Outback Adventure - Cameron's Corner - Roothy

john get down to the corner store and get me some milk and bread i'm busy here dear john you'll get to the corner store now if you know what's good for you okay i'll go to the corner store all right well she wanted me to go to the corner store i know which corner i'm going to south australia queensland and new south wales border corner that'll do me cameron corner there's a whole lot of different ways to get out to the corner from brisbane but i wanted to take a different way so somewhere i hadn't been before and so after looking at the map i thought well why not go down through bulu station up the bulu river hitting the ground running from brisbane it's a good 900 k's before you hit the dirt for the first time it's a full day in the old sheepskin saddle to get to kanamala and from there there's another few hundred k's before we make our first camp by the bulu river heading out this way be ready for some long hot stretches so bring plenty of fresh drinking water especially when you're driving a truck like milo arriving at the bulu and making camp after the long haul from brisbane i'm reminded why we four-wheel drivers do what we do seeing the river with plenty of water this far from the coast reminds you of just how extraordinary our land is and how fortunate we are to be a part of it i don't know about you but after a drive like that i could eat the nuts off the harbour bridge time for a cook up here's the old bushman's trick to lighting a fire with a lot of dry timber here's a fire lighter oh the old bush fire lighter doesn't matter the wood's dry as out here and look at this talk about a perfect western river this is the bulu river we've come down south here to pick it up it's beautiful lots of water in it too what a great place to camp just going to get this fire going and i'll go and get the roast ready for the boys cooking on a dry wood fire is a bit of an art in itself because you get an awful lot of intense heat for a very small time i've found in the past that the best way to do it is get it on and play with it well as you know i left home in a bit of a hurry there's quite a few things i forgot to chuck in the truck including a beer caller brad i'm going to make a beer caller but thank you you've got to have a beer to make the beer cooler with um bush beer cooler really simple bit of plastic any plastic will do wrap it around the beer and then we grab some cardboard wrap that around the plastic not too hard it's funny how you know whoever designed beer cans he knew a lot didn't it i mean i don't know about you but my hand naturally falls around a beer can has done for a lot of years i reckon it's ergonomically one of the best things ever made and 100 mile an hour tape now if you're going bush without a hundred mile an hour tape naughty naughty naughty you can do everything with this stuff you can even tie them oh no no no i didn't mean that the hand breaker better not hear that one okay ah there you have it homemade beer cooler now i'm gonna cook a roast tonight mostly because i reckon you should never go bush without a leg of something in this case a leg of lamb cooking a roast in a hot pot is dead easy so it's really easy when you forgot the vegetables which is another thing i left at home but that's all right i'm on a bit of a low-carb diet anyway so meat beer peas gravy that's us we're gonna have to do this really quickly because there's about 10 million flies here on the bulu it's part of the experience they're all going to go away as soon as the sun drops anyway this is just a simple leg of lamb dead easy all i'm going to do i've got some garlic in a squeeze bottle here give it a quick slash from side to side gee this leatherman sharp you got to watch your fingers i'll tell you you need lots of butter in the pot it just sort of breaks the seal so that the meat floats a little bit as it cooks i like butter you know i don't know whether it's part of my low-carb diet i must find that out no i might not ask actually safer plenty of garlic rub it in now lamb you can do almost any way you can think of i'm using garlic because it's simple and i'm in a hurry i want to try out my homemade beer cooler but you can do all sorts of things with lamb in fact you can do all sorts of things with roasts one of the best things i've ever tried with lamb was alternate bits of lemon and lime but that's going to take too long and i don't have a lemon i left that at home too along with the coronas okay with the lamb all garlicked up in the pot how hard was that this is when you know you could chuck the veggies in now if the potatoes are nice and big or if you want to sort of keep them down to half size you'd put them in in about an hour or so actually by the look of that fire the way it's going i reckon this whole thing will be done in an hour that's something else too judging how long it takes to cook something like this um the only way to do that is to have a beer open the lid you get the hang of it now all we've got to do is set the fire up to take the pot and we'll be away when you cook with a hot pot you need to have heat underneath it and heat on top and the more uniform the heat the better um best way to achieve that is to let the fire burn for a while and get some coals and then you just flatten them out like this see that sand under there will be hot enough oh it's pretty hot actually in goes the pot looks like yay that's still a bit odd this is why they have a lip obviously to keep a few coals on top and to keep the ashes out when you lift the lid up to check on the lamp this is pretty hot and this is a very quick fire because the timber is very dry and very light so that means i'll probably need to turn it a couple of times and keep it topped up but while we're waiting for the meat to cook i reckon we should chuck a yabby pot you know if there's not yabbies in there i'd be very surprised i'll just go get the pot you can cook on any sort of fire even a dry western wood fire but you do need to keep that pot turned around when the fire's as hot as this by that i mean literally just turning it occasionally so that it's not always facing the same way i might be the world's worst fisherman but i've actually caught a couple of yabbies over the years and here's a bit of a trick for you the best yabby tucker around is black and gold tuna cat food actually anything yucky in a tin will do the job my cooking does it too but we won't go there all you do is pierce a few holes in the top of the can and whack it in your net okay well the bait's ready time to chuck it in i don't know how big the yabbies are going to be we'll tie a couple of knots in today don't think there's anything more peaceful than sitting on a riverbank waiting for your dinner to cook and enjoying a cold beer especially when you know you're at least a thousand miles from the nearest capital city that makes it even better [Music] it hasn't been in that long but this is a pretty hot fire you can hear that roast sizzling oh it's going the right way isn't it look at that bit black on the outside but it hasn't been in long enough to be cooked all the way through so we'll just put the lid back on leave it on the edge for a while i think another half an hour another beer or two should be magic several beers later and his next morning and wonderful and peaceful it is too in the bush you know people say this country always looks the same but it doesn't look at this wild ducks must have been heaps of them they all just suddenly decided to skate up the river for no reason at all we've got every brand of spider here even the non-dangerous ones are good for scaring tourists with though tell you what the flyers are back straight away aren't they soon as the sun comes up half a dozen flies [Music] well the pot's been in overnight let's see how we went eh he mates on the mud flats would be proud of me oh look at that there's a meal there you know chooker reckons he knows how to catch crabs look at this well there you go how easy was that you could live out here couldn't you dead easy just off the abbeys it helps that the river's up i reckon though that we'd better stick them on ice because it's going to get hot pretty soon and i reckon we'll make a nice meal with those tonight little lobsters you know i traveled all over the world as a young bloke and they just didn't want me here i guess and i know one thing for sure and that is that in australia we are the world's best campers we really are and i think that the reason why is that even a campsite like this where no one's going to come for another 50 years we'll leave it spotless we'll take everything we brought including quite a few of these out with us oh get a load of this you didn't see this last night this is all that's left of that lego lamb i reckon uh watto and pico really gave it a bit of a hiding eye along with a couple of beers right out let's go right now the bull is flourishing with the flow on from recent rains just north actually the bulu river was the site of the world's third ever electric hydro plant and it was the first in australia with water comes wildlife and there's plenty of it out here it might look brown but i'll tell you what i had an early morning dip and it was perfect it always is especially when you've got to spend the rest of the day sitting in a dusty cabin station is a station obviously which means they've got cattle all the big stations are fenced and gated on the edges unless they've got grids just depends on the you know the establishment itself and how often people travel people don't travel through here very often so we've got gates and the rule with gates is simple if it's open leave it open if it's shut make sure you shut it and it's not as if we're talking about a gate every 100 yards oh hang on yes we are in this case this is just a stock run most of the big stations have them they need something to narrow down all those huge square miles of country when they're mustering in the cattle i didn't see any but i'd say a lot of the mustering out here is done with a helicopter farmers use more ways to shut gates than there are ways to drink beer all you got to do is copy what the last guy did and you've got a fair chance of getting it right just make sure that the gate won't come open though okay i love travelling on station tracks it reminds me of when i was a kid you know back on our station i suppose but more than that it's just that feeling that you are well and truly away from it all i mean you could drive along here in a two-wheel drive you no problems at all most of the way but if things went wrong then you'd be in trouble that's when four-wheel drive comes in really handy a little bit of rain out here you can be stuck for days even in a good truck i noticed there were a couple of bulls in the creek here just fairly close to us and knowing the time of year and the way those bulls are probably feeling i got back into the truck about as quick as i could some of these bush balls are really worth avoiding a light fat kevi at closing time stay out of the way [Music] milo loves these dirt tracks as much as i do i reckon there's nothing like just pouring along a track knowing full well that there's no one coming from miles i mean you can see them you can see the dust two or three k's away just you you and this wonderful environment you know it can be as flat as a pancake flatter than a clay pan for miles and miles and miles and you think you've seen it all in bingo there's something you haven't seen in this case a mob of emus doing the usual emu thing running across the track not along it it doesn't matter how flat australia is in places it's almost as if mother nature chucked up the odd mountain range or creek or clove of trees or something you know there's always something just up ahead that you haven't seen before that's a little bit interesting a little bit different i love the outback for that i guess it's a question of contrast isn't it you can go for hundreds of k's and not see anything and that's partly enjoyable too and then there it is something different something new the first signpost i've seen in a while unfortunately it's got cameron's corner written on it which is a good thing because if you go out here one of the things you're going to find out is that there's at least half a dozen intersections that aren't even on the map follow your nose and follow those signs to cameron's corner and you'll get there see they weren't kidding about this track being in lousy condition i think the range came through messed it all up then it dried up hard before it had a chance to settle and that's what you get rough track it'll be rough till it's graded plenty of soft sandy spots too it's the old bulldust pits that can really cause you trouble you know if you hit them at speed and there's something hidden in there you can do a lot of damage you can even roll your truck these sort of conditions it's best to just maintain a pretty decent speed you know 70 80 kilometers an hour tops that way you can get out of trouble before you get into it and talking about trouble here's the cameron corner pub you beauty [Music] this is the only establishment for at least 250 kilometers all around you gotta love that [Music] oh bill likes to keep the beer cold out here too [Music] it's pretty amazing you know we hit the corner hotel the same night as most of the local policemen from broken hill from innominca and from all over that part of queensland south australia and new south wales they were having a bit of a get-together a bit of a a conventional i guess you'd call it and it was good to see them too because normally there's only two or three people here if you're lucky a lot of these guys too are dead set four-wheel drive enthusiasts there's one of them who suggested i go and play a round of golf maybe it was just a way to get me out of the pub this is one of the few games of golf you can have where you have some holes in queensland and some in new south wales you could have some in south australia too except national parks stuff that bit up now i don't know much about golf [Music] but i know that if the little ball goes in the hole you can go back to the clubhouse for another beer right well here we are at the corner the corner pub i've got claire with me she's from france she's been traveling all around the outback you've got a year yes that's right yep oh wonderful and she's keen to try lots of different things which means we've got a perfect victim for our yabbies now this is how you cook yours for you people who've never done it it's dead easy first thing we do i've got some salt water boiling there i'll just drop a few in and we had these guys on ice all day so there's still a pretty cold it's just been enough to kill them which is good because i hate the things when they're alive there we go just give them a bit of a boil up oh what do you reckon five minutes five minutes yes i think it's the that's the way we do the question stations in france yeah what do you have something like a yabby in france yeah we've got uh longustin which are this a bit of the same but they're a bit more they're orangey beige and yep oh okay yeah yeah well it's sort of just like a little lobster they are salt water saltwater salt water yes yeah well our saltwater ones are this big you know yep i know they're not about the speaker and we've got some fresh water ones as well yeah okay well that's what that's all yep freshwater cray we're going to do it with garlic but unfortunately because we're traveling in the bush we don't have any fresh garlic so it'll be garlic out of a bottle okay i'm sorry about that right look at that they're nice and orange they've done four or five minutes so now we'll just pull them out of there duck them in cold water skin them and bung them in the pan trimming a yabby cleaning it up is just like cleaning a prawn all you need to do is crack the tail open it's really only worth getting the meat out of the tail crack the tail open pull out the intestinal tube clean off the bits and pieces and you're ready to go [Music] now it's one thing about aussie cooking dead simple it's got to be because we are right out here we go lots of butter a lot of people use margarine i hate margarine do you guys use margarine for cooking uh for real good cooking it's better it's better is it no it's better as well yeah oh you like butter yes oh thank heavens for that i was worried there for a second this is um this is garlic that i freshly squeezed and put in the bottle maybe maybe there we go we'll just cook a few of these to start with amazing isn't it you know the creek they came out of i couldn't see i couldn't see my finger a quarter of an inch under the water it's that brown you know because it's running that fast and yet you get this lovely food from it so they they like still water or running water to be able to thrive you know what i think they must like still water as well but it must need some sort of breathing because i've seen yabby farms where they have ponds but they keep the water flowing from one to the next to the next to the next okay we got these out of the um the river back here and it was flowing pretty hard so so it's from the balu river from the balloon we camped there last night okay you know um you know what we use for bait no a tin of cat food with some holes poked in it i love it okay there you go claire these are just about done yep you're looking worried are you okay so that's where try that thank you it'll be hot [Music] is that nice absolutely delicious how do you guys see and and i mean it i just don't say that to be nice better than a snail away much better than a snail but listen delicious delicious there you go we don't have to call for the flying doctor no oh that's wonderful well would you mind one of the local guys here ben his nickname's frenchy so we'll bring him in and see what he reckons too come on in ben okay ben there you go mate ready try that is that all right that's gold that's good for bush tucker isn't it eh it's not bad well thanks very much you can all go in there because i want to finish these off [Laughter] this is bill mitchell he's the uh publican and the probably the king of cameron's corner i'd say aren't you bill just to be here just about you've been here seven years now just on yes truth and right here what have we got here this is the the border post that's the corner right here's the corner new south queensland and i'm in chat australia you're in queensland well i'm going to keep it that way mate i won't be in queensland but i notice there's a few other sort of survey posts and things around too what's the go here what's going on there's another one over there when they surveyed it i think that's one of the first ones there another one behind us technology's catching up over the years and this is where to put it and this is where it's staying this is where it's staying so one of these i mean there's only about 15 foot in this from the origin that must be cameron himself the original surveyor john cameron yeah and that was what 18 oh around about 1890 1890 so he would have done it with a camel and a piece of chain or something wouldn't it would have been hard yeah man he wasn't bad was he's 15 feet away from the satellite right damn well he's done well it looks to me like the the old rabbit fence is not in the right place what's happening i think queenslanders must have built it borrowed a bit of land off new south wales is that what it is yeah hey we've had a win i like it what do they use the fence for now the dogs uh dog finch now the koopa mouth of new south wales keep them out of new south wales yes yeah actually i reckon we should extend this fence right the way down the border and try and keep all the cockroaches out of queensland too while we're at it [Laughter] little blue ones that's the ones bill last night in the bar um i heard a bit of a rumor that you might be selling up before long she's on the market now john is it yep did you hear that somewhere out there someone is in for the buy of a lifetime feed inc in cameron's corner store that's awesome goodbye for someone mate goodbye there's a square mile of country you've got all the business in the world here on this corner everyone comes here eventually some of us don't want to go home hey that reminds me i better get some milk off you too plenty over there mate fresh or long life oh good yeah well i think i'll need long life mate by the time i get home oh good audio corner life is like nothing else in australia where else can you live in queensland have a new south wales postcode and a south australian phone number sure makes things tough at grand final time when you really think about it it's amazing that john cameron could be so accurate with the survey of this area and so far from any capital city street i get lost just going to the corner store let alone this far out warning bill you got something for me something for the handbrake mate oh good idea mate that'll make a day wasn't it it will money thanks bill god bless mate i'll see you next time [Music] oh well with the milk and bread it was time to head home back through calamala sticking to the tracks where we can poor old milo she's starting to show her age a bit on the run home i noticed she was running a bit rough oh dear stopping for a look i found i had two broken engine mounts and i think i've got a blind piston or at least a few sets of bad rings thinking back i did hit that wash out a bit hard about a hundred k's back looks like i left a nurse at home on this one strewth that'll make me even later getting home oh dear right mister i told you to go to the corner store what took you so long i'll tell you the traffic in brisbane's murder these days [Music] [Music] g'day welcome to ruthie's ruthless tales go on grab a slice of feared income australia get your dose of roofie and put a smile on your dial [Music] you

Channel: JOHN ROOTH

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Keywords: 4xForum, RonBacardi666, GallBoys, ExpeditionOverland, OverlandBound, markstuff681, AlmazanKitchen, UbeefHooked, Misadventure4WD, OHM26, Hemi4WD, Off-Road Control, go4x4media, josephallen19, 4wdaction, PowerfulJRE, 4xOverland, 1all4Adventure, 4x4Australia, Roothy, UCzRkxmVeTP_29MMtEzPF4KQ, Muddy, Beards, 4x4, UCU7WCO2ymb8HSfee1z72X-w, UCKSKD6XxpsRE1IwSyGC8bKQ

Id: lEfDRlVNoXY

Length: 26min 33sec (1593 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 15 2021