Mail Order FAQ

Payment and mailing

We have an online credit card payment system hosted by Paypal, through which we accept payment on Visa and MasterCard. You don’t need a Paypal account to pay via this system. We chose Paypal because it’s experienced and secure.

Otherwise you can pay by phone by choosing that option at checkout. We get your order and give you a call. 

Once you’ve chosen your food and checked your order you’ll click through to our checkout page. There you’ll be asked to enter billing details, including your mailing address. Once that’s done and you’ve read and accepted out Terms and Conditions, you’ll click “pay by phone” or “PayPal” to go through to a secure Paypal payment page to complete the transaction.

Ideally a month or so in advance for mail orders. While our food is shelf stable, some meals have a longer shelf life than others (It’s food, right? This is why you want it – because it doesn’t have all the good stuff sucked out that makes it last forever). 

Having said that, we can turn around orders pretty fast, and Express Post delivers usually in a day to capital cities (or a three if outside them). Make sure you give us a call if you’re ordering at short notice, and be prepared for the fact that some food items might take a few days to create.

The answer is: it depends. If the food is in stock we can get it in the post the next day. We use Australia Post, so Express Post takes about a day to capital cities and three days outside of the big smoke.

Regular post is a bit less predictable, and you’ve probably got a decent idea of what it takes in your part of the world. It’s a good idea to let us know at the checkout page in notes if you’ve got a concern or hard deadline. 

No – we don’t post those extras, such as fresh shaved parmesan and tortillas. The reason is that in almost all cases, they have a fairly short shelf life once they’ve been removed from original packaging. The tortillas are pretty heavy as well, and if there are a lot of them associated with an order it drives up the postage price.

Food preferences

Yes, we do. We even have some vegan meals. At the bottom of every page in the gourmet section you’ll see three little symbols – one for gluten free (Gluten Free), one for vegetarian ( ), and one for vegan (). They’re displayed with meals as appropriate. We’re always looking to expand our offering of meals so if you have any suggestions for gluten-free, vegetarian and vegan meals we’d love to hear them.

You’ll be doing a fair bit of exercise, so our meals are designed to be hearty, without leaving you too much rubbish to carry out. And has there ever been a better time for trying leftovers for breakfast? 

When we work out our meal sizes, we reckon the one thing it’s easy not to do is give people too little, so our meals are a filling meal for one.

Because you haven’t told us what it is yet! Let us know – we’re always up for trying new delicious things …

Relax whole body and consider Gail’s Tomato Soup Rule (TSR™). Once upon a time in the dim dark past, if you wanted soup could go to the shops and buy tinned tomato soup – or tomatoes to make your own soup. Now, there are a cornucopia of options from small batch producers and an alphabet of artisans to choose from.

What does this have to do with our food? Camping food’s pretty much stuck in the TSR™ Dark Ages – Option 1: industrialised; Option 2:  DIY. We’re aiming to provide Option 3 – small batch food from local ingredients with a focus on flavour. We also choose to mix dehydrated ingredients with freeze dried ingredients to get what we think is the best result: mushrooms are much better freeze-dried, for example, while a tomato passata base for a pasta sauce really needs to be cooked – onions, tomatoes, garlic, parsley – and then dehydrated to get a result that’s more at the delicious end of the scale.

Random questions you're too shy to ask

By dressing appropriately for the conditions. You’ll have packed according to the rules of layering (keep reading) and it’ll go pretty much as you’d expect. If the weather turns cold – which it may, any time of year – you’ll wear more layers, and less if it’s warm. It’s a good idea to always keep your raincoat near the top of your backpack as an easy-to-access windproof layer.

Ian believes that somewhere, sometime in the outdooriverse, someone said: “There is no bad weather, only bad clothing”. Most often these days it’s cited as an old Scandanavian saying. Whatever. Take it to mean that you’ll have more fun on an outdoor trip if you dress appropriately. You need clothes that keep you dry if it rains, warm if it’s cold and cool if it’s hot. The things you choose should be comfortable, light, hard-wearing and easy to wash. And – seeing as you’ve got to carry it – you want as few items of clothing as possible. Enter the concept of layering …

If you dress in multiple light layers you’re able to adapt to a greater range of conditions. You can add or remove layers depending on the weather and the effort you’re putting in. If conditions demand, you should be able to wear all of your layers in comfort. The three principal layers are base, insulation and outer.

The base, or foundation, layer contacts the skin, which it keeps dry by wicking away moisture. It should be lightweight and quick-drying; merino wool, silk and synthetics including polypropylene are the regular choices. Cotton isn’t a good insulator; it gets clingy when wet and takes longer to dry – save it for in the huts.

The insulation layer is meant to keep you warm. It should keep cold air out and redistribute moisture wicked from the base layer – partly by absorbing it and partly by letting it evaporate. A couple of lighter insulation layers are probably better than a single thicker layer, but don’t get too hung up on this. Popular choices include fleece, down and wool.

The outer layer is there to protect you from wind and rain (and snow, if that’s the climate you’re tackling). The go-to choice for outer wear is garments made with a waterproof/breathable microporous membrane such as Gore-tex, eVent, Reflex (and many others).

You should carry as little as possible: the less weight you’re lugging, the happier you’ll be. 

How much you can carry is a beloved subject of hikers. The long-time rule of thumb is to carry no more than a third of your bodyweight, but let’s leave that where it belongs – probably somewhere mid last century, as far as technology goes. Enter various lightweight fabrics, camping stoves etc and these days even multi-day, independent walkers aim for a total pack weight of no more than 25 per cent of their body weight.

C’mon – it’s going to be great! It’s not like you have to run 20km and then catch up for a meeting and replace your tap washers before preparing a banquet for 10. Every day you’ll start at the beginning, and your only job for that day is to admire the scenery, eat all your snacks and work out your playlist in case it rains. You’ll do it – and you’ll have a blast. Trust us…

Some camping innovator’s idea of a funniest home videos joke. A spork combines a spoon, a knife and a fork in one often strangely coloured implement. On the plus side it saves on washing up, but consider this: you want porridge and a piece of toast and Vegemite for breakfast. Which end would you like to hold?

Stuff sack

It’s a drawstring bag. For putting… stuff… in. Can’t you just tumble it all into your backpack? Gail has no idea, though she does like that a stuff sack keeps her socks and undies all snuggling together somewhere warm and dry and that they’re easy to find. Ian believes in stuff sacks the way some people believe in Vitamin C. He thinks that hiking, ski-touring and bicycle touring are made easier and happier by a small investment in nylon or Cordura bags. So why wouldn’t you?

Scroggin, aka trail mix, aka Gorp.

Scroggin, or scrog (says Ian), is the name that’s stuck at our house for the hiker’s favourite mix of dried fruits, nuts, seeds and a couple of secret sugary extras. It’s often called trail mix on commercial packets, while others call it gorp (“good ol’ raisins and peanuts” or “granola, oats, raisins, peanuts”).

Gail used to think it was the kind of thing odd people wearing waterproof or breathable shorts, socks that wick and ankle boots ate as they tackled their next perilous mountain. But she’s been converted by Ian’s secret special mix.

Spondonickle

Strictly you don’t need to know this one, but’s it’s fun to say three times fast. If you were also carrying your own cooking stuff then every gram counts (Ian knows people who have drilled holes in their cutlery handles to reduce a gram or two – at least he says it’s someone he knows…). A spondonickle – or ‘spondy’ for those in the know – is like a portable handle for camping pots so that instead of carrying the weight and non-tessallating shape of pots with handles you take some neat handleless ones, and a spondy.

layering

See “How will I stay warm?”, above.

Tassie runs on Australian Eastern Standard Time (UTC + 10 hours) from the first Sunday in April to the first Sunday in October, and Australian Eastern Daylight Time (UTC + 11 hours) at other times. Same time as Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne. But not Brisbane, from October to April.

An idiosyncratic Tasmanian concept required by the island’s four-seasons-in-one-hour weather extravaganza. Gail understands it to mean that in order to get through a day you need to find a way to empty your entire wardrobe onto your body in Michelin Man style, then drape what you can’t wear in easy reach. In practice it’s wise to have both a sun hat and beanie close to hand; you’ll almost certainly need both through the course of the day. For Ian’s perhaps more practical advice, visit our FAQ on how to keep warm.

 

An idiosyncratic Tasmanian concept required by the island’s four-seasons-in-one-hour weather extravaganza. Gail understands it to mean that in order to get through a day you need to find a way to empty your entire wardrobe onto your body in Michelin Man style, then drape what you can’t wear in easy reach. In practice it’s wise to have both a sun hat and beanie close to hand; you’ll almost certainly need both through the course of the day. For Ian’s perhaps more practical advice, visit our FAQ on how to keep warm.

 

Gail says – as in, humans and other fauna. But if my jacket self-breathes, it must therefore be alive, and ewwww. Ian rolls his eyes and says this handy term refers to the various microporous membranes that allow water vapour to escape but resist the entry of water droplets, the first (but by no means last) and arguably still best-known of which is Gore-Tex.

Fun facts about Gore-Tex manufacturer, W.L. Gore & Associates:

* Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and ‘Buzz’ Aldrin installed seismographic equipment on the Moon in 1969. It was connected to the lunar lander with a lightweight cable made by Gore.

* The first two Gore-Tex products sold were a joint sealant for industrial pipes and a pipe thread tape.

Gail says – as in, humans and other fauna. But if my jacket self-breathes, it must therefore be alive, and ewwww. Ian rolls his eyes and says this handy term refers to the various microporous membranes that allow water vapour to escape but resist the entry of water droplets, the first (but by no means last) and arguably still best-known of which is Gore-Tex.

Fun facts about Gore-Tex manufacturer, W.L. Gore & Associates:

* Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and ‘Buzz’ Aldrin installed seismographic equipment on the Moon in 1969. It was connected to the lunar lander with a lightweight cable made by Gore.

* The first two Gore-Tex products sold were a joint sealant for industrial pipes and a pipe thread tape.

Remember during the 2014 election (says Gail) when Tony Abbott was on talk radio and someone rang in to say they had to work as a phone sex operator to make ends meet and Abbott – as a subconscious reaction – winked? The particular tic that leads to winking = wicking.

Sigh (says Ian). To wick is to absorb or draw off liquid by capillary action. Thus good base-layer garments wick moisture away from the skin.

An idiosyncratic Tasmanian concept required by the island’s four-seasons-in-one-hour weather extravaganza. Gail understands it to mean that in order to get through a day you need to find a way to empty your entire wardrobe onto your body in Michelin Man style, then drape what you can’t wear in easy reach. In practice it’s wise to have both a sun hat and beanie close to hand; you’ll almost certainly need both through the course of the day. For Ian’s perhaps more practical advice, visit our FAQ on how to keep warm.