Just to wrap up this saga for those who have been following along... ...finally some good news.
We held this camp over the (Nth Tas) long weekend just gone, and it went very well. Numbers were down a little this year, but that's partly my fault for not accounting for all the logistical issues when I started the ball rolling and therefore not being able to advertise the camp as early as usual.
The kids had a great time, and so did the adults (although several got a bit too sunburnt, especially the one who fell asleep on the beach!).
I found an excellent location, that I will not provide details for, behind a beach that had plenty of room for many tents, and the ground was easy to dig for a fairly wide/deep toilet hole. It was about 5km and a little over three hours walk each way.
Several of us walked in the weekend before to drop off some casks of drinking water, a spade, a pop-up toilet tent, and the toilet itself.
It took me a while to figure out how to make a toilet work in a way that would be suitable for novice kids. The challenge was to provide privacy, and a decent seat without having to actually squat. Of course all the waste had to be able to be buried deep, leaving little or no trace of having been there. Here's what I did, in the end, for a dunny...
I bought a toilet bucket thingy from Anaconda - it's essentially one of those standard large buckets, but instead of a normal lid, it has a toilet seat that press-seals onto the top, with a hinged toilet lid. I then found that it was exactly the same size as another plain bucket I already had at home. Interesting. So I bought a THIRD similar plain bucket and constructed the dunny thusly:
- Cut the bottom out of the toilet bucket AND cut the bottom out of one of the other plain buckets
- Stack them with the bottom bucket upside down, and to toilet bucket on top (right way up) - you now have a long tube (in two parts) with no bottom or anything to block the passage of waste dropped through it (See photo below)
- Cut a ring out of the third bucket at the right height so that it fits nicely over the bottoms of the stacked buckets
- Drill a few holes in the ring and in the bottom bucket and bolt the ring onto the bottom (upside-down) bucket so that half of the ring is available as a receptacle to hold the top toilet bucket in place
The top toilet bucket should be able to slip/slide/squeeze in and out of the ring, which should hold it perfectly in place aligned on top of the upturned bottom bucket. To transport them, you can stack the buckets inside each other, and they will then fit inside a large back pack.
To use, dig a deep hole, and bury the long toilet tube (bottom-to-bottom buckets) so that only about half of the top toilet bucket is above the ground. Pack some of the loose dirt in around the outside of the buried buckets.
Then all that is seen is the top half of the top toilet bucket sitting above the ground. It is a fairly low toilet seat, but this ensures that what is deposited is quite deep. I'm annoyed with myself that I didn't get any photos of the completed dunny in-situ.
After three days of 16 people, the waste filled maybe a quarter of the bottom bucket. The dunny was comfortable to sit on, and to my surprise it did not stink anywhere near as much as I expected. Certainly not as much as most camp site long-drops I've used. If smell becomes a problem, you could throw a few shovel-fulls of dirt on top (but be careful not to over-fill it - gotta end up with all waste well under-ground).
Afterwards, removing, dismantling and cleaning was straightforward. We dug out some of the packed-in dirt from around the buckets, wiggled them, and lifted them out. The waste remained in the hole, which was then filled in with the pile of dirt, and packed down. Can hardly see where it was already - in fact, I placed a rock on the location so that I know not to dig in the same spot if we go back there again.
The buckets were easy to clean with some anti-septic wipes (honestly, there was very little stuck to them at all!), and then stacked and placed in a large tough bag that I carried out in my hands on the last day (didn't weigh much). The wipes and rubber gloves were then double-bagged and carried out too.
This was an exceptionally good arrangement, and I'd be happy to use it for similar groups anywhere that wan't likely to be over-used by other people, and wasn't too sensitive in terms of vegetation, etc. If this site does become popular with other people, I'd have to reconsider, but as it is, it appears that the site is rarely used (although we were clearly not the first to discover it).
- dunny.jpg (94.53 KiB) Viewed 14843 times