I wasn't able to go for the entire time but was not about to miss the opportunity to combine fire, seared flesh and four wheel driving so I went for the length of time I had available and had an awesome time indeed!
The location was close to home, a mountain range that offers excellent four wheel driving that is enjoyable and sometimes worrying, (some of the tracks are car-breakers), but always worth the effort. The trip started on Friday and ended Sunday but I wasn't able to to get there until Saturday lunch time and had to leave early Sunday for another commitment; I was there with bells on though and had a blast.
I did some fun and challenging tracks in the afternoon requiring "low low" (low range, low gear) in my truck and luckily managed not to break anything or incur any damage, and then it was back to camp to make fire and dinner. We had a fuck-ton of wood so had a roaring campfire and the lads had made a secondary cooking fire the day before because there's nothing quite like cooking on fire.
Below is three massive chunks of sirloin steak (rump for you Americans I think) which we cooked prior to being cut into steaks. We were feeding thirty five people (adults and kids) and those three hunks of meat would have easily fed fifty! Most of us chaps had seconds of course.
This is what we did:
Get the hotplates really hot, rub the meat with oil and season with salt (no pepper yet). Slap onto the plates and turn every one minute and sear the edges as well (you can see that part in the last two images). They were super thick so we tested the temperature in the middle to bring it up to 48°C then wrapped each of them in foil...after being seasoned just prior with pepper and some more salt. They had a really pleasing "bark" on them, seared crispy flesh. So good.
One of my mates is a chef so he was on salad duty and he hand made the best coleslaw (slaw) one could ever have, an amazing warm potato salad and a green salad as well. Oh, the meat juices went into the pepper gravy and that was the meal completed...we tucked in around the fire.
After dinner, and before people got stuck into the the beers, wine and spirits, we went for a short night-time four wheel driving session, crossed some creeks and went up and down a few decent tracks - four wheel driving is a completely different beast at night - and then it was time to settle in around the fire and relax, talk shit, tell lies about the "good old days" and chill out.
I would have liked being there for the entire trip but I was there for the Saturday night cook up and had a great time four wheelin' with the lads so I was content. We had partners along and some brought their kids who were riding bikes, (making fires and jumping those fires), swimming (fucken crazy little fuckers, it was only 10°C in the afternoon) and generally doing kid stuff...without a single device in sight.
It was such a relaxing time and so much fun.