Dan and Cam Invade Australia!

[The Vanilla Gorilla]

Can you believe they actually granted me a passport?? I woulda thought for sure they woulda denied anybody who took their passport photo in overalls....

On September 28th, me and Dan (DHR)left the United States, bound for Cape York, Queensland. This trip had been in the making for almost 2 years. Started out with a couple emails back and forth with Andy Ivy, who had started guiding with Trophy Bowhunts Australia. I'm a sucker for putting an arrow in feral animals, and by the things I had heard, Australia was right up my alley for that stuff. A couple of emails swapped, and Andy put me in contact with Dan and the ball got rolling.  To me, it all seemed a little surreal, like it was all just kind of a "maybe I'm going" type trip. Then we started wiring money over seas.  Still, it didn't seem like it was really gonna happen.

Then, when I walked into the D terminal at Dallas International Airport, and saw this monster plane sitting out there, crap suddenly got real!!  I was gonna go on my first international huntin trip.

 

[Ben Maher]

Giddyup !

[steadman]

Cameron, do I need work on some more photos for ya?    Looking good!

[Yellow Dog]

Bring it on Cameron, looks like you're going to take us to Australia with you  

[Claym]

     

[Mike Bolin]

Come on Cam!! Hey lil' buddy, did you "bust any moves" or "shake that groove thang" for our brothers in OZ?

[Mike Vines]

I waiting to see how this turned out.  Sounds like a dream trip in the making.

[The Vanilla Gorilla]

Dan will hopefully be along sometime soon with his sides of the story and his pics.  Till then I'm gonna entertain you with mine.  

I dont travel much, but I can't see where getting to Australia could have gone any smoother.  I left Dallas at 10pm and arrived in Brisbane, Australia 16 hours later.  The flight was pleasant and pretty much uneventful. I had contacted Marty (Buff) and Alan (Amar911) about what to expect, and they pretty well gave me the rundown as to what to expect while traveling abroad. Thanks again guys!

 Upon arrival in Brisbane, I had to get thru customs.  For the most part, it went pretty smooth. Except for when I admitted I was gonna be hunting, and a cute customs girl wanted to go thru my gear and look at my knives. My dad had tried to get me to take along his beloved Randall Model 5, with the 8" blade, with hopes that I could use it to tune up a hog with in the outback.  Good thing I decided to leave it at home, cause it woulda stayed in Australia.  

I hopped another flight from Brisbane to Cairns and arrived there at 9:30am.  Dan was due to arrive about noon, but due to some circumstances beyond his control, we finally met up at about 5pm and headed to the hostel that Mick and Andy had arranged for us to crash in for the night.

The hostel was inexpensive, and basic.  Perfect for us. After all, this was gonna be the last stop of civilization for the next 10 days!

 

That night, we got a lesson on Australian culture. We drank their beer, ate their kangaroo meat, engaged in conversation with some locals, and got to witness how quickly a couple of female cops can take down a belligerent drunk and drag him out. I was really liking the place, and me and Dan both agreed by the end of the trip that we shoulda taken another day or two to spend around town before we went back home.  

The next morning, Andy pulls up outside the hostel to pick us up.  We loaded up our gear, and began to head out of town.  But first, Andy had to submit to a mandatory breathalyzer test at a roadblock at 7AM!!  I'm not sure, but I was beginning to think that Cairns was a hellraisin town! (For this record, Andy was sober...this is apparently just something that just gets done on the streets of Cairns.)

I love this pic....

 

[The Vanilla Gorilla]

Originally posted by Mike Bolin:
Come on Cam!! Hey lil' buddy, did you "bust any moves" or "shake that groove thang" for our brothers in OZ?

Mike. You know me brother.  I can't go anywhere...dont matter if its in Tulsa, or on a whole nuther continent....without making an a$$ of myself!  Haha!  But at least I didn't walk around with a corncob hanging from my neck.  This time.

[The Vanilla Gorilla]

From Cairns, Dan, Andy and I traveled north.  In the town of Mareeba, we met up with Mick, owner of Trophy Bowhunts Australia, and two other hunters from other areas of Australia.

After a short breakfast stop, we continued our trek up north to Cape York.

 

 

About halfway thru the trip, I came to the conclusion that Oklahoma Department of Transportation must obviously take care of the road maintenance thru the Cape York area as well, because the road we were on, was only slightly better condition than your average state highway in Oklahoma.

 

I'm a bit of a gearhead. Especially when it comes to 4wd vehicles.  Australia has it made when it comes to this stuff. Apparently their pickups, or "Utes" as they call em, are loaded down standard with all the stuff we have to pay big money for to have.  ARB bull bars, diesel engines, solid front axles...all sorts of cool stuff!  

Anyway...several hours later, we arrived at our home for the next week, Crosby Station.  There's a handful of you guys who have been to this place before.  Welcome back, fellas!

 

[doug77]

Been wating to hear from you Cam.

doug77

[pdk25]

I sense something big coming. Welcome back, Cam.

[The Vanilla Gorilla]

The first evening in camp was for the most part spent putting bows together, assembling arrows, unpacking gear, lobbing arrows at a target, and getting ready to hunt.

The next morning we split into pairs, each with a guide and headed off to make trouble.  The first morning, it didn't take us long before Andy had us into hogs at a swamp. In fact, there wasn't a time during this 10 day hunt that Mick and Andy didn't have us into hogs. It blew my mind to see hogs in the daylight, cause back home, if you see a good boar in the daylight, you're either hunting with dogs, or there's a brush fire moving thru!

As my luck would have it, on the 2nd day of the trip, I woke up with serious sinus drainage, which would later blossum into a sweet little respiratory infection.  Id like to get my hands on the cretin who was on the plane who gave me this little gift.  Seems like everywhere I fly to, this ingrate is on the same flight I'm on.  

The respiratory infection really slowed me down, but I didn't keep from hunting.  It did however remind me that even though this was a hunting trip, I was still on vacation, and even if I didn't get to hunt as hard as I wanted to, I was still hunting in Australia, something I'd wanted to do for years. I just needed to kinda pace myself and enjoy my time there. Sometimes I didn't feel well enough for a morning or afternoon hunt, so I hung around camp and took photos.

 

 

 

 

[rastaman]

[The Vanilla Gorilla]

I'm a bit of a bird nut. Between my dad hauling me along on his bird studies for the universities when I was a kid, to the collection of racing pigeons and game cocks in my back yard, I've always learned to love and know birds. Australia is a birdwatchers mecca. Every morning at 6am the cockatoos, lorakeets, doves and everything else the place has would wake up.

 

[David Yukon]

Nice read! I use to own one of those Hillux Surf...I roled it down a 60'hole... They are indeed great truck!! Nice pics! Can't wait for the rest!

[snakewood3]

Really enjoying this, thanks for taking the time to share with us.

[Old Chief]

A very nice read, thank you.

[Tom Baxter]

Makin me home sick you are, and we have not even got to the game on the ground yet either, and as an Australian it would be remiss of me not to say, "you lucky bastard"!

[Over&Under]

Great so far!!!  Very much enjoying this as Oz has been one of my dreams as well for a long time!

Thanks alot for sharing this with us.

One thing I can't get over is that they would actually keep your knives...that just ain't right!