Tent Troubles

When we spent the weekend camping at Lions Den in the rain, we discovered our tent (a canvas tourer+ style) has a leak. This happened in the most annoying way possible - a constant drip from the top assembly down onto Jess' head and pillow. Of course it started at around 2am, so there was nothing else for it but to try and dodgy something up and more our mattresses out of the way.

I'm pretty cranky about the tent leaking, since it's only a year old, and still basically brand new. When we bought it we made sure to set it up in the backyard, and over the space of three days would soak it completely with the hose and let it dry out. This allows the canvas to shrink and the thread to expand, thus waterproofing the seams.

However, I think the problem that we're having stems from a basic design flaw with the tent. As a canvas tourer-style tent, it has an internal square frame at the top of the tent. The frame is inside the tent, which makes for a very easy and quick setup time. What I believe is happening is that once the canvas gets waterlogged, where the frame touches the external canvas it pulls the water through to the frame, where it then drips down. This is the same as if you put a bag or your feet against the waterlogged canvas - the contact "pulls" the water through the canvas and whatever's touching gets wet.

Dad had old canvas tourer style tents, and they had an external frame at the top. This was a pain in the backside to assemble each time, but they didn't have problems with the water coming through like we're having here. I'm not really sure what to do - I may yet email the manufacturers and see what they say.

Short of that though, I think I'll try some Scotchguard waterproofing spray on the top section. If that doesn't work, I guess the only thing for it is to set up a tarp as a fly over the tent, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a canvas tourer tent in the first place.

Some pictures of the problem areas:

You can see a drip forming on the corner section of the metal frame






If I do get around to emailing the manufacturer, I'll have to remember to ask them about an ongoing issue we have had with the retention of the back section of the tent. As ours is a Tourer+ style, it has the extra area at the rear to provide more space. This is retained by an external U-frame to hold the back out tight. However, the top corners seem to lack any nice way of attaching to the frame.

There's a nice thick webbing loop, but it has nothing to attach to on the frame:




So we end up using the small little ties to secure it to the frame and pull it taught. However, as you can see from the above photo, I don't think that they're designed for that, as they're very small and thus can't be attached too securely to the tent itself.

Because the U-frame is wider than the rear of the tent, one side inevitably ends up pulled further out than the other. You can clearly see here why we can't use the thick webbing straps to secure the back:




I don't think that the U-frame is too big - I think that the thick webbing straps were meant to be twice as long as they are, and would hook over the top of the lugs on the top of the corner sections.

All up, it's not an ideal situation, and may even be contributing to the leaking issue above, since we can't tension the canvas up properly for fear of tearing the thin tie strips completely off. Will have to see if we can come up with a better solution.

Daintree drive - Bloomfield Track

Jamie and Angie came up for a week's holiday from Saturday the 3rd of May to visit their friend Mary who moved to Cairns earlier in the year. Since they were here, we took them of a tour of the Daintree via the Bloomfield track. It was a bit squishy in the Pathfinder, but Jamie didn't seem to complain about being stuck in the back between the two girls. Mary must have enjoyed the trip, as she began making plans on the way home to sell her car and trade up to a 4WD.

We pushed as far north as Wujal Wujal and the Bloomfield Falls, which we hadn't been to before. We had to stop off in town and ask for directions from the local hospital (the police station was closed). We had tried to find it ourselves, but we came across a rather huge, rather new, and very official looking "DO NOT ENTER - Council restricted zone. Tresspassers WILL be prosecuted" sign. We asked the duty Doctor about the sign, and his words were "Oh that - don't worry about that - just go straight past it, and keep going as far as you can - it's about another 5 mins past the sign". Turns out his directions were spot on, and we didn't get jailed.

From there we turned south and headed back down the track again, through Cape Tribulation and back to the ferry over the Daintree river, with a quick stop at the Daintree Icecream farm on the way - luckily just arriving before they closed for the day. Once over the ferry you straight away feel as if you're back to civilisation, and the pioneering feel of the Daintree villages slips away behind you.

Nothing much to report - we've done this trip a few times with people now, and it's always a nice drive. The track itself is in good condition and there's nothing too hard about it. There's a few small creek crossings - Woobadda Ck is probably the deepest and longest, and hence the most fun. But it would be less than 30cm deep at it's deepest, so it's hardly challenging.

We took a bunch of photos on the day, and you can find them all here:
Picasa WebAlbum - 2008-05-04 - Daintree Rainforest

Here's a selection:

Woobadda Ck














A steep section on the track:


Bloomfield River:






Bloomfield Falls:
(With a bunch of lovely photos taken right down at the water's edge, about 30 seconds before Matt remembered that this section of the river is full of crocodiles)





















On the Ferry over the Daintree River, heading back home:

Injured Bandicoot

As we were doing a bit of gardening out the front of our place, Badger was snuffling around in the lillies on the footpath. He had rounded up and hearded out a poor little injured bandicoot who was previously hiding in there. Since he's a Good Dog, he didn't try and eat it (although I'm sure he would have if it had crossed his mind that it may be edible - he was a little scared of it), and simply hearded it out towards me, and then sat watching it.

I scooped the poor little fellow up in my t-shirt, and took him inside. He had hurt one of his back legs and his tail, and was very slow and dopey. You could pick him up and pat him, whereas you'd be hard pushed to even catch a healthy one. We put him in a box in the kitchen and gave him some water, and let him rest. He was well snuggled into my favourite Triumph t-shirt and had no intentions of giving it up, so I reluctantly left it with him.

We eventually got onto the local wildlife carers (wasn't that a fun exercise in driving around town, ringing unanswered mobile phones, and wildlife clinics that proudly advertised "Open 7 days" on their closed front doors - the same clinics which referred you to the aforementioned unanswered phones) late that afternoon, and a tattooed, pierced, goth/emo, gruff and generally very unhelpful girl came to collect him.

We've not heard anything since, so can only hope that he was OK, and that a vet somewhere fixed him up and he's back to bouncing around the neighbourhood. Hopefully not ours though - the main way that ticks get bought into the yard is via bandicoots, and Badger's had enough of those to last him a lifetime!