Not a lot of trip reports this winter, even for some of the big events, sad times for readers like myself who’ve been trapped on the surface of mars for the past few months.
I had a bit of free time recently between work contracts, and since it’s very unpleasant to try and hike in the upper reaches of South Australia at this time of year, I used it to finally finished up this report from last August of a real slog of a trip which myself, Tom C, Cassandra E, and Shuyu F did up in the high alpine above Bella Coola. I’ve published it to my personal photoblog: I built a lot of photography-specific features into it which allow me to better balance the “showing” with the “telling” than I can do here on the ol’ VOC server: Howe Lake via the Tatsquan Horseshoe: Should’ve just done Ape Lake.. There seems to be a lot of photography enthusiasm this year, based on the discord chatter and the absolute bangers in the photo contest, so hopefully folks understand!
Cassandra suggested that I should post a link to it here as a trip report, since we’re all active VOC’ers on this trip, so here you go: some light reading and pretty photography for the bored, perhaps inspiration for the approaching summer. Look close in a few of the shots and you’ll spy where my plans for this year are aiming. 
How does the bushwhacking in the southern hemisphere compare to Bella Coola?
Unwise around Sydney, filled with the Sydney Funnel Web – one of the deadliest spiders on earth. Not a lot of bush to whack in South Oz, just a lot of tall grass filled with the third deadliest snake on earth. A snake which is a nice dull brown, to better blend in with the brown grass and brown dirt.
I tried it in Cambodia and swiftly walked my face right into a Golden Orb Weaver web, a moderately dangerous spindly spider the size of my hand, and decided it was a bad idea there too.
So far 0/10 would not bushwhack in southern hemisphere.