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The trundler hand cart

You can backpack, canoe or use a cycle trailer, and be respected, or even fashionable, but trundling is a no-no.

I trundle off-track, up mountains, over small fallen trees and under large ones, but avoid crossing rivers. If thirty minutes of hiking bliss is all you get before the pack starts to double in weight, you might be happier trundling. To my knowledge there are no makers of hand carts, which presents you with a sizeable project. Before you start, this is what I use mine for. No prizes are awarded for doing the same. Real bush-bashing or rough country climbing is of course no longer possible, which is either a terrible disadvantage, or a very handy way of keeping the solo camper out of trouble.

Glorious space

Inside the blue polythene drum is 160 or 170 liters of room. If the cart stays vertical you can walk through any rain short of a flash flood, and all but the days requirements up in your pack will remain bone dry. I do take the trouble to pack and compress the sleeping bag (two in the winter), but everything else whether preparing at home or striking camp is just 'chucked in the bin'. Lightening and compacting measures such as dried foods are no longer needed, and for a four day trip in all but extreme heat I carry cereal, sandwiches, cold meat, salad and pre-cooked potatoes, plus plenty of apples and oranges, all of which means the Trangia can be left at home.

NOTE: With the latest project being the slimming of the Trangia, it once more comes with me, and I can wash in warm water again.

The wheeled base can be removed from the drum as fast as opening your pack. Overnight you can tip the drum on its side for a waterproof storage that keeps the tent floor tidier, and put the wheeled lid back on if possums or foxes are expected. The closed drum has not been tested for Grizzly impact (wrong country) but the contents are unlikely to remain your property. Since the drum is industrial, it can be padlocked to at least inconvenience human thieves.

With the drum and possibly the wheeled cap in use while you are camped, the long drawbar can also be employed. I use a twin bar made of two square section aluminium tubes side by side, and these bars can be used to support your tent, provided you are willing to return to the old-fashioned ridge model. I found a camping shop with some Korean nylon ridge tents left at about $US 27 each, and bought two in a hurry. No matter how wide a flysheet is for these models, it is never long enough to reach beyond the ends of the tent, and keep the rain off. I bought two four-man tent nylon flys, unpicked one into two halves, and sewed one of the halves onto the other fly, to make an extended fly that was half as long again as the tent. This gear is more aimed at static camping than one stop per night since I normally leave the car, travel cross-country, then trundle 300 vertical metres to the top of Scrubby Hill, a trackless 1600 Metre mountain, where I have encountered one other visitor in the last twenty years. The weather can range from 35 deg Celsius in the Summer to four feet of snow in the Winter, with gales and downpours also being common.

I beefed up the nylon tent with nylon webbing along the ridge and also the gutters at each side. The pitch can vary from the bare tent minus walls to the full fly if the wind eases off and sun or rain are present in excess. This is gale-resistant mode with the walls pegged down. Note the cart drawbars are pitched before any tent is erected with two top guys to each drawbar, and a top line between them, allowing a rigid structure to be set up in the wind and rain before committing any tentage. In a downpour you can throw the fly over the top line, temporarlly peg it out then put up the tent underneath in the dry. The reinforcement and two-cord mounting at each end of the ridge allow high tension on the long nylon guys, keeping the tent in shape but elastic.

The inner tent has been raised by adjusting the two-cord mountings, and the walls have been pegged out. Note the ridge of the long flysheet is virtually straight, since it uses a catenary support cord above the fly passing through loops on the nylon webbing reinforced ridge. In Winter the fly is pitched with much shorter cords, steepening the slope to allow snow to slide off.

All pictures were taken in the dry foothills of the Black Snake and Blue ranges, north of Tynong in Gippsland, about one hours drive to the east of Melbourne, Australia. The 'model' (cough) is six foot three inches tall.