Sewing Machine Mechanic

Is your sewing maching not feeding the fabric through?  Does the bobbin get wound up with thread when you sew in reverse?  Are you just sick and tired of your sewing maching not working properly?

Just send it over to Garrett and he will fix it in a jiffy. 

Jacquie's machine was having these problems, so I decided to take a look.  I started taking things apart, which is my typical response for when things aren't working properly, not knowing if I would be able to put it all back together.  And with my very keen sense of intellect and expansive knowledge of machinery I was able to clean out the ounce of lint that had balled up under the feeder-mechanism and remove the old thread that had wound itself permanently around the bobbin assembly. 

Pictures from Carrington to Fitzroy Falls Trip

Due, to popular demand, here are some pics of my trip from Carrington Falls to Fitzroy Falls.  Thanks to Evan who took these and shared them with everyone. 

 Dave crossing the river. 

 

 Me, after crossing.

 

Two smaller waterfalls we passed along the way.  There had been plenty of rain this summer and over the past few days so there was no lack of water.

 A view of the top half of Fitzroy falls.

 View from the top of fitzroy falls.  This give you an idea of the steepness of the valleys we hiked through.

Carrington to Fitzroy Trip Report

This past weekend I went down to Budderoo National Park for a two-night backpacking trip with the bushwalker's rescue squad.   I didn't take my camera but am hoping to get some pics from a buddy who had his.

We drove down from Sydney on Friday night and camped at Nelles Glen.  Before heading to bed we walked out to the Warris Chair lookout and watched the Kangaroo Valley fill with fog in the moonlight.  We rose early on Saturday to meet the group at Carrington Falls and shuttle some cars over to Fitzroy Falls. 

We hiked south-west along a faint trail towards Stevos Pass at the top of the cliff face.  When then followed an old cedar-getters road about a quarter of the way down the steep side of the valley at which point the 'bush bashing' began.  We zig-zagged down the side of the valley and headed for the Kangaroo River.  The river was quite flooded due to the recent downpours in the area and it took some time to find a suitable spot to cross.  The day was beginning to warm up at this point which made the river crossing very refreshing.  The river was about 10 metres wide with a maximum depth of about 1.5 metres.

After crossing, and ringing out our socks, we headed up the opposite side of the valley and aimed for the paddocks to the south-west.  The terrain on this side of the river was very steep and dense with trees and scrub.  We slowly worked our way up to 300 m elevation and worked to maintain that elevation as we travelled toward the paddocks.  Sometime along the way Keith accidentally hit a stinging tree with the back of his hand and was in some pretty good pain for the rest of the day.  We crossed several gullies on this side of the river including one with a beautiful waterfall pouring over a steep rock formation (reminded me of the 'Grotto' on the way to little caliente hot spring in Santa Barbara).  Not too long after crossing this stream a full grown wombat passed by as we were waiting for the rest of the group to catch up.  We eventually made it to the paddocks which were a welcome relief from the dense scrub we had been fighting through.  They were totally cleared of trees and scrub and only contained wild grass and some blackberry bushes.  At the north end we connected to an old fire road and hiked along that until we reached out camping spot for the night near the top of Belmore Falls.

In the morning we continued along the fire road for about 500 metres towards and then went off track and headed back down into the valley.  We had to work our way through about 20 metres of nasty nettle plants which was pretty uncomfortable for the next while.  We eventually made our way down and headed back up the opposite side of the neck of the valley.  We climbed  the eastern slope and were confronted with a cliff face.  We worked along the face to the north, and walked under a small waterfall, until we found a suitable spot to climb through to the top. 

At this point, and throughout the remainder of the trip the terrain was undulating with little significant elevation change.  We trekked through more scrub and alongside a few farming fields and even saw a wallaby.  We made it to Mannings lookout and enjoyed the view for bit before heading down the road toward Fitzroy Falls.  We took the road for about 1.5 k's until we could get back to a trail.  The trail meandered along the cliff face to the south-west of the Fitzroy Reservoir and provided amazing views of the Yarrunga Creek and valley below.  When we got to the falls they were absolutely pumping and you could hear the roar of the water for quite a distance.  It was a great end to an amazing trip.  We were even lucky enough to have beautfiul weather the entire time with nary a sprinkle.

The Blue Mountains

Seeing as Garrett and I don't have a car, we took an early morning train to Katoomba where we went hiking in the Blue Mountains (we can still get around).  Katoomba is west of Sydney.  "They" call them the Blue Mountains because the forest is nearly completely made up of eucalyptus trees.  The trees give off oil into the atmosphere and when those oil droplets combine with the water vapor and dust particles in the air, it creates a blue horizon...it has something to do with wave lengths of the rays of light or something.  I don't know...I'm not a scientist.

First stop, bus stop.  Our first hike of the day was to the bus stop so that we could get to the train station.

You can see Garrett's sleepy eyes.

After a couple of hours on the train we finally arrived in Katoomba.  The next hike of the day was from the train station to the Blue Mountains.  As we were searching for the head of the trail we came across a great view of the park.

At the trail head at Echo Point we were able to see rock formations called The Three Sisters.  The Aboriginal legend of the sisters goes like this....there were three sisters of the Katoomba tribe.  They fell in love with three brothers of a neighboring tribe, but tribal law forbade them to marry.  The brothers didn't agree with the law and chose to capture the sisters instead which caused battle between the tribes.  Because the lives of the sisters were in danger, a witchdoctor decided to turn the sisters to stone to keep them from harm until the battle was over.  But before the witchdoctor could change the sisters back, he was killed.  Because he was the only one able to reverse the spell, the sisters still stand as beautiful rock formations as a reminder of the battle for generations to come.  

Echo point was extremely crowded, mainly because you didn't really have to hike to get there and enjoy the view.  Most of the people were Asian, as are a lot of people in Sydney.  While we were there we decided to play a little game of "Where's Garrett?"  Can you find him?

The trail led down The Giant Staircase.  And they weren't kidding.  It really was giant....and steep.  And it took us straight to one of the sisters.  By the time we reached the bottom of the staircase our legs were weak and shaky.

And unfortunately my allergy to nickel flared up as I was gripping the hand rail down the staircase.  I ended up with red, itchy, swollen, painful hands  Lucky for me, Garrett brought his gloves with him, so I was able to wear them for the rest of the hike.

  I know, this picture is blown out all weird...tried to fix it...can't explain it.

The remainder of the hike took us through the rain forest to Katoomba Falls and Bridal Veil Lookout.  Throughout the hike Garrett and I would turn to one another and say, "We're hiking.....in AUSTRALIA!"  It's awesome.   

The greenery along the way was beautiful...

At the end of the day we were tired, hungry, and sorry to leave.  We plan to make another trip soon.