The bushwalking experience – changes over the last 50 years

[mikethepike]

The year is 1968 and there are 9 of us with rucksacks and two cars – a Holden panel van with 5 people and 7 rucksacks and a VW sedan with 4 people and 2 packs. The walking destination is 750 km away, more than half on dirt roads. The vehicles travel separately and the VW breaks down with 600 km to go and the two whose packs are in the van decide to hitch. The last 80 km of the upward journey and all the way home is 7 bods and their packs in the panel van. (Think of it as a ute with a cabin where the tray is but open between cabin and the front with its bench seat.) After 6 days in the bush, the trip home is from 4 pm to 3.45 a.m. No-one of my acquaintance does this type of trip anymore –it’s typically 3 and less often 4 people with packs to a 4WD and 2 people and packs in a smaller 2 WD. Engines are smaller while expectations for comfort are higher and people want to be home not long after sunset if not before. The trip used to be a significant part of the experience but now it’s a lot less so I think. We were uni students at the time and maybe students haven't changed but I don't know.
That's a start and more about the trip than the walking experience. There are many changes of course and I'll be interested in people's ideas and opinions.

[GPSGuided]

Petrol was cheaper in those days.

[walkon]

Along with age come more responsibilities and less time, at least for me. There's kids, business and keeping the house running. Trying to fit it all in is an effort. So I don't do the long hauls as much, I leave them for the longer weekends. I find it amusing watching the kids drop everything and take off, probably wistful thinking pondering how good they've got it really. Ahh those were the days lol

[cooee]

Along with age come more responsibilities and less time, at least for me. There's kids, business and keeping the house running. Trying to fit it all in is an effort. So I don't do the long hauls as much, I leave them for the longer weekends. I find it amusing watching the kids drop everything and take off, probably wistful thinking pondering how good they've got it really. Ahh those were the days lol

Well said.
Some days you wish you didn't have a care in the world.

[mikethepike]

It's as I feared. Everyone has grown up and got responsible and campfire conversations are now less lively and shorter lived than they once were. I recall a time when our loose but fairly regular group was camped at Arapiles one Easter and someone lamented about how some of our former companions had gone missing. We concluded that they were now married or too busy working and had dropped out of the scene. It seemed like a very dismal thing to us but I think that even then some of us feared that we could one day be heading the same way.

[Hallu]

Petrol was cheaper in those days.

And Holden made more than 2 cars =)

[wayno]

students have much higher fees to pay now and often have to work longer hours, theres so many more distractions for young people that didnt exist like computers and their games... all sorts of casual sports events, and newer sports that didnt exist that compete with bush walking like mountain biking and multisport events... when i was young few could afford cars, you got away from adults by going bush walking, now teens can often afford cars and can just drive to get away from parents, a lot of teens havent developed the fitness since they are less likely to walk and bike to get around...

[neilmny]

Petrol was cheaper in those days.

Wages and salaries were way way lower in those days.

[wayno]

[GPSGuided]

Classic!

[wayno]

back in the day,,, the world didnt come to you electronically in anything like the scale it does now. there werent endless photos and videos available on an internet to show you every corner of the planet. if you wanted to experience the world you had to go out and see it for yourself...

[GPSGuided]

...if you wanted to experience the world you had to go out and see it for yourself...

Or join a bushwalking club and be an apprentice to the art.

[Lophophaps]

A-frame packs, then Mountain Mules ("carry the load" - and we did); single skin two pole japara tents; closed cell foam mats that did not do much; 1":1 mile and 1:50 maps that were really just repackaged maps of 20 years earlier, hills in the wrong place; no track notes; only a basic Silva compass, or an army prismatic one; oiled japara parkas; heavy blue stove (steel, can't think of the name, shellite); woollen undies; Dachsteins mitts in winter; lots of wax and klister; heavy SLR camera or a Rollie 35S on climbs...

And if you tell young people about those days they will not believe you.

[wayno]

blue steel stove: Optimus 8r?
they still make them, i used mine till i burnt the cross bars away.... if you used a large billy for too long it melted the seal on the safety valve on teh fuel tank = instant flame thrower....

[PeterJ]

Like the earlier comment, the packs are so much more comfortable, the tents now keep the insects and other unwelcomed out and the advent of the Thermarest added the comfort that was only dreamed about.

[Moondog55]

Truth is I wouldn't know I've only been bushwalking for 40 years, some things are better some things are worse but the experience is pretty much the same

[Lophophaps]

Wayno, that's the one, Optimus 8R, may still have mine in the dungeon. I've experienced the flame thrower trick; might have been with the choofer, Optimus 123. Your post from NZ reminded me of alpine aspects - straight pick ice axes and cutting steps. I still have some very long axes, and steel krabs. Well, they were good enough for Bonatti... Prussik knots are fun with cold hands on icy ropes. I just thought of a mate's comment at a high hut (Empress I think): "Today I'll put the rope on before I fall in the slot." LOL.

Truth is I wouldn't know I've only been bushwalking for 40 years, some things are better some things are worse but the experience is pretty much the same

Is so. The regulations, better gear, and many changes have not altered the people, except there's more dweebs at times, more pressure on a finite resource. Campfires on Townsend! Good grief.

[north-north-west]

Campfires on Townsend! Good grief.

Are people still doing that? I still have trouble believing that group I saw last time up there in summer, who carried a load of firewood up past at least three signs saying fires were banned above the treeline.

[mikethepike]

When I was young and started bushwalking I had a hand me down sleeping bag from me grandad and he reckons he found it in a maggoty dump when he was a kid. It had more holes than bagging and it was so cold that in I had to go around scrounging fish'n'chips wrappings to line it with to keep me warm at night and 'warm' is just a euphemism for not so blanky cold as without it. Just thinking about all that misery makes me feel nostalgic and makes me feel like getting rid of my modern high loft down bag. We had no money but we had fun without it and didn't need any. It's a lost art!

I reckon that crazy video you posted may have started something wayno!

[Pteropus]

I can’t go back as far as you, but in the late 80’s when I was a kid, and early 90’s as a teen, I had some very basic kit. I remember carrying my sleeping bag when it didn’t fit in the day pack which I used for over nighters too, and we would sleep under rock overhangs with a big blue tarp to stop water dripping on us in the night, or using a $20 tent from woolworths. I got more and heavier kit later, including a proper pack and tent. Over time my kit eventually got lighter...but in the last 6 years its nice and heavy again with camera equipment, spare batteries for the gps etc. The rest of the gear is the lightest stuff i’ve owned though! As for comfort (and safety!), people have come to expect a certain level of comfort, I suppose because that is what they are used to. 20 years ago when I was a teen, I knew someone with a tiny Ford Escort panel van and we didn’t think twice about piling in the back and going for crazy drives. If my parents knew they would have been horrified. Just thinking about it for the first time in years, how dumb we were! Now I’d not do it for safety sake...thats what happens when you get older and wiser.

These days though it seems to me that it can be difficult to get a group of interested people together and do this sort of thing. People have different priorities such as family and work etc, though sometimes I think people aren’t as interested. But sometimes it does work. One of the best bushwalks I have been on was a couple of years ago on the South Coast Track in Tas, and what made it so great was that we got a bunch of six friends who decided to just commit to going on this hike, despite it being a reasonably expensive plane trip from Qld and two weeks off work (well, post-grad study, so it’s true we all had some flexibility, and granted, the people involved didn’t have family commitments), and no one pulled out or ummed and ahhed about it. We all committed and just went for it. The walk would have been great even if I did it solo, but it was much better I reckon coz of a great group of friends who all worked at making it happen. I have rarely had that kind of experience where people commit to adventures like that.

[mikethepike]

When I was young and started bushwalking I had a hand me down sleeping bag from me grandad and he reckons he found it in a maggoty dump when he was a kid. It had more holes than bagging and it was so cold

etc, etc
That was my weak attempt at Monty Python type humour. The only hardship I had in my bushwalking apprenticeship was the pain of the un-padded or insufficiently padded shoulder straps of my A and then H fame pack.

[Lophophaps]

That was my weak attempt at Monty Python type humour. The only hardship I had in my bushwalking apprenticeship was the pain of the un-padded or insufficiently padded shoulder straps of my A and then H fame pack.

I laughed. I have a vision of four grizzled walkers sitting around a ring of stoves reminiscing about the good old days. In retrospect, A-frame and H-frame packs were not very comfortable. Much of the gear then was not very good compared to today's gear. However, I cannot recall complaining too much as this was all we had. One conversation was comparing mud. It was a competition between Frog Flats and the South Coast Track; I think that SCT won as it was longer and wider. I went in up to my thighs on SCT attempting to pull a mate out.

So much has changed in gear, attitudes, information, regulation, cost and weather. And yet a walker aged 25 will simply accept these things as it is the way that they are. Could any current ways of conducting matters have been predicted in 1974? Packs made of a very light and very tough fabric? Stoves that weigh very little? GPS and PLB? No campfires in many places? Booking to go on a walk? Fees to camp in many places? I'll quite happily predict where I'll be in the next five minutes. Predictions for 2054 is a undetermined. But I know precisely what i'll be doing then - I hope. At best it will be a day trip to the breakfast table in the hospice.

[mikethepike]

When I was young and started bushwalking I had a hand me down sleeping bag from me grandad and he reckons he found it in a maggoty dump when he was a kid. It had more holes than bagging and it was so cold

I laughed.

May all the Gods bless you for letting us all know that my attempt at humour manifested itself as a display of hilarity, however mild, on your part and and bestow on you earthly riches beyond your wildest imaginings Lophophaps!!

[Miyata610]

I too don't quite reach the 50 year milestone.

I think my first overnight bushwalk with boys my own age would have been 43 years ago. Although I had done some walks with my father before that.

Yes our gear was pretty basic, as discussed already by others. I bought my first down bag when I was about 14 or 15, and shortly after that my first goretex coat, in I think 1975 or 1976. Goretex had just hit the market. It came with a tube of goo to seal the seams. They were yet to invent tape. It replaced a homemade oiled Japara coat. I vaguely remember using a pajama sewing pattern as the basis of that coat design. It worked. Sort of. I still have my first goretex jacket, it was made by paddy pallin in Australia. I think I bought it at MSD on Swanston Street in Melbourne.

We got wet and cold, and lit fires to dry off, when we could get one lit.

This was mostly in the high country in Victoria, baw baw plateau and bogong high plains being a favorite. We learned to tolerate snow and sleet very young.

It was normal then to go away with just your peers, a group of three boys aged eleven to thirteen was normal. We managed. It gave me some valuable skills, not just out in the bush but in other areas too. My observation is that people coming to the sport as adults seem to have a different attitude. I might be wrong.

I learnt to lead groups and to share my knowledge by the time I was 13. We did our own planning and prep. Including menus and safety gear. Life was simpler then I'm sure.

Btw, we called it hiking then. I'm guessing the obsession with the phrase "bushwalking" may have localised origins. My father called it hiking too. He did it mostly in the 1930's and in to the war years.

[mikethepike]

This topic wasn’t meant to stall on just the one aspect of the ‘then and now’ theme but to cover a wider range of aspects so here’s another one that may stir some interest. Its as much about perceived changes in group dynamics and sociology as with changes in gear.

It's to do with tents. Years ago, many walkers made do with army surplus rubberized 'hutchees' which could serve as raincoat, groundsheet and shelter if it rained and if it did, you were better sheltered pairing up two hutchees than using them singly. Single tents were just about unheard of then whereas doubles were the norm and could hold three if required and often did. The modern trend to solo tents means that eight bushwalkers will now set up a campsite of seven tents (two of the walkers are a sharing couple) whereas formerly this was more likely to be three or, less likely, four tents. With this change, two thought come to mind. One is that, despite the fact two can travel with less total weight if they take a double rather than two single tents, many people still choose the latter option even with all the emphasis on lightweight camping. The second is campsite space. Am I right in believing that tent platforms in the Western Arthurs can hold two double tents but only the same number of single tents (excluding bivy bags here)? If so, the result is obvious and not a good outcome during the peak bushwalking season. Any comments?

[gayet]

50 years ago the world was a less crowded place. There was less emphasis on, or demand for, one's "own" space. Perhaps this loss of community is behind the move to solo tents, as an example? Or just a less tolerant society, even on a very small scale of a group of friends walking. Each requires independence from the others, the right to stake a claim to their own space and to avoid any necessary compromises inherent in sharing a tent and/or any thing else?

[Lophophaps]

This topic [was meant to] to cover a wider range of aspects so here’s another one that may stir some interest. Its as much about perceived changes in group dynamics and sociology as with changes in gear. ...

The modern trend to solo tents means that eight bushwalkers will now set up a campsite of seven tents (two of the walkers are a sharing couple) whereas formerly this was more likely to be three or, less likely, four tents. With this change, two thought come to mind. One is that, despite the fact two can travel with less total weight if they take a double rather than two single tents, many people still choose the latter option even with all the emphasis on lightweight camping. ... Any comments?

My recollection of the late 1960s when I started ... hiking or bushwalking is a little hazy. I can clearly recall single skin ridged tents, with or without walls. One person had an amazing tent made from a parachute; I think he must have blocked up the central hole. Design gradually moved to single pole tents, like the Blacks Good Companion and the locally made Tawonga. Both needed 15-20 pegs, and took up a huge amount of space due to the guys. Fibreglass and aluminium poles then took us into tunnel and hooped tents.

Until perhaps the late 1990s, most tents were for two people. It's only recently that single person tents have become more common. The social aspects are interesting, as is attempting to cook in a small tent without burning it down. Whilst a single person tent can be very light, for a little extra cost and weight a two person tent can be obtained.

50 years ago the world was a less crowded place. There was less emphasis on, or demand for, one's "own" space. Perhaps this loss of community is behind the move to solo tents, as an example? Or just a less tolerant society, even on a very small scale of a group of friends walking. Each requires independence from the others, the right to stake a claim to their own space and to avoid any necessary compromises inherent in sharing a tent and/or any thing else?

This is a very good point and an interesting question. I now plan trips to avoid popular places in peak times. Even so I'm surprised at times. Virtually nobody on the Bogong High Plains over about six days - about ten people - and about 40 at Cleve Cole Hut on Mt Bogong over two days.

With the advent of technology, many now use SMS, emails and websites for communicating, at the expense of speaking in person. Technology is good if it allows one to easily, inexpensively and quickly reach others - especially at a distance or shifted in time - but not of it limits or compromises doing so in person when practical. Maybe solo tent are a reflection of society. I don't know.

[mikethepike]

50 years ago the world was a less crowded place. There was less emphasis on, or demand for, one's "own" space. Perhaps this loss of community is behind the move to solo tents, as an example? Or just a less tolerant society, even on a very small scale of a group of friends walking. Each requires independence from the others, the right to stake a claim to their own space and to avoid any necessary compromises inherent in sharing a tent and/or any thing else?

I think you may be right on the money here gayet, you used a few key words (own space, tolerant, e.g) that were on my mind when I was writing that bit.

With the advent of technology, many now use SMS, emails and websites for communicating, at the expense of speaking in person. Technology is good if it allows one to easily, inexpensively and quickly reach others - especially at a distance or shifted in time - but not of it limits or compromises doing so in person when practical. Maybe solo tent are a reflection of society. I don't know.

Ditto re the money Lophophaps. I often wonder why, even after not very arduous days, people often desert the campfire company very early in the evening - I'm thinking 8 pmish. Often I can only imagine, for I would never ask, that they've gone off to listen to music on their MP3 or iPad or whatever.

[Mark F]

I think gayet and Lopohaps are largely on the money. The 24/7 connectivity in our lives either creates a subconscious demand for personal space and time where one can be disconnected from the loop, or leads to embracing it to the detriment of personal connectivity. As an "old bloke" I am no doubt totally out of step but a few of the the things I notice are:

People at dinner parties who prefer to text, tweet and facebook rather than engage in conversation with others at the table (or campfire).
The 99% of narcissists with Go Pro cameras who feel the whole world should marvel at their rather pathetic feats - 1% do do amazing things and I applaud them.
People who publicly claim records that have most probably been done several times before (in the old days you didn't have to brag about it to a newspaper or on a blog) and obviously have made no attempt to ascertain the truth.
People who want to go bush but still retain permanent internet connectivity.
The need of some for total prior knowledge of their next walk rather than developing the skills to cope with the unexpected.

This is not to say there is not a place for electronic connectivity. I am really happy with the benefits of gps, SPOT and plbs. I have been thankful for phone reception at several spots in the bush over the years but I engage with them on an as needed basis rather than as something I expect as a some sort of right.

[Lophophaps]

Mark. Well said.