Australian Bushcraft.

Did you know that there is not an Australian bushcraft forum on the net?! Well except for our group forum at: http://livinghistory.proforums.org/ 

Bushcraft to me is what we do on our treks and camps, using our skills to make things we need in the field, like a primitive shelter, cordage to use on the shelter, making a kettle hook and maybe a tripod to hang the kettle from. We practice making traps for survival use, making pegs for an oilcloth lean-to shelter. We make fire with tinderbox, flint and steel or we make and use a fire-bow.

Bushcraft is about making a comfortable camp without a lot of modern gear and a nylon tent. It is about making a bed of sticks and bracken and using a blanket instead of an artic sleeping bag. It is about trail foods that don't come in plastic wrap, and making fire in the rain or snow without a ferocium rod!

There was a time when bushcraft meant carrying a hatchet or tomahawk to do heavier work, now it means using a stainless steel bladed knife to split logs by wacking them with a chunk of wood! There is so much more new bushcraft gear being produced now, and people seem to need to keep buying stuff. With each piece of new gear they are distancing themselves from the woodland environment. They can no longer feel the forest floor beneath their feet.

I think people need to stop and think where the term bushcraft came from, and what it originally meant, and perhaps they need to think about where it is going before it is gone. Buried under a pile of nylon tents, synthetic footwear, ferrocium rods, parracord and freeze dried foods!

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.-Mark Twain