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It's been some time since we last did the Six Foot Track to Jenolan Caves, so we thought we'd give it another trundle... though this time we'll turn around when we get there and walk back again (after a hot bath and some fish and chips ).

The last couple of weeks we've been attempting to get our legs going again (with quite a bit of leg pain), so it'll be interesting to see how we pull up out of this one

Our planned itinerary:

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Well, it seems an eternity since we walked off the Bibbulmun Track (but we have been busy with other things: like two sons' weddings and wonderful experimentations into the world of photomosaics creating an animation for one and a community art performance for the other wedding) and we desperately wanted to get out into the bush again, but didn't have the time to go too far: so we decided to do the Six Foot Track to Jenolan Caves and back again (we did the one way version back in 2011.

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OK... if you're following these posts you'd think there's a bit of a recurrent theme happening It's been just over a month since Keren & Danni's piece was publicly released: kdm, a LiveMosaic and of course their Wedding Mosaic, and I've just uploaded Nat & Moni's Wedding Pages!

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When we were having breakfast I suggested to Don that he could probably do with an extra piece of toast because it was going to be a big day: we were walking the National Pass from the Conservation Hut through to Wentworth Falls, then we were going out to dinner and off to see Les Miserables later in the evening. We'd just had a busy time with Nathanael and Monica's wedding, so we were due for a relaxed stroll, surely? Don was keen to check out the waterfalls that would be flowing strongly.

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Some time ago (well: 2.5 years ago, checking the date ) I implemented my backup strategy, and it's saved my bacon a number of times. Nothing much has changed over the years, except for replacing BvckUp with FreeFileSync and Paragon with Macrium Reflect FreeEdition.

SpiderOak is the software that backs up all my documents. What is especially reassuring is that as well as the most current versions being safe on SpiderOak, all the previous versions and even deleted files are safe there as well (just in case I didn't mean to delete it last month )!

Having just finished a couple of graphics projects (Keren & Danni's Wedding Piece and Nathanael & Monica's Wedding Piece) I thought it was time to clean up the file system and free up some resources. These graphics projects produced a lot of temporary files, and files kept for safe keeping and graphic components that were used in the main projects. Once the project was complete most of the components could be deleted and definitely all the temporary files. It's nice to keep a good, clean file system after all.

But of course all those files were still on SpiderOak! I was a little shocked to see that my data usage had grown to 94.933 Gb! You can forget about SpiderOak sitting in the system tray uploading all your file changes: when I checked what was there I even discovered the contents of a previous computer! That will have to wait for another day...

The housekeeping chores are really easy:

1. Delete unwanted files on the file system
2. Delete the unwanted deleted files in SpiderOak
3. Delete any historical versions not required

I'm a little too paranoid at the moment to delete the historical versions (or maybe the projects are still too new?), so I didn't do that step; but after housekeeping my usage was down to 68.256 Gb: a total of 26Gb cleaned up!

I should also note that I could also be purging my historical files (which is a rules based process), but that's SpiderOak wide so I'd need to think carefully

Oh, and one other thing that SpiderOak is proving extremely useful for: uploading the artwork for the printer. There's about 1.5 Gb of files that has to get to the printer: with SpiderOak I can simply create what they call a Share Room from the files that I have already backed up and send the printer the url to the Share Room! That way I don't need to upload them twice, or send them some other way... saves on bandwidth and I can even edit them and the printer will get the latest version! Too easy

If you want to give SpiderOak a go you can use this link and we'll both get 1Gb extra!

Keren & Danni's wedding was one of the most sublime weddings I've been to! ...but some months previous (after their engagement), I had an idea for a piece at their reception: The initial inspiration for the piece was in two parts:

1. To create an image of Keren & Danni that was made up of images of Keren and Danni's friends and family.
2. To create an animation of mosaics that progressed from a single image (technically not a mosaic, I guess?) to the final image, adding small numbers of photo tiles each animation slide.

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I guess it was inevitable that after 9,106 photos on the track that I would come to the conclusion that they'd make an interesting photo-mosaic? Well, it was a simple thought that pushed me down this path, and although it didn't quite turn out as simple as I originally thought (or maybe hoped) it was a great learning experience (which I hope to keep using). More information about our experience of the Bibbulmun Track is found on our Bibbulmun Track page, with links to the 67 Blog Posts, GPS Tracks (downloadable), distance tables and On-Track Reviews.

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During the planning stage for our Bibbulmun Track walk I created our itinerary by assessing the track distance, elevation profile and the Guidebook's notes and calculating estimated walk times for each section.

After the walk we recorded our personal assessment of the section's difficulty, which was very much a subjective analysis of the day's walk as it was based on how we felt, which was affected by all sorts of odd things:

• wet weather / wet clothes
• illness
• bad moods
• thirst / hunger

The actual day's total was calculated as the sum of the average of Sandi and my rating. The colouring is a basic conditional gradient based solely on this walk, so reddest red is the hardest day we had on the Bibbulmun and the greenest green is the easiest day we had on this walk, with the in betweens grading from green→yellow→orange→red.

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The FUSE 4W is a Solar charger manufactured by Voltaic. Voltaic say of the FUSE:

The Fuse 4W Solar Charger is a lightweight way to add solar and battery power to any bag. It connects in seconds to bags, tents, bicycles and pretty much any place else you might need solar power.

Summary

Over the 54 Days of the walk weather conditions, tree canopy and an unreliable FUSE position in relation to the sun (whilst walking) contributed to the FUSE not reaching our required one recharge of the FUSE battery per day, and Mains Power was utilised to maintain the battery levels. The main conclusions from the walk:

1. Weather and atmospheric conditions are unreliable, more solar panels are required to meet our energy demands.
2. The act of walking, changing direction constantly, reduces the efficiency of the FUSE by about half.
3. The FUSE provided a flexible (solar & mains re-charging) solution for power transportation (into the bush).

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The SPOT2 Messenger is a Satellite GPS Messenger that provides a unique line of communication with friends and family when you want it, and emergency assistance when you need it. Using 100% satellite technology, the SPOT works virtually anywhere in the world, even where cell phones don't – all with the push of a button. This review looks at how the device performed over 54 days on the Bibbulmun Track in the South-West of Western Australia.

Background

In a previous review of the SPOT2 Messenger (based on our usage on our Mittagong to Katoomba walk), I stated our understanding of what the SPOT2 is:

• Small, light device: Treat with care
• Use with discretion: Like all GPS Devices it wont work everywhere
• Messages are one way only: No receipt of successful delivery available
• Customer service may be less than satisfactory: Tread carefully

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