Trip Report:Back of Bungleboori Thursday 25th August 2022
Destination: Somewhere ‘Back of Bungleboori’ – or, wherever we end (ed) up!
Wot ‘Appened? ….. Well, we met on a freezing cold Thursday morning at the Clarence Station of the Zig-Zag Railway (due to re-open again very soon by the way), ready to leave by 9:05 am approx.
‘Oo came, in Wot? We only had 4 vehicles this time:
Neil Flower with Jon Beuman L/R Disco Trip Leader Ralph Radovan L/R Range Rover Alex Levshin with visitor Stephen Ford Ranger Richard Thompson and son Reg Nissan Patrol (1st trip as a member – welcome!)
Where we went and which tracks were closed?
• Our aim was to check out some tracks to the East of the Glow Worm Tunnel Road, especially the Waratah Ridge and Two Trees Roads which lead to some really magnificent viewing points and valley views and then if time permitted some other tracks in that area. • Two things worked together to prevent our fulfilling this aim: o There had been quite a lot of rain over the previous 3 days in this area which meant that not only were all low points along the tracks full of water but with all the rain of the ‘La Ninãs’ of the last 2 or so years the ground is still extremely soft and boggy in this area. One vehicle went down and needed a bit of winching. Got out OK, however.
o Unfortunately, the NPWS have also heard of the beautiful views and have closed the main tracks with high wire gates and signs threatening legal action if one should venture further. (Is this really the ‘Oz’ we once knew?) No explanations, no apologies from the Minister responsible.
• Fortunately, we had a plan ‘B’. Returning to the Bungleboori Picnic Ground, we headed out along the Sunnyside Track to the Wolgan Valley Lookdown where we had a fairly late lunch. Great place, magnificent views and best of all, real good fellowship. • As mentioned above, it was a slow drive to Sunnyside because every low point in the road was filled with very muddy water – and therefore slow speeds were necessary since there was no guarantee as to how deep the low points were. Good for fuel economy though! • Returning to the Bungleboori Picnic ground we had Afternoon Tea but decided to call it a day there since more rain was coming across from the west with quite a strong wind pushing it along.
Conclusion. • A great day despite the problems. It had been explained to all comers that this was a ‘recce’ trip and therefore no guarantees that we would be able to get through to anywhere. We succeeded well in this! • All members are invited to join in our next ‘Recce’ to be held in September, Watch your inbox for dates, times etc.
Neil Flower – Trip leader.
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One man’s view about the things that really matter….
HOPE IN GOD
“And now Lord, for what do I wait? My hope is in you”. Psalm 39:7
Just what are we waiting for? We sometimes ask the question as we face a difficult task, hoping something will come along to make it unnecessary. Yet we know it must be done.
What are we waiting for?
Will it be easier tomorrow? We must go to it confidently, remembering our hope is in God. Then again, we ask the question as part of the searching we must give our souls. Just what are the hungers within us?
What do we expect from life? and for what do we dream?
We must be careful to examine our dreams, to be sure we’re waiting for things that are right and good, God-centred. We may have our dreams and desires, but always remembering our hope is in God. Sometimes we ask the question “For what do I wait?” out of laziness, waiting for someone to come along and do our tasks for us. But no one else can live the life, use the talent, or fill the time that God gave specifically to us. We must face our own duties bravely, again remembering our hope is in God. There are things for which we may rightly wait. We may wait for God to guide us in our decisions, to strengthen us for our tasks, to comfort us in our sorrows, and to bless us in our relationships. For those things, while we work, we wait, always remembering, God is our only hope.
PRAYER Our Father, we thank you that in all life’s challenges we may steadily hope in you. Give us the grace to wait for your help and your guidance in all we do. In Jesus’, Amen.
TRAX is going to ‘Ameroo’ Mudgee for the long weekend 1st2nd 3rd October.
On Saturday meet at Capertee and travel along Palmers Oaky and Upper Turon Rd to Sofala and then to ‘Ameroo’ (Liney property). Toilet facilities available this time.
On Sunday will do a day trip to The Bridle Track, Hill End.
On Monday morning some 4WDdriving around the property.
You will need a full tank of fuel, UHF radio (Channel 13) and recovery equipment (just in case). Camera – pictures needed for TRAXION. Food and camping equipment.
See you on the tracks
trips@trax.org.au
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Trip Report: Blue Mountains National Park, McMahons Point, Mount Hay Saturday, 23rd July 2022
Vehicles (TRAX members) Matt – TL (Land Rover) Will (Dirt bike) Shane & Kylie – TEC (Patrol) Rex & Susan (FJ Cruiser) Philip (Patrol) Eric (Prado) Ralph (Land Rover) Alex (Ute)
Vehicles (Visitors) Sharon & Philip (Pajero) Karina (Prado)
Timeline 8:30 We met at Springwood and the Trip Leader briefed us on the plan for the day. We prayed and then started out in convoy along Chapman Parade into the Blue Mountains National Park. 9:30 After a short, muddy drive with some tree dodging, we arrived at a rocky lookout over a valley. Then we headed off to McMahons Point.
11:45 Stopped for an early lunch at the end of Kings Table Land Road and a short bush walk up to a lookout at McMahons Point. The lookout had a gorgeous view of mist – about 10 metres of visibility. Apparently, this is a lookout well worth seeing in fine weather.
1:00 We got on the road again, returning back along Kings Table Land Road after a mostly dry lunch.
1:30 Our intrepid Trip Leader had technical difficulties with an exploding brake assembly and missing bolts. We stopped to see if it could be fixed. In the end a few of the blokes (and Laura), managed to fix it enough to get him back to sealed roads, to wait for a tow truck.3:00 We stopped quickly to admire Battleship rock, which lived up to its name and then onto Mount Hay. 5:00 After a particularly slippery climb on some wet clay roads, we stopped on top of Mount Hay to enjoy the spectacular views before the mist came in again. Thanks to Ralph for significantly increasing our calorific intake with his treats for afternoon tea.
6:00 As the sun went down, we made our way back at the highway. We all stopped for farewells and ended a damp and lively day with a prayer.
Trip report by Harrison and Olivia With consultation from Joel. “Nice work”: Ed
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Trip Report: St. Johns Church 101st Anniversary Sunday 24th July 2022
Location: Asquith Anglican Church (Yep, that’s right!)
Neil Flower reports… “This would have been one of the hardest TRAX trips that I have ever done… and I didn’t even get the old LANDY into Low Range!”
It was a nice fine day (for a change), and I had been asked if I would organize a BBQ luncheon for 101st Anniversary of St. Johns Church at Asquith. Why me? Well, I’m not sure. It may have been because I was the ‘last man standing’ since both the Senior Minister and the Assistant Minister had both had their families come down with ‘Covid 19’ in the fortnight before the event, or, it may have been that it was going to be held at a local farm at Cowan just a bit up the railway line to give it an outdoors flavour. Anyway, on visiting the farm 2 Saturdays before the event the ground was sodden – black soil country and totally waterlogged with all the rain of the last 2 years. I had been told that they were expecting over 100 people to attend – that meant about 40 vehicles trying to park in a small paddock with one small entrance to it. I got my Land Rover Disco in, but found the wheels wanted to spin on the way out. – and the Disco is a constant 4WD vehicle!
First decision, the Anniversary Luncheon was not going to be held on the farm! It was going to have to be held at the Church where there was at least a large bitumen covered car park where ordinary vehicles would not get stuck. (I had no desire to spend most of Sunday afternoon winching a whole lot of 2WD vehicles out of the mud!).
Second decision, since this was a very special service (actually it was the 100th anniversary that had been postponed because of rain and Covid last year), and, given the fact that the Archbishop was preaching and many former clergy had been invited, we needed something where a ‘proper’ lunch could be made, served and consumed in some semblance of comfort. Thus, the church buildings were the only alternative.
Third decision. Sausages and a bun with sauce? Not on. This had to be something special and the food therefore had to be special while still fitting into a very tight budget. Yours truly would not be able handle that single handed. A team was needed.
Fourth decision. If this was going to be a real fellowship occasion where everyone could meet and enjoy themselves then, how could I ask the local people to give up such a great occasion by slaving away over a hot BBQ and in the church kitchen to prepare food for and then feed 100+ people? The above- mentioned team had to be brought in from outside the Parish and then asked/threatened/cajoled into ‘volunteering’ their services as cooks, wait staff, and cleaners for the day. But, (as the TV ad once said) “where do y’ get ‘em?”
TRAX – that’s where. After years of submitting ‘TRAXCOOKX’ articles and having members comment on them I decided to have a phone around and see who might be willing to help. Nine calls and nine offers to help!
Thanks to : Ron Paton – who because of his RFS catering experience was made ‘Foreman’ of the team, Ron Owen – who worked so hard at serving salads and desserts, Rob Drummond – Willing to have a go at anything, Matt Smith – BBQ attendant and salad server, Will Smith –Who won the undying admiration of the children with his Ice Cream servings, Daniel Lee – another great helper, willing (and able) to follow the foreman’s bidding, Phillip Favaloro – able to turn his hand to almost anything, Vanessa Flower – seemed to be everywhere and never stopping for breath, Stephen Flower – Chief chicken fillet cook and BBQ expert.
Boy, did they work! Every one of them
Not just in getting food ready but in the making of teas and coffees and especially in the mammoth task of cleaning up, washing up, and leaving the kitchen in such a state that it would have won a prize for cleanliness anywhere. Hard work? It was hard work! After everything was served, cleaned, washed and ‘put away’ we were all really weary. It was a TRAX trip with a difference!
As the title of this article says “This would have been one of the hardest TRAX trips that I have ever done… and I didn’t even get the old LANDY into Low Range!” But it was a great ‘trip’. TRAX was able to free up at least 10 – 13 parishioners who for once were able to sit and enjoy fellowship with others from the Church and not have to work and miss out on the great day.
Sooooo, thanks to all the TRAX members who helped. You were a great witness to the Christian faith and you brought honour to Christ Himself. Neil Flower. PS. I’m kind of glad that I didn’t have to get the old Landy into Low range on this one”
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One man’s view about the things that really matter….
ASK AND RECEIVE
“Ask, and it will be given you. …” Matthew 7:7
Without thinking, we sometimes make God appear to be untrue. God has said in Scripture that He is adequate for all our needs. And the world in general has the impression that the idea of God carries with it the idea of sufficiency. A God, whoever He is, ought to be greater than all our problems, ought to be able to fulfill all our needs. And that’s exactly what we say about our wonderful God. But when we present a dejected or defeated appearance to the world, we are in effect saying there’s something missing in God. God hasn’t been quite able to fill the bill, else why are we so defeated? We imply that He’s not what He says He is. This must be a terrible insult to God. He deserves a better press than that. And do not allow yourself to say that you cannot be victorious in your present trouble. Don’t let yourself off too easily. You must overcome, for the sake of God’s reputation if not for your own. How may you regain the joy of the Christian life and the peace of heart you so much want, and the power to display these to others? Remember the verse for today: “Ask, and it will be given you'”—pray for such joy and peace and power. Many a broken person has risen from prayer, whole and strong and victorious. “We kneel, how weak; we rise how full of power.”
PRAYER: Lord, we praise you for giving us a Saviour sufficient for all the events of our lives. May the world glorify you because it sees in us our power and goodness. In Christ, Amen.
Ron Paton TRAX Chaplain
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One man’s view about the things that really matter….
Thank God for Sceptics?
During the spring of 1915, German U-boat attacks off the south coast of Ireland prompted the British Admiralty to warn the passenger ship Lusitania either to avoid the area or to take evasive measures in the hope of confusing any U-boats plotting its course. The Captain, however, didn’t believe the warnings, so he ignored them. Tragically, at 2:12pm on 7th May, the Lusitania was torpedoed on its starboard side. The blast of the torpedo was followed by an even greater explosion (the boilers?) and the ship sank 20 minutes later with the loss of 1,201 lives.
In the years before the start of WWII, political refugees from Nazi Germany had tried to warn European governments about the existence of Concentration camps in Germany, begging their intervention to abolish them. None of the governments believed them. In 1942 a group of Polish resistants sent the Allies a series of six photos showing the burning of corpses in Auschwitz-Berkenau; hundreds more sent testimonies of other extermination camps. Yet nothing was done because the authorities didn’t believe them. The truth of the reports and the enormities they described were only realised when the camps were liberated in 1945.
Even after the Japanese surrender in August 1945, numerous Japanese soldiers in the jungles of the Pacific refused to believe the announcements that the war was over, thinking them to be an enemy trick designed to flush them out of the jungles to be captured. One of them – Hiroo Onoda, was discovered in the Philippine jungle in 1974, and came out of hiding on 10th March, 1975 only after his former commanding officer travelled to the Philippines to meet him and convince him that the war was, indeed, over.
Ignoring the evidence can have enormous consequences! The Gospels describe another sceptic whose scepticism was, potentially, even more catastrophic than those I’ve just mentioned. His name was Thomas. We all know him by the moniker, ‘Doubting Thomas’, but this seems unfair given that not one of the disciples expected Jesus to rise from the dead.
Although (on numerous occasions) Jesus had told them that he would be killed and the rise from the dead, this prospect was so far beyond their sphere of comprehension that – even though Jesus had raised others from the dead – it didn’t penetrate their minds to reshape their expectations. If the disciples had entertained even a glimmer of hope that Jesus would ultimately emerge victorious, that glimmer had been obliterated by the savagery, the degradation and the enormous finality of His crucifixion. When the women went to his tomb on that Sunday morning, the last thing on their minds was a risen Jesus; they thought only of the huge, immovable stone and beyond it, Jesus’ cold, brutalised corpse, which they hoped to pack with spices to offset the stench of decay that was soon to come.
The unexpected removal of the stone and the shocking absence of the body produced in them no excitement or hope, but only a deeper distress and confusion, evoking floods of tears. Despite all that Jesus has told them, they saw his body’s absence only in terms of removal – resurrection never entered their minds! Consequently, Jesus’ appearance to them in the garden was so overwhelming that they couldn’t take it in; Matthew records that they returned to the apostles in ‘fear and joy’, but when they told them what had happened, they were greeted with ridicule: ‘these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them’ (the Greek word translated ‘idle tale’ means, ‘that which is totally devoid of anything worthwhile, idle talk, nonsense, humbug’).
Nevertheless, an ember of hope was fanned. Peter and another disciple ran to the tomb and indeed found it empty, except for the linen cloths in which Jesus’ body had been wrapped. So: • the women didn’t believe; and • the apostles didn’t believe. No-one believed that Jesus had risen: ‘they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead’ – they simply didn’t know what had happened! The only one who is said to have ‘believed’ did not believe that Jesus was risen; he only believed the women’s testimony that the tomb was empty!
That all changed when Jesus suddenly appeared (as a physical human being) to the disciples, who were assembled – for security reasons – in a closed room. It’s difficult to imagine the magnitude of their emotional transformation when Jesus appeared before them – one moment they were in a state of grief, depression, fear and confusion; in the next they were in a state of ‘stunned jubilation’ as they realised that the impossible had really happened!
But Thomas wasn’t with them.
Later, when Thomas returned and they told him that Jesus truly had risen – that they had seen and touched him – and although they were jubilant and overwhelmed by what had happened, Thomas refused to believe them. Thomas knew that the consequences of a Jesus risen from the dead are without parallel; he refused to commit his life’s hopes and identity to a person – no matter how impressive they were in life – purely on the basis of others’ say so. He wasn’t a person who would allow himself to be swept up by a euphoria when he wasn’t able to identify with its basis.
It may have been that, in the wake of his grief and shattered hopes, he wouldn’t risk having his hopes raised once more – only to have them devastated once again. The pain would be too much to bear. It must have been a stressful week! The disciples were dealing with the overwhelming impact of a bodily-resurrected Jesus, whereas Thomas stubbornly refused to join them until he was confronted personally with the ‘impossibility’ of a risen Jesus.
When Jesus appeared to him, the power of Thomas’ stubbornness was suddenly released in an eruption in an epiphany of truth and belief as he professed the risen Jesus before him to be, ‘my Lord and my God!’
Why is the ‘doubting’ moniker given only to Thomas? Why is he rebuked by Jesus when the others – none of whom believed that Jesus would rise – were not? Although the ‘doubting’ moniker came from preachers and not from the Scriptures, Jesus chided Thomas because he disbelieved, not only Jesus, but also the unanimous testimony of the disciples that Jesus had risen from the dead – just as He said he would. Life would never be the same again.
Probably because we know that a risen Jesus changes everything, most people avoid considering the question, ‘Did Jesus actually rise from the dead?’
Even if it’s the ultimate ‘inconvenient truth’, we must decide – is it really true? I wish that more people were like Thomas, who appreciated the unparalleled significance of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Thomas wouldn’t commit himself until he was convinced of the reality of Jesus’ resurrection. Nor should we! There’s no ‘blind faith’ here! We’re challenged to consider the evidence!
What about you? As you consider the evidence before you, ask yourself, ‘Are the Gospel accounts fabrications or are they eye-witness testimony?’ ‘Is Jesus’ resurrection the greatest hoax, or the greatest event, in history?’ Could Jesus truly be – as Thomas so shockingly concluded – ‘[our] Lord and [our] God’?
By TRAX friend The Rev. Ian Porter
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Details:
Saturday, 23rd July 2022
TRAX Trip – Blue Mountains Adventure
G’day,
Matt is easing us back into trips and adventure. We will be seeing God’s beauty and splendor as we take in the views of the Blue Mountains. We are going the Chapman Parade Faulconbridge, McMahon’s Point and Mount Hay.
Come for a great day of fellowship.
Trip Leader – Matt Smith
Contact trips@trax.org.au
Trip Grade – Easy with a few more difficult bog holes (look out for the TRAX training session- How deep is that bog hole)
You will need a full tank of fuel, UHF radio (Channel 13) and recovery equipment (just in case). Camera – pictures needed for TRAXION. Food for lunch, morning and afternoon teas.
See you on the tracks
trips@trax.org.au
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One man’s view about the things that really matter….
Stories that may be strange, yet true, from the Chaplain’s Travel Log….
EDIFYING EACH OTHER Romans 15:1-7
Romans 15:2
Let each of us please his neighbour for his good, to edify him.
It seems that God created the member-to-member relationship with in the church, intending that it become a direct factor in mutual spiritual growth, renewal, and sanctification. We often look towards other things to do this – preaching, worship, prayer, sacraments, Bible reading. And they do. But the New Testament idea of the church is that the people themselves should provide this kind of spiritual factor. It is the spiritual interaction of people of grace with other people of grace that helps Christians grow. In the passage in Romans 15:1-7. Paul speaks of edifying, building up, one another. With this he describes the impact of one Christian person on another. Surely, we are edified by preaching and the sacraments, but here Paul wants edification accomplished by people to people. To edify is to build up someone’s faith and spiritual life, to deepen the spiritual element in another’s life. One can do it by being an impressive example of faith or good works or Christ likeness; or by an exercise of love or helpfulness in which Christ shines through; or by a strong spiritual word at a given time, a testimony of what Christ has done for you or in you; or by a supportive prayer. This is the Christian love by which we promote our fellow believer’s spiritual well-being. It’s easy to neglect this responsibility; let’s see it through, joyfully.
PRAYER:Our Father, using the grace we have received, help us to strengthen the life of grace in our fellow Christians. We thank you for your grace towards us, for Christ’s sake. Amen
Ron Paton TRAX Chaplain
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