What's Happening in 2025?

What are we up to in 2025?

It's the start of a new year and this post will be a good one to look back on for us at the end of this year because to put it plainly, we don't have much penciled and locked in as yet for 2025! Still not too sure if that's a good thing or not, we have parts of the year planned out but there are big gaps in between where we are still unsure of direction we'll take. Unlike the start of most previous years where we've had a bit of a rough game plan, this one still has a big void in the middle to fill... but we know that things change quickly so - we'll see!

Let the Good Times roll in 2025!

Though 2024 will be a hard one to beat! It was an epic year of adventure, we trekked through and explored 3 states, another Hezza World Champ was crowned, swagged it on the beach in Esperance, hunted pigs in the gulf of the N.T. and everything in between! Looking back on it, there was so much stuff packed into 1 year while still working and going forward, which is what it's all about.

So for 2025, what we do know is this... we are house-sitting in the southwest until end of January and I am also working up until the start of Feb, then we have a month or so up in the mid-west exploring and fishing some new places and returning to some of our favourites. We'll be living out of the Dmax & Swag and towing my olds bigger 4.5m Tinny with us. After that, we'll head south to make it back in time for the 3rd Annual Hezza Slaya World Championship in Walpole! This should be a big one and we can't wait for this years competition. We are hoping to crack 100 competitors this year with a few extra prizes available. Around the same time, we are hoping to get a couple of missions in down south to see if the Salmon are around and get into some beach camping. Maybe hit up Bremer or Cheynes for a look-see.

After Walpole in mid-March is where we are still unsure. I have the option to pick up another 6 weeks of work till the start of May, but we are 50/50 as yet if that is what we want to do as it would mean we'd be hanging around longer in the southwest and we'd rather be on the road trekking somewhere by then, but ya never know! Around that time though we are planning a trip up along the Coral Coast to meet up with mates to do a couple of weeks land-based fishing if the weather plays nice. From there onwards is a big blank void for a few months, we have a couple of commitments in the third quarter of 2025 in the southwest that we'd like to be back for so we don't really want to venture out too far. We always have the option of popping back up to the Pilbara to pick up some more work like we have done in previous years, but we use this as a last resort. It's a great place and there are plenty of opportunities for making good money while also having some epic camping and fishing but we're just unsure yet as we have been up there a couple of times before and would like to find something different if we can.

Once we have popped back down south around September-ish, our plan is to have locked in a caretaking gig in the North on a cattle station or similar and ride out a wet season up there. So we'll be turning around hopefully and trekking back north into some moistness... We have already set out a few feelers for a couple of different places but it's early days for most of these places to organise next wet season when they are only just into this one!

So at the moment, that's pretty much what we have in mind for 2025. We are currently talking to a few contacts for some caretaking work also which might scrap all of what I just said and things will turn a complete 180 - haha! But that's great thing about having the freedom we have, giving us endless options for what we want to do next.

On a side note, we will also be getting a couple of extra mods done to the Dmax, we will soon be fitting a modifed valve body to the gearbox to get it to shift a bit smoother and also looking at getting a tow-tune done before we trek out after March. These are a couple of things we've been putting off for a while and saving up for, which we think will be worthy upgrades for towing in the future.

The next blog post will be about the ole Dmax, our honest thoughts about it, and things that have gone good... and bad. So we'll reveal all next month.

Cheers to 2024! Was such an Epic year...will be a hard one to beat!

Anyway, thanks everyone for 2024. The support along the way has been absolutely amazing! We have a great community behind us that continues to grow and support us in so many ways! We get messages, emails, comments, and catch-ups as well as people sending us care packages (mmm... snakes!) from people all over the place, which is just epic!

We both appreciate this so so much and thank you all!

Cheers to 2025 and let the good times roll ...

Team Jelly ox