was about to expire). Needing something yogurt-like for a vegan meal, I intended to make my own. Vegan yogurt sounds like it should be an easy extension of the process (just use soy milk instead of dairy, right?) but suffers from one simple problem: yogurt cultures are based on milk products. The cultures I use are just remains of dairy-based yogurts. The powdered cultures in supermarkets are pre-mixed with milk powder. The only dairy-free yogurt I could find in shops was sweetened and flavoured. Not only does this mean it has the wrong taste for cooking, but flavoured yogurt is also largely useless as a culture.

So I tried searching further afield, checking health food stores in and around Canberra. Several of them had yogurt cultures ready to go, but they were all based on milk whey. Online shopping revealed a few vegan-friendly cultures, but none that would arrive before I needed them (I had not left myself enough time to order the ingredients online and prepare them). Out of curiosity, I checked the packets of probiotic capsules down at the pharmacy and found that they did indeed contain the bacteria needed to turn milk into yogurt. Success! But I needed only a single capsule, and they were sold by the jar. Partial success then; I had a solution but it was a wasteful one.

I had enough time to experiment before I'd need to get some probiotics, and bought two tubs of the least flavoured soy yogurt I could find. When using unsweetend yogurt as a culture, a couple of tablespoons is enough to get the next batch going. Omitted from advertising on sweetened yogurt packaging is that they've been pretty much sterilised before sale and contain barely enough live bacteria to be called yogurt. So using a sweetened yogurt as a starter culture, I used six times as much as I usually would, a full 180ml tub.

I started two batches of yogurt—using my improvised yogurt makers—so that I could try two types of soy milk at once. The milks used were: Macro-Organics (Woolworths homebrand with a pretty label) and Vitasoy. After ten or so hours, I unscrewed the lids of the makers, took out the canisters of yogurt and tried them. The Vitasoy yogurt was still sweet, entirely liquid and had only the most vague taste of yogurt. The Macro-Organics yogurt was similar, but had an added foul aftertaste. At this point, I'd usually transfer the yogurt to the fridge and eat it the next day. Instead I refilled the maker with hot water and returned the Vitasoy yogurt to it for another ten hours. The Macro-Organics was abandoned as a failed experiment.

It took two days for me to ferment the Vitasoy milk to the point where it could be called yogurt. It was still runny and sweeter than I cared for, but that was all I was expecting. Vegan yogurt is runnier than dairy, thanks to the makeup of the milks that can be used, and is typically thickened using agar-agar to give it the desired texture.

So, it is possible to use commercial soy yogurts as a culture to produce a vegan substitue for greek yogurt, but only if you've got a few days of experimentation time to spare.

Spicy Carrot Dip

This Moroccan(ish) dip is simple to make, and extremely tasty. The inspiration for it came from a wonderful recipe on Serious Eats. I used much the same method, but the ingredients suffered from the changes wrought by my penchant for randomly changing every recipe I "follow" just to see what happens.

Ingredients:

• 6 large carrots, peeled and chopped
• 2 tsp honey
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp cumin seeds
• 2 tsp coriander seeds
• 1 tsp fennel seeds
• 1 bay leaf, stem removed
• 2 tsp smoked paprika
• 3 cloves* garlic, crushed
• 3 cm length of fresh ginger, grated
• 1/4 cup stuffed† green olives
• 1/4 cup flat-leaf parsley
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp lime juice
• 1/2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 tbsp tomato paste

Directions:

• Place honey and salt in a saucepan, then add carrots and top up with 1cm water (note: carrots are not covered). Cover and bring to a low boil, then leave uncovered at a gentle simmer, stirring frequently, for ~15 minutes.
• While carrots are cooking, grind cumin, coriander, fennel and bay leaf using a mortar and pestle or spice grinder
• When the liquid has evaporated and the honey starts to caramelise, remove the pan from the heat and immediately add 1/2 C cold water so the carrots don't burn. Transfer carrots and all ingredients to a food processor and process until smooth.

* I use one of the purple-striped varieties of garlic that are finally becoming readily available in Australia. They're a powerfully flavoured garlic, and have large cloves. If I can't find any, my substitute for 1 clove of purple-striped is: 2-3 cloves Chinese/white/bleached garlic (the name varies, but it's the cheap, white garlic in most supermarkets) or 1/2 tbsp crushed garlic from a jar (yes, it does happen sometimes).

† All I had in the house was a jar of capsicum-stuffed green olives, but any pitted green olives would work.

Canyons and Bushbashing on a Blue Mountains Adventure

There isn't much canyoning down in Tasmania, and I'd only done it twice (both times entirely accidentally) on my home isle before moving to Canberra. The first time, I wound up on top of a cliff wishing I had a rope I could use to get to the bottom and ended up shimmying down a tree. The second was a 1:1 gradient quartzite stream that I descended while wearing walking boots and a 25kg pack. With such promising beginnings in the sport, it's small wonder I wanted to try canyoning with people who know what they're doing.

On the March long weekend this year, I ventured up into the Blue Mountains with a group of ANUMC bushwalkers, mountain-bikers, rockclimbers and canyoneers. While I spent most of the weekend bushwalking, I did take a day off to don my wetsuit, five-fingers and helmet then proceed to jump and slide my way down Twister and Rocky Creek canyons. I discovered, in that one activity, something that tested several of my phobias: claustrophobia, acrophobia and nyctophobia. Now if you don't handle fear the way I do, I can understand why you'd think this meant I didn't enjoy myself. Actually, I loved it. Pitching myself against things that terrify me has thus far proved an effective way of becoming less terrified of them afterwards and enjoying myself while I'm at it.

So I signed up to the next canyoning trip I could join, which promised a nice 60m abseil to put my acrophobia to the test. I donned wetsuit, volleys, helmet and harness and prepped myself for the terror. It was annoyingly easy, thanks to some wide ledges breaking up the descent, but I knew I'd find more canyons to terrify me later.Fast forward to October, and a three day canyoning trip up to the Blue Mountains. Five of us set off for the mountains (five came back as well, in case you were wondering) on Friday evening, bound for a campsite at the promisingly named Barcoo Swamp, which we hoped would be quiet over the long weekend. It turned out to be a pleasant, well-drained campsite and made for a good night's sleep before our first canyon.

The plan was to do Heart Attack*, a "dry" canyon boasting 35 and 40m abseils, and a lot of wading up to waist deep. It also boasts a 16km round trip of walking between the car and canyon. The track to the canyon was pretty distinct for the most part, being an old 4WD trail given over to bushwalkers. "For the most part" omits the off-track section at the end. We descended toward the canyon edge, searching for the promised scrub-bash that would skirt around the 40m cliffs we'd otherwise have to abseil. Alas, said cliffs failed to provide their promised easier way around. We searched back and forward along the clifftops, finding numerous gullies that terminated in cliffs and trees solid enough to be used as abseil anchors, provided we knew that they would land us in the right area.

Eventually, we worked our way along the canyon rim to where we knew we could abseil down. Even with GPS coordinates to guide us, it took us some time to find the official anchor—in part because the coordinates we had skipped four out of the ten digits, or around ±70m accuracy, but mostly because we'd been looking for a more substantial anchor. With a 40m abseil ahead, we were checking every sizeable tree along the clifftop for old slings that would give it away as the abseiling anchor. When we found it, it turned out to be a burnt out hollow stump. Already into the afternoon after our explorations, and faced with a dubious anchor, we made our way back to the car rather than risk being stuck in the bottom of a canyon when night fell.

After a warm day pushing our way through dry scrub without finding our destination, everyone was pretty keen for an easily accessed wet canyon on day two. Our canyon of choice was Death Trap. It was only a few km from camp, and a quick scout the night before showed pretty easy walking through open bush. None of us had done it before, and followed a GPS to the promised start-point. The stream wasn't wide enough to wade, but was pretty easily followed down to where it was.

It turned into a canyon eventually, but even the stream was pretty.

A series of pools made up the upper extents of the canyon, entered by short slides or jumps. One pool, draining via a tunnel in to its neighbour, would have been extremely difficult to climb out of at low water levels and was a possible explanation for a pretty canyon receiving such an ominous name. It isn't a long canyon, and we soon reached the abseil down a waterfall into the last pool.

Not steep enough for comfort.

Something I've had to come to terms with in canyoning is that steeper is easier. Abseiling down a slope is more difficult by far than down a vertical rockface, itself more difficult than an overhang. While acrophobia makes those nice sloping rock faces look more appealing than a cliff, it's actually much easier not to slip and fall if your feet aren't touching anything. This waterfall was unfortunately sloped, requiring the odd stretch of bum-sliding mid abseil, but  the pool at the bottom was glorious and worth the awkward access route.

From the pool, we walked along a broad canyon bordered by sheer cliff faces. There was no way to climb out yet and we pressed down further. Part of the cliff had collapsed, not providing a way up but almost completely blocking the canyon. The "almost" was a slot not much than shoulder width between the fallen rock and the opposite wall. It descended under the rocks, from where a short tunnel brought us back into sunlight. We wandered further, taking in the glorious canyon while looking for a break in the cliffs.

The only way to escape Death Trap is down.

 Soon we found ourselves walking on a path that zig-zagged its way up through the cliffline. The path vanished into obscurity as soon as we hit the top, but there was no mistaking it when we stumbled onto it after a few hundred metres of bushbashing. Wide, well-walked and running straight along the ridgeline, it led to within 300m of our car before veering abruptly. We waved it goodbye, clambered into the car and made for the second canyon of the day, as compensation to ourselves for failing Heart Attack on day 1.

Twister was as fun and even easier than I remembered it, with plenty of jumps, slides and swims along its short but convoluted length. The most dramatic part of the canyon is the final drop, a waterfall with a catch. The pool at the bottom of the canyon is little over ankle deep and no saviour at all for a jump. Instead we jumped into a deep pool halfway down the cliff, and used a handline to descend from there. Scouting for anything recently washed into the pool was the only difficulty, and our leader abseiled the short drop to check for submerged branches. Many groups don't bother checking jumps if they've done a canyon before but—coming from a whitewater background where rapids change with every flood—I was glad we took more precautions. We never encountered surprise submerged branches, but it would have only taken one...

We had considered doing Rocky Creek as well, bringing our day's total to three canyons, but the consensus at the exit track was to head back to camp rather than doing another canyon in the encroaching dark. Although the day had been warm earlier, it wasn't any more and no one was inclined to change out of wetsuits for the steep track out of the canyon.

Our last day of the trip took us to another new canyon for the group, Tigersnake. It was a dry canyon and we swapped wetsuits for quick-dry pants before setting off. The access track was an easily followed fire-trail for most of the way, then a well-walked trail for the rest. Unfortunately we had some old notes for the canyon that included instructions of where to turn off the track and descend toward the first abseil. These instructions proved somewhat outdated and the branch at the promised location led us through what turned out to be an entirely unnecessary bushbash and climb before simply rejoining the track we'd been on. No harm—beyond a few scratches and losing half an hour—done and we would know for next time. There certainly will be a next time.

Down into the canyon.

Tigersnake canyon starts with an abseil down through the narrow roof of the canyon. Its a short descent made tricky by the close confines, and some choose to climb down instead. From there, beautiful grottos and a short descent lead to one of the dodgiest anchors you could ever hope not to trust with your weight. A pile of what amounts to old kindling had been wedged across the canyon and roped together. Closer examination revealed that most of it didn't touch either side, let alone both, and was likely the broken remnants of earlier anchors simply left in place. We put in a backup anchor and abseiled in descending order of weight, the last removing the backup before her abseil.

Not a reassuring anchor...

The anchor held, but flexed and creaked alarmingly. From here our nice dry canyon included a wade through a shallow pool before a short abseil to the top of the main drop, a 17m cliff, 10m of which is an overhang. Now I reiterate that cliffs are easier to abseil than slopes, but I was still awash with a nice gentle buzz of terror as I roped up. I failed to fall, failed to die and the worst part of the descent was that my canyoning harness was a whole lot less comfortable than the nice padded climbing harness I had chosen to leave at home. Durability be damned, next time I'm choosing padding.

A short walk through forest brought us to a choice between another long abseil, or a short and tricky abseil down into a second stretch of glorious twisting canyon. We chose the latter.

One of the only photos that didn't blur
in Tigersnake's gloom.

The abseil starts from on top of a chockstone, which was disturbingly prone to shifting slightly underfoot. There were a few joking references to Aron Ralston, but a second (far more secure) chockstone beneath it meant it couldn't actually fall, just threaten. The abseil dropped straight into thigh-deep water (dry canyons, it seems, aren't dry at all) that smells like it doesn't get much flow to flush it clean. We moved on quickly, and into a series of level-floored cathedral-like chambers linked by twisting passages carved into the rock. The divide between caving and canyoning can be slight at times, and there were a few places where the sky vanished from overhead to cast the spectacular rocks into gloom.

Emerging from the end into open canyon once more, we quickly found the exit track and started making our way back to the car and from there back to camp. There our weekend hit a sour note, with the discovery of the piles of garbage—cans, beer bottles, vegetable scraps, even meat and cheese—that the residents of the neighbouring campsite had left in their wake. Our car already laden with five people, we had enough of a challenge loading our own gear and garbage and couldn't fit a bag or ten of theirs in as well. It made for an unfortunate end to the weekend, a reminder of the attitudes some Australians have toward the bush that stayed with us on the long drive home.

If you're interested in another viewpoint on the weekends adventuring, not to mention some spectacular photos, check out the post on Jessica Hancock's blog.

* Named, not for any property of the canyon, but because the party that explored it was woken up by someone trying to get help for someone having a heart attack.