We all met in the Arts Factory car park at 9am Friday morning, excited and ready for some adventure. Joining us on the trip were two Dutch guys (Matty and Florien) and an Aussie girl (Jessie). We all jumped in Paul's beaten up land cruiser with Mr Pickles sat on the back of the drivers seat and headed out. Along the way Paul was pointing out different things, like where the best place would be to find water and how the landscape tells you where the water will be. We stopped off at an ancient aboriginal ceremony site which was over 30,000 years old. It was where they used to bring the boys of the tribe to become men. It took us about 3hrs to get Paul's place. I'm not really sure where it is exactly but it's near Grafton somewhere. We pulled upto camp about 2pm, got settled in to our five man teepee and jumped 'on' Paul's other, even more beat up land cruiser, on a fire wood mission. There was only a drivers seat so we all had to hang on the side. First we collected loads of paperbark for starting the fire, then it was the actual wood. Paul had brought his chainsaw a gave us all a lesson on using it. We chopped up a big tree that had been hit by lighting, the other half of the tree was a good 30m away! All the inside of it had been eaten away by termites, and the dust they'd left behind had somehow become rock hard after the lighting had struck it, so it wasn't the best tree for cutting. After the truck was over flowing with wood we jumped back on and drove back to camp to unload. Then we had to go down to the creek to get water. When we had finally got everything sorted for camp we lit a fire and Paul made us some road kill kangaroo and mushroom stew which was awesome!! Seeing as it was a clear night, Paul decided to show us some star constellations and how to use them for navigation. There were sooo many stars! I have never seen so many. We could see the milky way and everything, we counted at least ten shooting stars as well. After a long day and a good feed it was time for bed. All that was left to do was the teepee fire which kept us warm all night. When we woke the first job was to get the fire going as it was really quite cold in the mornings, also we needed to heat some water up for a coffee. On the way into Paul's place we made a detour to pick up a couple of massive farmed rabbits, so the mornings lesson was how to kill and dress a rabbit ready for cooking. Because I already know how to do this Paul wanted me to show everyone my way of doing it, then he showed us his way on the other one. He even used bits of sharp stone as a knife. After the rabbits had been sorted we left them to hang for a day as they were going to be part of the roast dinner on Sunday. It was time for a tea break or "smoke-o", then Paul showed us how to make a spear out of bamboo and the spear head out of a hard wood called iron bark; and it lives up to it's name. Another smoke-o and he showed us how to throw the spears with a woomera, basically a stick which works as an extension of your arm helping to you to throw the spear. After killing a plastic tub a few times we got a load of fishing stuff and headed down to the river to do a bit of fishing. Before I came down to Paul's spot he was telling me how good the fishing was, but that wasn't the case for that day. No one caught anything, not even a nibble, but the river was beautiful and it was nice just to do a bit of canoeing. Dinner that night was kangaroo bolognese which again was awesome. Roo mince is better than beef in my opinion and it's only $8 a kilo! In his garden Paul has a big cast iron bath which you fill up with water from the creek and make a fire under it so you can have a bush bath under the stars, Mel and I ended up having one every other night. The 3rd day we went on a big bush walk where Paul showed us how to navigate using the sun, where and how to find water, what plants and things we could find to eat, tracking, shelter building and how to make fire with two sticks, which is knackering! Mr Pickles of course came with us as he dose everywhere, he is like a little kid even though he is older than Mel. He always wanting what you have and gets mardy when he doesn't get his own way. The walk took pretty much all day so when we got back to camp all we did was chill out. I carried on with my spear that I had been making and we started to cook the rabbits for our roast dinner. One was done in the cast iron camp oven over the fire and the other was done on a spit. We ended up with a mountain of food. The next day everyone was still full from the meal and tired from the walk so we just chilled out round camp. Paul showed us how to make a few traps, I finished off my spear and did some more throwing, we did another little walk round his house, went kangaroo spotting just on dark and had pancakes for dinner followed by some more star gazing and some spider spotting. We managed to spot a poisonous spider called a shield spider and we found a big garden orb weaver on the corner of Paul's house. While we were shining the touch at the orb weaver a moth decide to fly into its web so we got to see the spider in action.
 We were supposed to be going back to Byron with Paul On the Tuesday, but as we liked it there so much and he wanted some plumbing work doing we decided that we'd stay for an extra week and help him out. He is trying to set up a survival school so people can come down like we did and learn how to live off the land. It's in it's very early stages at the moment and he needs a few things doing before he can get it completely passed by the council. The end goal is to employ some aboriginal people to teach bush crafts as their culture only allows them to do certain work. So I offered to help out and put some grease traps and soak aways in for the kitchen sinks at the camp and his house, in exchange for food and the teepee. Paul had been into town the day before and picked us up some food and plumbing parts, so we were set to go it on our own for three nights until he came back from the Arts Factory. After everyone had left we got to work. Mel on cleaning and me on digging a trench and big hole for the soak away. That afternoon I managed to get all the digging done for the camp soak away, Mel managed to clean and rearrange the whole camp, kitchen, teepee and we even got water and fire wood for the bath. Feeling proud of our afternoons work we put some more roo bolognese on the fire and went for a bush bath with a couple of ciders and stared at the stars. The next morning we got up early so we could crack on with work. We found evidence that we had had a little visitor in the kitchen that night. Paul had told us about the local possums and how annoying they were but we hadn't seen any while there were five of us in camp. His nick name was EFTPOS, (emergency flood tucker possum) he had been in the bins and stole a pot of Nutella! That day I finished the plumbing off down at camp and started on the hole up at Paul's house. Mel had a quick tidy up after EFTPOS and got stuck into cleaning Paul's house which was a proper lads pad. Guitars in the corner, skulls on the walls, skins on the floor and it defiantly looked like a single guy was living there. So Mel was kept busy for a while. I was digging away when I heard a shout of "maatttttt" from inside, I went round to see what had gone on and Mel had found a snake under the door matt, and had almost hoovered it up! When I got there all we could see was a tail sticking out from under the carpet. Silly me gave it a pull to see if I could pull it out but it shot under further. So we lifted the carpet to find a black snake staring at us. It wasn't very big only about 80cm long but it didn't look too happy and slithered off under the door frame. We later found out that it was a small Red Bellied Black Snake - in the top 5 of the most poisonous snakes in the world!! After that little excitement I finished off digging and Mel finished cleaning and it was time to make some dinner. We had left over roo mince so we cut up some potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, onion and garlic, stuck a few herbs in there with some olive oil, put them in the camp oven over the fire and left them roasting while we had another bath. When we came back down bloody EFTPOS was in the bins again! He gave Mel a right scare when he jumped out. Instead of running off he just climbed up into the roof and sandwiched himself between a beam and wouldn't come down. So we had our dinner and went to bed and left him to it. Our last day alone was spent finishing off the plumbing bits and having a clean up again ready for Paul's return. He was supposed to come back around lunch time but didn't end up coming back till late on that evening. For a while we thought we had been abandoned. While we were sat round with nothing to do I started making a few spear heads then thought I would try and make a fancy one so we could give it Paul to say thanks. Over the course of several nights and bits in the day when Paul wasn't around, I made him a big spear head and Mel engraved it with a little message.
We had started putting the bins on top of eachother so EFTPOS couldn't get in them, but as we found out the next morning he still managed to get to the nutella! That day Paul and I went on a fire wood mission and he told me some bad news, my hole I had dug wasn't big enough to meet aussie regulations. He had spoke to one of his mates who does soak aways for a living and the hole needed to be at least 10m cubed!! But that was a job for tomorrow. The rest of the day was spent chilling. Mel and I tried another fish mish to no avail and Paul went into town to pick up some more food and another girl Sabrina who was coming to do some work. The next two days were spent digging the hole bigger, running more pipe inside it for the soak away, putting 3tonns of stone chippings in to cover the pipe, covering that with a special cloth to stop the tree roots getting in and putting all the soil we had dug out back on top of it again! Then it was time to go back to Byron, the time went so fast we really enjoyed it. Definitely the best thing we've done, it was really nice to go on a trip that wasn't so commercial and regulated. I'm really glad I could help Paul out seeing as he is working so hard for a good cause, not to mention he is such a legend. I really enjoyed working again for a change instead of just chilling all the time. Kangaroo creek is a beautiful place and we have been invited to go back any time.